M. John Harrison started as a key figure in the new British Science Fiction scene, before growing dissatisfied with his own work in the late-1970s, scaling back his writing and moving North to work in a book shop and obsessively climb things.
Since the mid-1980s, and his full return to writing, his best work has been characterised by a mix of documentary realism and fantastic mysticism. The characters in his stories do normal, even banal things in the shadow of something bigger and much weirder than their everyday lives: occult ritual gone wrong, alien invasion, ancient forces lurking in the depths of urban waterways...
In Signs Of Life (1997) he gives us a detailed story about four interconnected (socially, professionally, romantically) people underpinned by sub-plots about medical waste, genetic experimentation, foreign espionage and the varying fortunes of entrepreneurs in a fluctuating economy. As I re-read the book the other day I was struck by three passages that, to me, summed up just how interesting and brilliant Harrison's writing is. I present them here without context (or subtext), I just think they're cool.
'...someone who looked as if he used to run Butlins was interviewing someone who looked as if he used to run Bulgaria.'
'The girl watched, puzzled as a Martian, then said: 'They're thick and they love it. It's such a revenge for being alive, isn't it? To be thick and in the way.'
'...until I lost her I was always moving from moment to moment, incident to incident, in a kind of warm, seamless daze. I never wanted anything until Isobel. I've not really wanted much since.'
I have no idea if any of this will resonate with anybody else, but they reverberate with me, I think they are extraordinary.
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