M. John Harrison – Light (2002) Review

Although M. John Harrison writes SF and Fantasy fiction, he often places himself outside of the current trends and subgenres. He often writes against the genres, instead of being part of them.

When Fantasy authors were busy writing Tolkien inspired epics, he wrote Viriconium, a series in which the worldbuilding is not consistent and names and histories change from one book to the next. When SF authors wrote optimistic space operas, he wrote The Centauri Device, a gritty, depressing future filled with lowlifes, and incidentally laying the building blocks for the new genre cyberpunk. I suppose his goal is to shake people away from conventions in writing when things are in danger of getting stale and constricting. And in the last decade, while SF authors have been writing such cyberpunk and hard-sf, Harrison offered a new work: Light.

The pillar that Light kicks against is that of science. The 24th century is a post-science world. Science is no longer a support for understanding the universe, nor the real motor of progress. The thing is, in this novel all alien civilisations have scientific theories that underpin their faster than light space drives, but all of these theories prove the other ones false, yet all of them work. And then there is the Kefahuchi Tract, a region of space that cannot be explained. For millions of years it has attracted civilizations to study it, of which humanity is just the latest one. Now humanity is sifting through the remains of alien cultures, dead millions of years, finding tech and getting rich on things they don’t understand. In daily life, these things just are, and humans muddle through, even though it isn’t clear any more what still is a human.

A lot happens, at a breakneck pace. Three points of view, two in the 24th century and one in the 1990s. It takes a couple of chapters to get a grip on the context of all the weird stuff happening. There’s a girl turned into a starship who visits planets in the disguise of a cat, there’s a homicidal physicist who is stalked by a monster living in fractals, there’s a guy living in a simulation while his body floats in a tank of organic goo. Most of the futuristic concepts never really get an explanation. For example, there are human-like species like the New Men and the Shadow Boys who might be alien or artificially designed or something, but the point is that this is all part of the confusion of the 24^th century. It’s about being adrift in a post-science world.

This confusion and aimlessness of the human future also exists within the characters themselves. They are all searching for things, whether it is relief, or memories of forgotten pasts. They are hollow, chasing compulsions – most of all sexual – to fill up the emotional holes inside them. The Beach, an area in space full of alien artefacts, is also a place that washes up humans. It is all an exaggeration of fears that exist today, of the universe being complex and beyond understanding, of swimming in a sea of technology while not knowing what to do with your life.

I am in awe of Harrison’s imagination. He exercises his powers of invention constantly, with a nervous energy behind it. Like Jack Vance conjured up whole societies on the fly, Harrison inserts ideas as throwaway articles just to paint certain impressions. His worldbuilding is great but it is clearly not his goal, and instead of slowing down and exploring his own creation he constantly creates and inserts new stuff, sometimes to achieve emotional and thematic effects, sometimes just for the fun of it. He explores themes, not worlds.

A downside of this style of writing is that you never really know what’s important. Details just come and go. Characters show up, turn out to be side stories, disappear again, only later to turn out to be important after all. Impressions of cities, planets, travels. There is a story in here somewhere but it only starts to take on shape halfway into it. Harrison has strict ideas about what he finds worthwhile in the art of storytelling.

Reading Harrison is like eating a bag of chips (crisps for the British). It crackles so nicely with sharp witticisms and quick turns of phrase, is salted and spiced with noir pathos, with late life cynicism about humans never changing and with those counterculture ideas about sex and drugs that Harrison apparently always carried with him. I want more, and more, and I actually feel nourished aesthetically afterwards. Compared to The Centauri Device, 30 years previously, his style is more controlled and measured, closer to the human condition and less prone to exaggeration.

I loved this novel. It’s a constant stream of hilarity and brain tingling inventiveness. Each chapter has its outrageous moments, too many to count all in all. But don’t ask me what the book is about for I will have to give you a glassy stare.

9/10