Вирикониум: Пастельді қала және қанаттардың дауілі

the Roman town

Viriconium is a series of novels and stories written by English author M. John Harrison between 1971 and 1984, set in and around the fictional city of the same name. In the first novel in the series, the city of Viriconium exists in a future Earth littered with the technological detritus of millennia (partly inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series and the poems of T. S. Eliot). However, variations of the city appear throughout the series (most frequently as Uriconium and Vriko), in an attempt by Harrison to subvert the concept of thoroughly mapped secondary worlds featured in certain works of fantasy, particularly those by J. R. R. Tolkien and his host of successors. Both universal and in particular, the city has a shifting topography and history, and is sometimes known by names such as 'Uroconium' (though there does not seem to be any association with the old Roman town of Viroconium).

The first Viriconium novel, The Pastel City (1971), presents a civilization in decline where medieval social patterns clash with advanced technology and superscience energy weapons that the citizens of the city know how to use but have forgotten how to engineer. Harrison's leading character, Lord tegeus Cromis, fancies himself a better poet than swordsman; yet he leads the battle to save Viriconium, the Pastel City, from the brain stealing automatons known as the geteit chemosit from Earth's past. The decadence Harrison describes is reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's vision of the far future in The End of All Songs. David Pringle wrote of the novel: "This is a sword and sorcery tale, yet it borders on sf by virtue of its distant future setting and the conceit that most of the 'magic' is in fact ancient, little understood science. Despite its obvious debts to Jack Vance and Michael Moorcock, it's a very moody and stylish entertainment." Reviewing the novel for Delap's F & SF, Michael Bishop opined that "my own gut feeling is that M. John Harrison is wasting his time and his gift with this sort of material" but that "if you like elegantly crafted, elegantly written sword and sorcery, this book is all you could ask for."

The more complex second novel of the Viriconium sequence, which is also borderline sf, is A Storm of Wings (1980). It is set eighty years later than The Pastel City and stylistically it is far denser and more elaborate than the first novel. Fay Glass and Alstath Fulthor of the Reborn Men, awoken from their long sleep, try to alert the powers of Viriconium that the northern highlands are overrun by insectile armies. A race of intelligent insects is invading Earth as human interest in survival wanes. Fay brings the severed head of an invading locust like giant insect to show the extent of the disaster. The story is told through both human and alien points of view and perceptions. The main characters are a resurrected man, an assassin, a magician, a madwoman, and Tomb, the Iron Dwarf. Retz has ambitions to seek treasure in the broad wastes south and west of Viriconium, and petitions the Queen to allow him to keep the power knife so he may defend himself against his enemies. When she refuses, he uses the knife to cut off her hand, and flees, hunted through the city by various factions of "aristocratic thugs" such as the Locust Clan and the Yellow Paper Men. Taking refuge in the house of an old man who shows him a strange tapestry, he beholds various visions of himself, seemingly at different periods in the city's history, before trying to steal a metal eagle from the old man's room. The metal eagle comes to life, attacking him, and Retz barely escapes. Later, he finds himself on a wasteland where some men are trying to bury a body with a fish mask on its head. Retz steals the clothes and mask from the body and continues on his way. In "The Luck in the Head", in the Artists' Quarter, the poet Ardwick Crome has been having a recurring dream about a ceremony called "the Luck in the Head." He wants these disturbing dreams to stop, so he goes looking for one of the women in the dream. "Strange Great Sins" is the story of the weak and silly man Baladine Prinsep, who becomes enamored with the ballet dancer Vera Ghillera and wastes away. The story is told at one remove through the memories of his nephew, an unnamed sin eater, and through those of his mother and of the singer Madame de Maupassant. In this story the motif of the Mari Lwyd is central. This story looks at the city of Viriconium from the perspective of outsiders who know that those who go there either are, or will become, decadent and self absorbed. In "The Dancer From the Dance" the ballerina Vera Ghillera from "Strange Great Sins" visits Allman's Heath where strange things are afoot. "A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium", set in our world, explains that Viriconium is a real place and tells you exactly how to get there, in case you want to go. The doorway is a mirror in a bathroom in a café in England. "Lords of Misrule", narrated in the first person by Harrison's continuing character Lord Cromis, deals with Cromis's visit to a country house where the Yule Greave, formerly a fighter with the Feverfew Anschluss faction of Viriconium, and his wife, live with their young servant Ringmer. An unidentified enemy is gradually encroaching on the country lands and Cromis appears to be surveying their progress. During his visit, he is shown one of the ancient and highly decorated Mari a version of the Mari Lwyd used by the people in the 'mast horse ceremony', which Ringmer's father used to operate. The graphic novel The Luck in the Head adapts the short story of that name and is illustrated by Ian Miller.