М. Джон Харрисон: Жизнь и творчество писателя-фантаста

English author and critic

Michael John Harrison (born 26 July 1945), known for publication purposes primarily as M. John Harrison, is an English author and literary critic. His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories (1971–1984), Climbers (1989), and the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, which consists of Light (2002), Nova Swing (2006) and Empty Space (2012). He is widely considered one of the major stylists of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a "genre contrarian". The Times Literary Supplement described him as "a singular stylist" and the Literary Review called him "a witty and truly imaginative writer".

Harrison was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, in 1945 to an engineering family. His father died when he was a teenager and he found himself "bored, alienated, resentful and entrapped", playing truant from Dunsmore School (now Ashlawn School). His first short story was published in 1966 by Kyril Bonfiglioli at Science Fantasy magazine, on the strength of which he relocated to London. He there met Michael Moorcock, who was editing New Worlds magazine.

Harrison later relocated to Manchester and was a regular contributor to New Manchester Review (1978–79). David Britton and Michael Butterworth of Savoy Books employed him to write in their basement (where he did so "amidst stacks of antique Eagles, Freindz, New Worlds and Styng. A basement that reverberates with indecent exposures of stolen sound, bootlegs sucked from hidden mikes, stacked in neat piles."). The commissioned work, originally announced in Savoy publications as By Gas Mask and Fire Hydrant, eventually became the novel In Viriconium. During the decade of 1976–1986, Harrison lived in the Peak District. In 1983, he published his second short story collection, The Ice Monkey and Other Stories, containing seven tales which capture the pathos, humour, awe, despair, pain and black humour of the human condition. The Ice Monkey was praised by Ramsey Campbell, who stated "M. John Harrison is the finest British writer now writing horror fiction and by far the most original". In "The Incalling", a story of seedy suburban magic which in some ways foreshadows his later novel The Course of the Heart, an editor is haunted by an author's attempts to cure himself of cancer by faith healing. Harrison has repeatedly affirmed in print the importance of rock climbing for his writing as an attempt to grapple with reality and its implications, which he had largely neglected while writing fantasy. The difference in his approach pre and post Climbers, can be observed in the extreme stylistic differences between the first novel of the Viriconium sequence The Pastel City and the second, A Storm of Wings. Around the time of writing Climbers, he declared that he had abandoned science fiction forever. Robert Macfarlane wrote an introduction to the 2013 reissue of Climbers. Writing about the book in The Guardian, he said: " it is surely the best novel about rock climbing ever written – though such a description drastically limits its achievement". Harrison has collaborated on several short stories with Simon Ings, and with Simon Pummel on the short film "Ray Gun Fun" (1998). His work has been classified by some as forming part of the style dubbed the New Weird, along with writers such as China Miéville, though Harrison himself resists being labelled as part of any literary style. Harrison won the Richard Evans Award in 1999 (named after the near legendary figure of UK publishing) given to the author who has contributed significantly to the SF genre without concomitant commercial success.

Harrison continued to publish short fiction in a wide variety of magazines through the late 1990s and early 21st century. Such tales were published in magazines as diverse as Conjunctions ("Entertaining Angels Unawares", Fall issue 2002), The Independent on Sunday ("Cicisbeo", 2003), The Times Literary Supplement ("Science and the Arts", 1999) and Woman's Journal ("Old Women", 1982). They were collected in his major short story collections Travel Arrangements (2000) and Things That Never Happen (2002). During 2007 Harrison provided material for performance by Barbara Campbell (1001 Nights Cast, 2007, 2008) and Kate McIntosh (Loose Promise, 2007). In 2002, Light marked a return to science fiction for Harrison and marked the beginning of the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy. Light was co winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2003. Its sequel, Nova Swing (2006), which contained elements of noir, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2007 and the Philip K. Dick Award in 2008. The third novel, Empty Space: A Haunting, was published in August 2012.

Harrison published two short stories on Kindle: Cave and Julia (2013) and The 4th Domain (2014). In 2014, Rhys Williams and Mark Bould organised a conference on Harrison's work at the University of Warwick, UK, called "Irradiating the Object: M. John Harrison". The keynote speakers were Fred Botting (Kingston University) and Sara Wasson (Edinburgh Napier University). The conference papers, including the keynote address by Tim Etchells, was published as M. John Harrison: Critical Essays edited by Rhys Williams and Mark Bould. In 2016, he received an honorary D. Litt. from the University of Warwick, UK. A collection of short stories, You Should Come With Me Now, was published in November 2017. 2020 saw two new books: a novel, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again and Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970 2020. The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again won the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize, and was longlisted for the 2020 BSFA Award. In 2023, Harrison released Wish I Was Here, an "anti memoir".

For Harrison's work in New Worlds magazine, see above. The bulk of his reviews were collected in the volume Parietal Games (2005; see below). Since 1991, Harrison has reviewed fiction and nonfiction for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. During 2003 Harrison was on the jury of the Michael Powell Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. He has taught creative writing courses in Devon and Wales, focusing on landscape and autobiography, with Adam Lively and the travel writer Jim Perrin. In 2009, Harrison shared (with Sarah Hall and Nicholas Royle) the judging of the Manchester Fiction Prize.

His work has been acclaimed by writers including Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman, Iain Banks (who called him "a Zen master of prose"), China Miéville, William Gibson, Robert Macfarlane In a Locus magazine interview, Harrison describes his work as "a deliberate intention to illustrate human values by describing their absence." Many of Harrison's novels include expansions or reworkings of previously published short stories. For instance, "The Ice Monkey" (title story of the collection) provides the basis for the novel Climbers (1989); the novel The Course of the Heart (1992) is based on his short story "The Great God Pan". The story "Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring" is expanded as the novel Signs of Life (1996); the short story "Anima", first published in Interzone magazine, also forms one of the central thematic threads of Signs of Life. In interviews, Harrison has described himself as an anarchist, and Michael Moorcock wrote in an essay entitled "Starship Stormtroopers" that, "His books are full of anarchists – some of them very bizarre like the anarchist aesthetes of The Centauri Device."

China Miéville has written: "That M. John Harrison is not a Nobel laureate proves the bankruptcy of the literary establishment. Austere, unflinching and desperately moving, he is one of the very great writers alive today. And yes, he writes fantasy and sf, though of a form, scale and brilliance that it shames not only the rest of the field, but most modern fiction." David Wingrove has written of Harrison: "Making use of forms from sword and sorcery, space opera and horror fiction, Harrison pursues an idiosyncratic vision: often grim, but with a strong vein of sardonic humour and sensual detail. Typically, his characters make ill assorted alliances to engage in manic and often ritualistic quests for obscure objectives. Out of the struggle, unacknowledged motives emerge, often to bring about a frightful conclusion, which, it is suggested, was secretly desired all along. Harrison's vivid, highly finished prose convinces the reader of everything."