re:mote voices

Title: Light
Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher:Gollancz

Light is the most recent novel by the writer M. John Harrison, from which I had read an extract at the time of it’s publication in hard back. I’ve just recently come across the paperback, which has been available for about 6 months apparently.

Light is a curious book, crossing genres, and at times baffling readers as it pursues it’s own train of thought. Following three threads, the first being Michael Kearney, a scientist who is involved with what might bring a real break through in mankind’s understanding of space. It is 1999 and despite Kearney’s genius, he might also be described as a mad scientist, an isolated childhood led to flight’s of fancy – with adulthood however, these have transformed to the belief that he is being pursued by a demon, and only continual movement and the regular ritual killings of women keep the demon at bay. The next section is about a girl who ran away to become a spaceship, Seria Mau achieved this by bonding herself with some sentient mathematics, but with years passed she might be regretting losing her humanity. it’s the far future and humanity as reached the stars thanks to Kearney’s work. Here they have found numerous other races and artefacts, one in particular being of fascination, and where all races become stumped. The third thread starts on one of the planets Seria Mau stops off on, Ed Chianese has become an addict of the current version of virtual reality, escaping life by holing up in a tank and dreaming. But as his past debts catch up on him, he is forced to come out and face facts – a man who has at one time or another flown every type of ship available to the human race, he finds himself recruited by a circus to become a prophet.

The result is curious and at times quite dark. The present day (Kearney’s 1999) has an esoteric feeling, a mix of strange characters, disembodied heads and the like which seems reminiscent of Hellblazer and John Constantine. While the future parts play with the madness of unimaginably ancient and alien races, the exoticness of things which transcend reality – including that whole sentient math thing. The future also mixes the ideas of things like cyber/virtual fiction with alien encounter and the hard science of the hard core space operas which are seeing a resurgence with the works of people like Alistair Reynolds and Robert Reed. Though with that, despite this being my first encounter with Harrison, it is clear that he has actually been writing for a long time, and pre-dates many of the folk who are attempting to write this kind of thing now. Light was something I really enjoyed, at times baffling me entirely with what was going on, but regardless intriguing with the levels of esoteric/exotic contents, coupled with repeating symbolism like the ideas of the black cat/white cat. With just how much I enjoyed Light, I have to say how frustrating it is to find how difficult sourcing more of his work appears to be.