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Light
M John Harrison
Gollancz hardback, 336 pages, £17.99
Review by Mike Don (2002)

Here is contemporary physicist Michael Kearney, murderously dysfunctional and quite literally haunted. Here, too, five centuries down the line, is Seria Mau Genlicher, scourge of the spaceways, a cyborged ship’s brain – think of McCaffrey’s Helva crossed with the ruthless amorality of Boba Fett – worried by a mysterious software package she’s taken aboard. And here, finally, is Ed Chianese, loser supreme, hiding from his creditors.

For most of the book there are three entirely separate narratives, spliced elegantly together almost on the last page, in a revelatory climax. A climax which opens up vertigo-inducing vistas of time, and a new take on humanity’s ‘manifest destiny’.

By my calculations, it’s been 28 years since M John Harrison last dipped into ‘conventional’ SF. Light rather gives the lie to academic assertions that he is ‘disgruntled’ with the genre. There is an effortless command of very different stylistic approaches in the three strands. ‘Kearney’ is contemporary dark fantasy, complete with a creepy Crowley analogue; ‘Genlicher’ is straightforward deep space action; while ‘Chianese’ (initially at least) is slick‘n’sleazy cyberpunk. The old gunslinger shows those upstarts that he can still match anything they try. 

Technically superb, though perhaps rather soullessly so.