M. John Harrison (born 26 July 1945), known as Mike Harrison, is an English author and reviewer, primarily of slipstream, science fiction and fantasy. His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories, (1982), Climbers (1989), and Light (2002). He currently resides in London.
Harrison was born in Rugby, Warwickshire in 1945. According to the jacket blurb of his first novel, he was treated to a technical education which didn't stick; he worked at various times as a groom (North Warwicks Hunt), a teacher, and a clerk for a masonic charity outfit; his hobbies included dwarfs, electric guitars and writing pastiches of H.H. Munro.
From 1968 to 1975 he was literary editor of the New Age science fiction magazine New Worlds. He was central to the New Wave movement which also included writers such as Norman Spinrad, Barrington Bayley and Thomas M. Disch. As reviewer for New Worlds he often used the pseudonym "Joyce Churchill" and was trenchantly critical of many works and writers published under the rubric of science fiction.
Amongst his works of that period are three stories utilising the Jerry Cornelius character invented by Michael Moorcock. (These stories do not appear in any of Harrison's own collections but do appear in the Nature of the Catastrophe and New Nature of the Catastophe published under Moorcock's name.) Other early stories appearing as from 1966, featured in anthologies such as such as New Writings in SF edited by John Carnell, and in magazines such as Transatlantic Review and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Harrison was a regular contributor to New Manchester Review (1978—79).
His first two novels, the dystopian The Committed Men and the revisionist space opera The Centauri Device have been reprinted several times. The latter was included in the SF Masterworks series, though Harrison is reputedly not fond of it. His work is profoundly leftist and committed to depicting alienated characters in the world of late Capitalism.
Between 1976 and 1986 he lived in the Peak District, where his interest in rock climbing led to the autobiographical novel Climbers (1989), the first novel to receive the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. Harrison also ghost-wrote the autobiography of one of Britain's best rock climbers, Ron Fawcett (Fawcett on Rock, 1987, as by Mike Harrison).
Subsequent novels and short stories, such as The Course of the Heart (1991) and "Empty" (1993), were set between London and the Peak District. They have a lyrical style and a strong sense of place, and take their tension from characteristically conflicting veins of mysticism and realism. The Course of the Heart deals in part with a magical experiment gone wrong, and with an imaginary country which may exist at the heart of Europe, as well as Gnostic themes.
In Viriconium was nominated for the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1982. The Viriconium sequence, influenced in its imagery by the poems of T.S. Eliot, consists of three novels and various short stories; its most complete version is the 2005 omnibus simply titled Viriconium which includes all the connected novels and most of the short stories. The graphic novel The Luck in the Head adapts one of his short works set in the sequence.
The novel Signs of Life (1996) is a romantic thriller which explores concerns about genetics and biotechnology amidst the turmoil of what might be termed a three-way love affair between its central characters.
Beginning with The Wild Road in 1996, he co-wrote four linked fantasies about cats with Jane Johnson, under the pseudonym "Gabriel King".
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.
In 2003 Harrison was on the jury of the Michael Powell Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
His science fiction novel Light was co-winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2003. Its sequel, Nova Swing (2006), won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2007 and the Philip K. Dick Award in 2008.
Harrison has collaborated on short stories with Simon Ings and with Simon Pummel on the short film Ray Gun Fun (1998). His work has been some by some as forming part of the movement dubbed the New Weird, along with writers such as China Mieville, though Harrison himself resists being labelled as part of any literary movement.
He recently provided material for performance by Barbara Campbell (1001 Nights Cast, 2007, 2008) and Kate McIntosh (Loose Promise, 2007).
He has taught creative writing courses in Devon and Wales, focusing on landscape and autobiography, with Adam Lively and the travel writer James Perrin. Since 1991, Harrison has reviewed fiction and nonfiction for The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Times.
His short stories have appeared 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 Women's Journal ("Old Women", 1982). They were collected in Travel Arrangements (2000) and Things That Never Happen (2002).
In 2009, Harrison shared (with Sarah Hall and Nicholas Royle) the judging of the Manchester Fiction Prize.
On 6 June 2009, Harrison wrote on his official blog that he has three major works in progress. These are: "(a) a third Light novel, which will collide A.E. van Vogt with all sorts of other unlikely people" - this novel has been announced as Pearlant, for publication in August 2011;(b) "a collection of short stories, some of which will be voiced in a familiar way, some of which won’t;"and (c) "something I would describe as a literary seaside concept-horror novel if four-word descriptions weren’t a betrayal of everything I stand for"
Style
Harrison is stylistically an Imagist and his early work relies heavily on the use of strange juxtapositions characteristic of absurdism. His work has been acclaimed by writers including Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and Clive Barker, who has referred to him as "a blazing original".
Leigh Blackmore. "Undoing the Mechanisms: Genre Expectation, Subversion and Anti-Consolation in the Kefahuchi Tract Novels of M. John Harrison." Studies in the Fantastic. 2 (Winter 2008/Spring 2009). (University of Tampa Press).
