Fantastic Metropolis

Michael John Harrison is the brooding hermit who occupies a slippery ledge on the fantasy mountain. Other climbers employ grandiose schemes for conquering the summit; frequently they venture higher than the scowling figure who clings on by his fingernails alone. But Harrison has chosen the difficult route with care—when he finally reaches the top, his ascent will seem all the more heroic.

Sheer landscapes, whether of glistening rock and ice or else human emotions, feature largely in Harrison’s oeuvre. His work is essentially concerned with the old existentialist dilemmas, the difficulties faced by beings who are unable to communicate with their own kind or relate to the surroundings that barely nurture their desires. He is a bleak writer, remote; yet not quite pessimistic. Ostensibly his stories seem fixed by stylistic pitons to the blank face of Realism; but there is a healthy measure of absurdity, and no little compassion, to belie the apparent naturalistic (and nihilistic) colours of his vistas.

His work has steadily improved over the decades, evolving from the twin extremes of avant-garde science-fiction and conventional fable to a more immediate and ethological study of individuals at times of crisis. He frequently uses entropy as a metaphor for the meaningless struggle of everyday existence. This is a literary conceit much affected by genre writers since the 1960’s—Moorcock and Ballard among others. And indeed his early work was heavily influenced by both these authors, as well as by more standard fantasy writing.

Born in 1945, Harrison became a student teacher in the early 60’s before selling his first story, the low-key “Baa Baa Blocksheep”, to New Worlds in 1968 (an even earlier tale published in 1966 has been disowned by him.) Published in an unremarkable issue devoted to ‘new’ writers, Harrison’s story made as little impression as those of his fellow contributors. But of the eight writers premiered in that issue, Harrison was one of only two—the other being Robert Holdstock—who was to go on to better things.

These better things came almost immediately. Ensnared by Moorcock’s ‘Jerry Cornelius’ mythos, Harrison started writing his own tales of the ‘English Assassin’. Moorcock had intended his creation to become an open character; other writers were able to use Cornelius as a foil for their own concerns. For one thing, the Cornelius mythos provided a workable format for experimentation as well as a non-linear method of exploring new subject matter. This is not to deny that many of the tales are on the verge of unreadability; but for the best writers the opportunities for wit offered by Cornelius managed to outweigh the disadvantages of the chaotic plotting and often pretentious messages.

Harrison brought a tighter rein to bear on Cornelius than others (including Moorcock) who were similarly tempted to add to the growing mythos. His Cornelius stories have often been judged to be the best of the bunch—his treatment of the anarchic demagogue was both rigorous and careful. More importantly, he proved that he could actually write well, showing a flair for characterisation, dynamic and description. Three of his early Cornelius tales, “The Ash Circus” (1969), “The Nash Circuit” (1969) and “The Flesh Circle” (1971), form a mesmerising sort of loop. He was also responsible for introducing new characters into the cycle, some of whom were adopted into Moorcock’s novels.

At the same time, Harrison was writing short pieces that had much more in common with the ‘condensed novels’ of J.G. Ballard. These tales are difficult to read and have not worn particularly well—much of the experimentation conducted within the pages of New Worlds trundled down rambling paths towards a dead-end. These odd stories were eventually collected together in The Machine in Shaft Ten (1975), the title story of which is probably the most interesting. “The Bait Principle” (1970) and “The Floating Nun” (1970) are typical examples of this disconnected phase—too complex for digestion and too tightly-knit to reward any but the most studious reader.

A third strain of Harrison’s fiction was finally to prove far more fruitful and entertaining. In 1967, he had written a remarkable little fantasy entitled “Lamia Mutable”. This was to find its way into Harlan Ellison’s superlative anthology Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972. Though a brief tale, it encapsulated many of Harrison’s obsessions and concerns and polished the stage for the cast of dislocated souls that flowed and changed into the impotent heroes of his fantasy masterpieces. The aging and foolish Birkin Grif, later recast as a mercenary in The Pastel City, here plays a part in a barely-concealed attack on London intellectual life. Later stories such as “The Lamia And Lord Cromis” (1971) and “The Causeway” (1971) added their own allegorical weight to the series. It was evident that Harrison had a sense of humour even blacker than he had demonstrated with his Jerry Cornelius tales.