M. John Harrison's classic novel turns the conventions of space opera on their head, and is written with the precision and brilliance for which is famed.

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Author: M. John Harrison

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 9780575088054

Category: Fiction

Page: 208

View: 735

John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. But he was also the last of the Centaurans, or at least half of him was, which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which might hold the key to settling a vicious space war. M. John Harrison's classic novel turns the conventions of space opera on their head, and is written with the precision and brilliance for which is famed.

In his ascribing to pulp science fiction a lurid, surreal disruption of technocratic
rationality, Harrison not only defends The Centauri Device against mainstream
critics but also presages his own eventual return to his space-opera roots in the ...

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Author: Jerome Winter

Publisher: University of Wales Press

ISBN: 9781783169450

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 256

View: 869

One of the few points critics and readers can agree upon when discussing the fiction popularly known as New Space Opera – a recent subgenre movement of science fiction – is its canny engagement with contemporary cultural politics in the age of globalisation. This book avers that the complex political allegories of New Space Opera respond to the recent cultural phenomenon known as neoliberalism, which entails the championing of the deregulation and privatisation of social services and programmes in the service of global free-market expansion. Providing close readings of the evolving New Space Opera canon and cultural histories and theoretical contexts of neoliberalism as a regnant ideology of our times, this book conceptualises a means to appreciate this thriving movement of popular literature.

HARRISON. The. Centauri. Device. Michael John Harrison (born 1945) is one of
the finest writers ever to have served an apprenticeship in the sf magazines (he
was particularly associated with New Worlds in the late 1960s and early 1970s).

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Author: David Pringle

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 9781473208070

Category: Fiction

Page: 224

View: 983

From one of the best-known editors in modern science fiction, this lively and authoritative guide will appeal to both newcomers and connoisseurs of the genre alike. Informative and readable, David Pringle's choices focus on landmark works by the likes of Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester and J.G. Ballard, unearth less prominent talents such as Ian Watson, Octavia Butler and Joanna Russ, and highlight breakthrough novels by William Gibson and Philip K. Dick. An essential guide to science fiction literature.

Michael Levy connects the rise of NSO with the British New Wave, and especially
with writers like Brian Stableford and M. John Harrison, whose Centauri Device “
is often cited by later British writers as a particular influence.” Because of the ...

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Author: Simone Caroti

Publisher: McFarland

ISBN: 9781476620404

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 252

View: 754

This critical history of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels covers the series from its inception in the 1970s to the The Hydrogen Sonata (2012), published less than a year before Banks’ death. It considers Banks’ origins as a writer, the development of his politics and ethics, his struggles to become a published author, his eventual success with The Wasp Factory (1984) and the publication of the first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas (1987). His 1994 essay “A Few Notes on the Culture” is included, along with a range of critical responses to the 10 Culture books he published in his lifetime and a discussion of the series’ status as utopian literature. Banks was a complex man, both in his everyday life and on the page. This work aims at understanding the Culture series not only as a fundamental contribution to science fiction but also as a product of its creator’s responses to the turbulent times he lived in.

Other Harrison titles of note include The Centauri Device (1974), in which
Captain John Truck is caught up in the middle of a war to gain control of a super-
doomsday device, and Signs of Life (1997), a startling piece of literary SF that sits
as ...

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Author: George Mann

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 9781780337043

Category: Fiction

Page: 160

View: 469

This encyclopedia is the most up-to-date, concise, clear and affordable guide to all aspects of science fiction, from its background to generic themes and devices, from authors (established and new) to films. Science fiction has evolved into one of the most popular, cutting-edge and exciting fiction geners, with a proliferation of modern and classic authors, themes and ideas, movies, TV series and awards. Arranged in an A-Z format, and featuring a comprehensive index and cross-referencing system, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is also the most accessible and easy to use encyclopedia of its kind currently available.

Out of print in the United States for more than two decades, four early fantasy works by the award-winning author of "Light" are gathered for this omnibus edition.

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Author: M. John Harrison

Publisher: Gollancz

ISBN: 1857989953

Category: Fantasy fiction, English

Page: 563

View: 233

In Viriconium, the young men whistle to one another all night long as they go about their deadly games. If you wake suddenly, you might hear footsteps running, or an urgent sigh. After a minute or two, the whistles move away in the direction of the Tinmarket or the Margarethestrasse. The next day, some lordling is discovered in the gutter with his throat cut. Who can tell fantasy from reality, magic from illusion, hero from villain, man from monster ... in Viriconium? Published here for the first time in one volume, and in the author's preferred order, are all the Viriconium stories, originally published in four books: The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium and Viriconium Nights.

Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2020, this is fiction that pushes the boundaries of the novel form.

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Author: M. John Harrison

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 9780575096370

Category: Fiction

Page: 488

View: 690

Shaw had a breakdown, but he's getting himself back together. He has a single room, a job on a decaying London barge, and an on-off affair with a doctor's daughter called Victoria, who claims to have seen her first corpse at age fourteen. It's not ideal, but it's a life. Or it would be if Shaw hadn't got himself involved in a conspiracy theory that, on dark nights by the river, seems less and less theoretical . . . Meanwhile, Victoria is up in the Midlands, renovating her dead mother's house, trying to make new friends. But what, exactly, happened to her mother? Why has the local waitress disappeared into a shallow pool in a field behind the house? And why is the town so obsessed with that old Victorian morality tale, The Water Babies? As Shaw and Victoria struggle to maintain their relationship, the sunken lands are rising up again, unnoticed in the shadows around them.

... in which off-Earth populations travel and fight wars in the vacuum of space,
leaping parsecs via a myriad of ftl devices, ... anarchistic values, as in M. John
Harrison's The Centauri Device(1975) or Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness or,
indeed, ...

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Author: Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

ISBN: 9780819571526

Category: Fiction

Page: 336

View: 551

As the world undergoes daily transformations through the application of technoscience to every aspect of life, science fiction has become an essential mode of imagining the horizons of possibility. However much science fiction texts vary in artistic quality and intellectual sophistication, they share in a mass social energy and a desire to imagine a collective future for the human species and the world. At this moment, a strikingly high proportion of films, commercial art, popular music, video and computer games, and non-genre fiction have become what Csicsery-Ronay calls science fictional, stimulating science-fictional habits of mind. We no longer treat science fiction as merely a genre-engine producing formulaic effects, but as a mode of awareness, which frames experiences as if they were aspects of science fiction. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction describes science fiction as a constellation of seven diverse cognitive attractions that are particularly formative of science-fictionality. These are the “seven beauties” of the title: fictive neology, fictive novums, future history, imaginary science, the science-fictional sublime, the science-fictional grotesque, and the Technologiade, or the epic of technsocience’s development into a global regime.

Now , for instance , The Centauri Device , does not do its job . It fails in my intent .
You can ' t do what I was trying to do with the tools that I had at the time . That ' s
not the case with Climbers . The technical tools are in the right place , they ' re ...

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Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015067523798

Category: Books

Page:

View: 134

... Skulls Robert Silverberg The Centauri Device M. John Harrison The Child
Garden Geoff Ryman The City and the Stars Arthur C. Clarke The Complete
Roderick John Sladek The Demolished Man Alfred Bester The Difference Engine
William ...

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Author: Olaf Stapledon

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 9780575128606

Category: Fiction

Page: 320

View: 912

John Wainwright is a freak, a human mutation with an extraordinary intelligence which is both awesome and frightening to behold. Ordinary humans are mere playthings to him. And Odd John has a plan - to create a new order on Earth, a new supernormal species. But the world is not ready for such a change ...

But let the record show that the unwieldy names of my ships were a direct pinch
from M. John Harrison's The Centauri Device, not the Culture. Okay: I don't want
to give anyone the idea that I stole everything. But debts must be acknowledged,
 ...

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Author: Alastair Reynolds

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 9780575087712

Category: Fiction

Page: 388

View: 964

Gathered here for the first time are Alastair Reynolds' stories and novelettes set in the universe of REVELATION SPACE, his first bestselling blockbuster.

Over the course of the next four decades, he published more than a dozen novels
, including high-fantasy novels (the long-running Viriconium series); science-
fiction novels, such as The Centauri Device and Light; Climbers, a mainstream ...

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Author: Stephen King

Publisher: Tachyon Publications

ISBN: 9781616961862

Category: Fiction

Page: 999

View: 147

A mutant baby goes on a rampage through Central Park. An immigrant reveals secrets in the folds of a perfect gift. Lucky Cats extend their virtual paws to salute a generous revolution. The Internet invades a third-world village. The premier speculative-fiction magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction continues to discover and showcase many of the most inventive authors writing in any genre. Now drawing even more deeply upon F&SF’s impressive history, this extraordinary companion anthology expands upon sixty-five years’ worth of top-notch storytelling. The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two is a star-studded tribute to the continuing vision of F&SF.

Despite Harrison ' s distaste for The Centauri Device , the novel has been largely
responsible for spawning a series of ... Many of the tales in The Machine in Shaft
Ten and Other Stories provided the narrative supports for the author ' s early ...

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Author: Gale Group

Publisher: Gale / Cengage Learning

ISBN: STANFORD:36105025820817

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 472

View: 214

Essays on British writers of fantasy and science fiction discuss the changing attitudes towards this genre, including serious consideration by critics. Covers the publication of science fiction in comic books, limited productions of publications by fan presses, the difference between British and American science fiction, the birth of the New Wave, and the revival of horror fiction as a distinct genre.

... wrote The Centauri Device, a novel that turned the conventions of space opera
on their head. It was, apparently, intended to kill space opera, or at least be an
anti–space opera. What it was, instead, was the work that provoked others to pick
 ...

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Author: Gardner Dozois

Publisher: HarperCollins

ISBN: 9780062565204

Category: Fiction

Page: 528

View: 171

The brightest names in science fiction pen all-new tales of space and wonder: Kage Baker Stephen Baxter Gregory Benford Tony Daniel Greg Egan Peter F. Hamilton Gwyneth Jones James Patrick Kelly Nancy Kress Ken Macleod Paul J. McAuley Ian McDonald Robert Reed Alastair Reynolds Mary Rosenblum Robert Silverberg Dan Simmons Walter Jon Williams

Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2020, this is fiction that pushes the boundaries of the novel form.Shaw had a breakdown, but he's getting himself back together.

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Author: M. Harrison

Publisher: Gollancz

ISBN: 1473232155

Category:

Page: 384

View: 735

Shaw had a breakdown, but he's getting himself back together. He has a single room, a job on a decaying London barge, and an on-off affair with a doctor's daughter called Victoria, who claims to have seen her first corpse at age fourteen.It's not ideal, but it's a life. Or it would be if Shaw hadn't got himself involved in a conspiracy theory that, on dark nights by the river, seems less and less theoretical . . .Meanwhile, Victoria is up in the Midlands, renovating her dead mother's house, trying to make new friends. But what, exactly, happened to her mother? Why has the local waitress disappeared into a shallow pool in a field behind the house? And why is the town so obsessed with that old Victorian morality tale, The Water Babies?As Shaw and Victoria struggle to maintain their relationship, the sunken lands are rising up again, unnoticed in the shadows around them.

THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN is M. John Harrison's definitive collection of short fiction, twenty-four dazzling stories of science fiction and fantasy; the perfect introduction to one of Britain's most brilliant writers.

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Author: Michael John Harrison

Publisher:

ISBN: 0575075937

Category: Science fiction

Page: 436

View: 202

'Like all good literature, Harrison's stories are worth reading again and again; the more you read, the more you understand.' Iain M. Banks Over the last thirty years, M. John Harrison has been inspiring readers and writers alike across the world. His return to science fiction in 2002 with the magnificent space opera LIGHT was a monumental triumph, shortlisted for every major award in the genre. He combines brilliant storytelling with complex plots and evocative, mesmerising writing. THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN is M. John Harrison's definitive collection of short fiction, twenty-four dazzling stories of science fiction and fantasy; the perfect introduction to one of Britain's most brilliant writers.

Infinite Jests , Robert Silverberg , ed . , Chilton , $ 5 . 95 . The Centauri Device , M
. John Harrison , Doubleday , $ 4 . 95 . III ( Ishtar ) 1 . 03 1 . 072 1 . 14 1 . 53 1 . 18
And so on . I am more at home with : A horn blew in the hills above Tarhanna .

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Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: UCAL:B4324478

Category: Fantasy fiction

Page:

View: 378

This selection of stories, drawn from over 50 years of writing, bears witness to that desire for difference: whether following backstreet occultists, amateur philosophers, down-and-outs or refugees, we see our relationship with ‘the ...

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Author: M. John Harrison

Publisher: Comma Press

ISBN: 9781912697441

Category: Fiction

Page: 288

View: 218

Throughout his career, M. John Harrison’s writing has defied categorisation, building worlds both unreal and all-too real, overlapping and interlocking with each other. His stories are replete with fissures and portals into parallel dimensions, unidentified countries and lost lands. But more important than the places they point to are the obsessions that drive the people who so believe in them, characters who spend their lives hunting for, and haunted by, clues and maps that speak to the possibility of somewhere else. This selection of stories, drawn from over 50 years of writing, bears witness to that desire for difference: whether following backstreet occultists, amateur philosophers, down-and-outs or refugees, we see our relationship with ‘the other’ in microscopic detail, and share in Harrison’s rejection of the idea that the world, or our understanding of it, could ever be settled.

One of M. John Harrison's most acclaimed novels in a career of near universal acclaim, CLIMBERS is, perhaps, the least fantastical of his novels.

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Author: M. John Harrison

Publisher: Hachette UK

ISBN: 9780575092181

Category: Fiction

Page: 224

View: 791

One of M. John Harrison's most acclaimed novels in a career of near universal acclaim, CLIMBERS is, perhaps, the least fantastical of his novels. Yet it carries life-changing moments, descriptions of landscape bordering on the hallucinogenic and flights of pure fictive power that leave any notion of the divide between realistic and unrealistic fiction far behind. First published in 1989, CLIMBERS has remained a strong favourite with fans and reviewers alike. A young man seeks to get a grip on his life by taking up rock-climbing. He hopes that by engaging with the hard realities of the rock and the fall he can grasp what is important about life. But as he is drawn into the obsessive world of climbing he learns that taking things to the edge comes with its own price. Retreating from his failed marriage to Pauline, Mike leaves London for the Yorkshire moors, where he meets Normal and his entourage, busy pursuing their own dreams of escape. Travelling from crag to crag throughout the country, they are searching for the unattainable: the perfect climb. Through rock-climbing, Mike discovers an intensity of experience - a wash of pain, fear and excitement - that obliterates the rest of his world. Increasingly addicted to the adrenaline, folklore and camaraderie of the sport, he finds, for a time, a genuine escape. But it is gained at a price... This dark, witty and poetic novel is full of the rugged beauty of nature, of the human drive to test oneself against extremes, and of the elation such escape can bring.

The Centauri Device , expanded from a seminal short story , is the space opera -
like saga of John Truck , a hobo flyer of My Ella Speed , a tin lizzy ship . Space -
spanning fights , intrigues , brawls , and political huggermugger surround Truck ...

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Author: Baird Searles

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015031733390

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 246

View: 226

A guide for the first time or occasional science fiction reader introducing authors and their styles, tracing the history of science fiction and listing series and awards