Viriconium (M. John Harrison)

[pat5150]

I wonder if MJH is ill. . .

I mean, he hasn't come up with a superbly inane quote in ages.

Patrick

[Werthead]

I think he's been working on his new book, the follow-up to Light and Nova Swing.

Viriconium was a terrible, terrible book. I am, however, willing to give Light a go to see if he is better in the science fiction field.

[MattD]

What is the better omnibus to pick up, the Fantasy Masterworks edition or the Spectra Books imprint? Any difference?

It's maybe worth mentioning that neither volume contains Harrison's latest revision of the final story, which is found in his short story collection Things That Never Happen. However, that revision can be made mentally:

Change "Viriconium" to "London" throughout.

Other than this, both editions contain the author's preferred selection and revisions of the stories (the FM has the preferred order), although this means that a few stories present in older editions have been dropped as detailed here.

[sonja]

Question for those that know:

What is the better omnibus to pick up, the Fantasy Masterworks edition or the Spectra Books imprint? Any difference?

(I know the SB imprint has a Neil Gaiman introduction)

What Larry said, plus the FM version doesn't have an introduction by Gaiman.

Viriconium was a terrible, terrible book

Gosh. I thought The Pastel City was a fine, fine book. It's worth looking into reading if you like far-future Dying Earth stories, especially if you like them fast-paced, bloat-free and filled with stuff that fires up the imagination. I know MJH looks down his nose at world-building but in only 160ish pages, MJH throws in decent world-building, memorable characters and an epic story line -- fine story-telling in so few pages.

I stuggled on the first read some of the other Viriconium stories -- metafiction isn't my cup of tea, particularly when I was pining for The Pastel City II and III, which the other stories mostly are not. In Viriconium -- a slog the first time through but a lot more rewarding on a re-read (I know, I know -- you shouldn't have to read a book twice to enjoy it!).

[Werthead]

The dwarf-in-power-armour in The Pastel City was cool. The rest of the novel was turgid and dull. The other books in the ominbus were a self-congratulatory exercise in morose tedium.

A lot of the stuff Harrison was doing in the Viriconium books put me in mind of things that Moorcock, Aldiss and Wolfe had done, either earlier or later, but in all cases, much better.

[Zach H]

Another question for those in the know:

I've appreciated other MJH fiction, but have yet to read Viriconium. Eventually I'll pick up the omnibus, but for now I have an old copy of The Floating Gods, which I gather is the third book (in terms of publication at least). Now granted, I know Harrison wasn't working with the idea of traditional sequels in mind, but in terms of theme and atmosphere and stuff would I be doing a great disservice to myself if I read this book first?

[Larry.]

You can read it independently of the others. In fact, it might alter how you read The Pastel City when you get to that one, come and think of it, which might be an interesting experiment of its own.

[Zach H]

Good to hear. I'll have to bump up Floating Gods nearer the top of my pile.

[Jussi]

I thought The Pastel City was a fine, fine book.

Agreed, The Pastel City is a great novel. Much better than I expected. I believe Martin has spoken highly of the book (I'm not 100% sure).

[David Selig]

Another question for those in the know:

I've appreciated other MJH fiction, but have yet to read Viriconium. Eventually I'll pick up the omnibus, but for now I have an old copy of The Floating Gods, which I gather is the third book (in terms of publication at least). Now granted, I know Harrison wasn't working with the idea of traditional sequels in mind, but in terms of theme and atmosphere and stuff would I be doing a great disservice to myself if I read this book first?

In an interview, Harrison commented on this:

I noticed that in the recent fantasy masterworks edition of Viriconium the stories are not presented in the order they were written. Did you have a hand in the way the stories were presented? Was there any particular idea behind the 'remix'?

One of the ideas of Viriconium - although obviously it couldn't be articulated that way in those days - was that the world it presents is in a constant state of self-remix (much like the unconscious, see above). That's made quite plain in a couple of places. Viriconium mimicked the processes by which it was written. It also enabled me to undermine progressively the normative fantasy of the 1970s and early 1980s, starting with the fairly middle-of-the-road (The Pastel City) and arriving at the heavily deconstructed (The Luck In The Head).

The order of reading in the Masterworks edition was the one I chose on the day. If you prefer another order, be my guest. I would certainly do it differently another time. One way to look at it might be that Viriconium is like a pack of Tarot cards. Shuffle. Deal. Tell your fortune. The only story that should have a fixed position - either at the beginning or end - is A Young Man's Journey.

Anyway, my experience with Viriconium is a bit mixed. I absolutely loved The Pastel City - gorgeous writing style, which made every paragraph a pleasure to read and is used to perfection to create the atmosphere of melancholy and the decay of the civilization. The plot was straightforward, but with enough twists to make it better than the cliched quest story it seems to be at first.

A Storm of Wings was a very different experience, much more challenging and weird, but rewarding in the end, Harrison managed to evoke for me a really strong sense of the totally alien and otherwordly nature of the locusts and their influence. The short stories though, which I read in the order of the Fantasy Masterworks edition, mostly left me baffled, and I stopped reading after The Lamia and Lord Cromis, partly because I was too busy at the time and couldn't give it the full attention it demands. I still plan to read the last of them and In Viriconium soon, if nothing else, even when his themes and plot are almost incomprehensible, Harrison's prose is so beautiful I still enjoy reading it.

[kissoon]

Both editions have all the stories. The FM edition reorders them somewhat, with the stories forming a storyline chronological order, while the Spectra edition publishes them in the original release format. Spectra edition is much less likely to crease and depending on where you're ordering it from, could be cheaper.

Thanks. I'll be ordering from thebookdepository so they are only like $1 difference.

It's maybe worth mentioning that neither volume contains Harrison's latest revision of the final story, which is found in his short story collection Things That Never Happen. However, that revision can be made mentally:

Change "Viriconium" to "London" throughout.

Other than this, both editions contain the author's preferred selection and revisions of the stories (the FM has the preferred order), although this means that a few stories present in older editions have been dropped as detailed here.

Ah, I have Things That Never Happen and also Again Dangerous Visions Vol. 2, not read yet. Thanks for the info.

I've been meaning to pick up Viriconium for some time now but it wasn't until I read The Luck in the Head short in The New Weird anthology recently that galvanised me into action. I'm still a bit undecided on which one to get but I'll most likely go with the FM edition if only for the author-preferred order of reading, though the other one does have a better cover and an intro.

[williamjm]

Another question for those in the know:

I've appreciated other MJH fiction, but have yet to read Viriconium. Eventually I'll pick up the omnibus, but for now I have an old copy of The Floating Gods, which I gather is the third book (in terms of publication at least). Now granted, I know Harrison wasn't working with the idea of traditional sequels in mind, but in terms of theme and atmosphere and stuff would I be doing a great disservice to myself if I read this book first?

I don't remember there being many plot connections between it and the other two novels. For the other two, I think it would make sense to read The Pastel City before A Storm of Wings since there are more plot connections between them, but the order isn't really important for the third book.

Anyway, my experience with Viriconium is a bit mixed. I absolutely loved The Pastel City - gorgeous writing style, which made every paragraph a pleasure to read and is used to perfection to create the atmosphere of melancholy and the decay of the civilization. The plot was straightforward, but with enough twists to make it better than the cliched quest story it seems to be at first.

A Storm of Wings was a very different experience, much more challenging and weird, but rewarding in the end, Harrison managed to evoke for me a really strong sense of the totally alien and otherwordly nature of the locusts and their influence. The short stories though, which I read in the order of the Fantasy Masterworks edition, mostly left me baffled, and I stopped reading after The Lamia and Lord Cromis, partly because I was too busy at the time and couldn't give it the full attention it demands. I still plan to read the last of them and In Viriconium soon, if nothing else, even when his themes and plot are almost incomprehensible, Harrison's prose is so beautiful I still enjoy reading it.

I'd generally agree with your experience of the books. In Viriconium (a.k.a. The Floating Gods) is the weirdest and least plot-driven of the three novels, but it is still mostly comprehensible unlike some of the baffling short stories.

[MattD]

I'll most likely go with the FM edition if only for the author-preferred order of reading, though the other one does have a better cover and an intro.

Of course you can read the stories in the Spectra edition in the "preferred" order (and anyway see David Selig's post above), but I should note, since it's been mentioned a few times, that the Gaiman intro is pleasantly congenial but not deeply insightful--it's the sort of thing designed for readers new to Harrison who bought the book because it had a Gaiman intro.

[Richard]

Astonishing (and rather saddening) to see so much blanket hostility covering for a failure to appreciate something for what it is - or, more accurately, what it isn't.

A couple of things worth remembering about Viriconium:

First, it is not a coherent whole. The Pastel City was published in 1971. A Storm of Wings came nine years later, in 1980, and In Viriconium a further two years after that. Between times and beyond, MJH was writing short fiction, some of which ended up collected in a book called Viriconium Nights, published in 1985. Lumping all this together in a single volume is like putting on a retrospective of a certain cycle in an artist's work, and it needs to be treated as such. Yes, you're bound to see some recurring themes and obsessions, maybe even some sequential pieces or re-workings of the same image - but to attack the Viriconium collection the way some on this thread have done is like going to a Munch exhibition and complaining that it doesn’t make sense the way Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns or Alan Moore's Watchmen does. Looking for any kind of overarching sequential coherence or even straight-forward second world fantasy yarn spinning is a category error - and becoming angry and dismissive because it isn’t there is just childish beyond belief.

Second, with the possible exception of The Pastel City (which he wrote when he was 25), MJH has never been even remotely interested in second world fantasy, except perhaps as a dull surface to strike sparks off. So if you're expecting the staples of that form, you're going to be increasingly disappointed as the "series" progresses and Harrison gets increasingly effectively to grips with the things he is interested in. But this is your problem, not the author's. There's not a huge amount of rushing around with swords or power armour in Kafka or Peake either, but I don't see that as a reason to dismiss or rage against it. You must read and appreciate a book for what is in it, not condemn it for what you expected from it beforehand and didn’t find.

Much of the vitriol here, sadly, puts me in mind of a gaggle of teenagers who sat behind me in the cinema when I went to see the movie The Interpreter. The Interpreter is a (not entirely triumphant, it must be said) political and psychological drama of a kind you don’t see much of these days. LIke Clint Eastwood's (entirely triumphant) Mystic River, it harks back to a mode of film-making from the seventies, moves fairly quietly and slowly for the most part, and interrogates areas your average contemporary Hollywood thriller barely understands how to touch. Now, this was clearly not what my teenage fellow viewers had wanted and they responded by sneering and rabbiting to each other throughout the film. The only point at which this stopped was when, in the movie, a bus full of people was blown up on the streets of New York - at which point the most vocal of the teen irritants behind me stopped his sneering, entranced, to utter the words "Oh wow - that was so cool!" To which my exasperated response was "You, son, are in the wrong fucking cinema."

[Jussi]

Good post, Richard. I have read only first two novels in the Viriconium "series". A Storm of Wings wasn't as good as The Pastel City, but I enjoyed it, too.

[Calibandar]

Good post, Richard

Really? Because I thought it was condescending and incorrect in that:

A) the assumption of why people here didn't like the book is used as a blanket statement itself; namely that the readers who read and did not care for the book are those who expected a standard epic Fantasy and scolded the book for not being what they wanted it to be.

B)The lack of enjoyment many people take from reading MJ Harrison's Viriconium is the reader's fault for failing to get to grips with whatever it is MJH was trying to do. In my opinion, surely the enjoyment of a book is an interplay between an author and a reader, and a sour reading experience cannot solely be blamed on the reader. That strikes me as very much an arrogant writer's perspective.

Richard,

Anyone who posts here and reads these threads on MJH, or has read this forum for a while, will know MJH's thoughts on epic secondary world Fantasy. He is indeed very dismissive of it, and has no time for it. I believe you straight away when you say that that is not the sort of story he tried to tell in Viriconium, even if on the surface it seems the most like epic Fantasy of all his works.

But that is not to say that many people disliked it just for that. I myself for instance was unimpressed with his writing style, but far more than that, deeply disappointed with his characterization. It feels non-existent to me.

Also, let me admit that I enjoy a setting that seems like it has been created with diligence and care. Clearly ( from his books as well as his pronouncements ) MJH is not interested in setting, and this shows, in my opiniont to the book's detriment.

It leads me to find myself reading an effort where I could not care about the characters in a world that seems utterly random and undeveloped, not worth investing oneself in. It's not a lack of appreciaton for the book because it isn't what I wanted it to be, but a lack of appreciaton because quite frankly, it's a turd. The comparison to idiot teens who only want stupid action films is misplaced and lazy.

[Werthead]

Astonishing (and rather saddening) to see so much blanket hostility covering for a failure to appreciate something for what it is - or, more accurately, what it isn't.

Translation: It's okay to bash a sacred cow (such as Tolkien) as long as you don't bash my sacred cow, then it's time to roll out the condescending attitude and false assumptions.

Much of the vitriol here, sadly, puts me in mind of a gaggle of teenagers who sat behind me in the cinema when I went to see the movie The Interpreter. The Interpreter is a (not entirely triumphant, it must be said) political and psychological drama of a kind you don't see much of these days. LIke Clint Eastwood's (entirely triumphant) Mystic River, it harks back to a mode of film-making from the seventies, moves fairly quietly and slowly for the most part, and interrogates areas your average contemporary Hollywood thriller barely understands how to touch. Now, this was clearly not what my teenage fellow viewers had wanted and they responded by sneering and rabbiting to each other throughout the film. The only point at which this stopped was when, in the movie, a bus full of people was blown up on the streets of New York - at which point the most vocal of the teen irritants behind me stopped his sneering, entranced, to utter the words "Oh wow - that was so cool!" To which my exasperated response was "You, son, are in the wrong fucking cinema."

Except that this genre is my fucking cinema.

Fantasy comes in many shapes and forms. Some fantasies are rational, with a coherent world and purpose behind them. These fantasies - from Tolkien to Martin to Erikson to Bakker to Mieville - appeal to the science fiction fan part of me.

Other fantasies are irrational, whimsical, not beholden to laws and rules. Some of these fantasies are breathtakingly impressive and beautifully-written: The Tooth Fairy by Joyce or Mythago Wood by Holdstock (which brilliantly even challenges the idea of rationalising the unrational in the text itself), for example. Others are interesting because there is a pattern behind the randomness, and deciphering that is great fun (as with Wolfe).

Viriconium does not fall into either stall. That there is no coherence to the world between books is unimportant. Neither is there in Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey books (where the location of previous major events and the age and status of existing characters changes almost randomly between volume). That it is not a traditional secondary-world epic fantasy about talismans, quests, thrones and orcs is unimportant. Neither is The Book of the New Sun, one of the highwater marks of fantasy to date for me. Even the lack of decent characterisation is not as much of a deal-breaker (as my aforementioned appreciation of Clarke indicates) as it is for Cali.

I don't like Viriconium because I find no joy in it. I can see no passion to the writing, no soul in the prose. It is sterile and antiseptic. It is an ugly book, utterly lacking in anything I find engaging in literature. The book never comes to life, either in terms of its parts or its whole (and the writing time and publication gaps between the volumes is irrelevant; Vance's Dying Earth books were published over a vastly longer period and are among my favourite works). I cited the dwarf-in-power-armour section as it is the only part of the book where the author feels like he even remotely engages anything approaching a sense of humour or imbues the book with energy. Otherwise it is cold and lifeless.

Others find it works for them. They find it engaging and interesting and that it speaks to them. Great for them. I think it's absolute tripe. Not because the author cannot write at all, or because I wanted it to be a secondary world fantasy or SF and it wasn't, but because there is nothing in it on an artistic or intellectual level I even remotely enjoyed.

[Richard]

The comparison to idiot teens who only want stupid action films is misplaced and lazy.

Really?

quite frankly, it's a turd.

Doesn't seem like overly grown up critique, but maybe that's just me.........

[Larry.]

Translation: It's okay to bash a sacred cow (such as Tolkien) as long as you don't bash my sacred cow, then it's time to roll out the condescending attitude and false assumptions.

Except that this genre is my fucking cinema.

Fantasy comes in many shapes and forms. Some fantasies are rational, with a coherent world and purpose behind them. These fantasies - from Tolkien to Martin to Erikson to Bakker to Mieville - appeal to the science fiction fan part of me.

Other fantasies are irrational, whimsical, not beholden to laws and rules. Some of these fantasies are breathtakingly impressive and beautifully-written: The Tooth Fairy by Joyce or Mythago Wood by Holdstock (which brilliantly even challenges the idea of rationalising the unrational in the text itself), for example. Others are interesting because there is a pattern behind the randomness, and deciphering that is great fun (as with Wolfe).

Viriconium does not fall into either stall. That there is no coherence to the world between books is unimportant. Neither is there in Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey books (where the location of previous major events and the age and status of existing characters changes almost randomly between volume). That it is not a traditional secondary-world epic fantasy about talismans, quests, thrones and orcs is unimportant. Neither is The Book of the New Sun, one of the highwater marks of fantasy to date for me. Even the lack of decent characterisation is not as much of a deal-breaker (as my aforementioned appreciation of Clarke indicates) as it is for Cali.

I don't like Viriconium because I find no joy in it. I can see no passion to the writing, no soul in the prose. It is sterile and antiseptic. It is an ugly book, utterly lacking in anything I find engaging in literature. The book never comes to life, either in terms of its parts or its whole (and the writing time and publication gaps between the volumes is irrelevant; Vance's Dying Earth books were published over a vastly longer period and are among my favourite works). I cited the dwarf-in-power-armour section as it is the only part of the book where the author feels like he even remotely engages anything approaching a sense of humour or imbues the book with energy. Otherwise it is cold and lifeless.

Others find it works for them. They find it engaging and interesting and that it speaks to them. Great for them. I think it's absolute tripe. Not because the author cannot write at all, or because I wanted it to be a secondary world fantasy or SF and it wasn't, but because there is nothing in it on an artistic or intellectual level I even remotely enjoyed.

So pretty much this is you wanting this text to fit your parameters and not you judging it based on its own parameters?

[Werthead]

So pretty much this is you wanting this text to fit your parameters and not you judging it based on its own parameters?

Interesting. So what you are saying is that Harrison set out to write an uninteresting, dull, uninspired and plain lifeless work and that, having fully and completely achieved that goal and achieved his parameters, he should be appreciated for it?

I hadn't considered that before. Good point, Larry.