Viriconium - M John Harrison

 Discovering the work of M John Harrison over the last year or so has been a profound experience.   He is by far the best of his genre, though that poses the question: what exactly is his genre?   I'll take a stab at dark imaginative fiction.   It doesn't matter if it has a sci fi setting, an imagined world outside time, or a neglected corner of this world, Harrison always goes further, adding a sense of the inexplicable, which is pure Harrison.

This Unwin paperback from the mid-80s combines two books of the Viriconium series, the novel In Viriconium (1982) and the short stories and associated pieces collected as Viriconium Nights (1984).   There are other Viriconium works, notably The Pastel City and A Storm of Wings.

Viriconium is everywhere and nowhere.   It is not always Viriconium; sometimes it is Uroconium, or Vrico.   It is medieval and sometimes it is fin de siecle Paris.   There is an Artists' Quarter, a High City, and heathland.   The totem of the city, though, is the Mari Lwyd, immortalised by Dylan Thomas's friend Vernon Watkins.  

Characters come and reappear in different contexts.   They have wondrous names and titles.  Ardwick Crome, the Grand Cairo, Morgante who is also Rotgob and sometimes Kiss-O-Suck, Mammy Vooley, Ignace Retz and Dissolution Khan.   One story, 'A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium', is absolutely set in contemporary York and is about how one gets from here to the mystic city via a mirror "in the lavatory og the Merrie England cafe, a little further down New Street than the El Greco, between Ramsden Street junction and Imperial Arcade" in, I think, Huddersfield.   Which feels exactly right.

In Virconium is the most satisfying piece, a sort of love story set in the Artists Quarter during a time of plague.   In this period a pair of demi-gods called the Barley Brothers (Matey and Gog) rampage through the city until they are defeated by the painter Ashlyme.   The stories of Virconium Nights are, by definition, more fragmentary but each has incredible depth, compelling the reader to ask questions and make connections, not all of which are necessarily there.

Fascinating, enthralling, often startling.   M John Harrison is giving my all-time favourite author (the late E L Doctorow) a run for his money.