The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again
Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher: Gollancz
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-04-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780575096363

*WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2020* *A New Statesman Book of the Year* 'A mesmerising, mysterious book . . . Haunting. Worrying. Beautiful' Russell T. Davis 'Brilliantly unsettling' Olivia Laing 'A magificent book' Neil Gaiman 'An extraordinary experience' William Gibson 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. 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 thirteen. 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.

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again
Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2020-06-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0575096373

*WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2020* *A New Statesman Book of the Year* 'A mesmerising, mysterious book . . . Haunting. Worrying. Beautiful' Russell T. Davis 'Brilliantly unsettling' Olivia Laing 'A magificent book' Neil Gaiman 'An extraordinary experience' William Gibson 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. 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 thirteen. 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.

Settling the World

Settling the World
Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher: Comma Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2020-08-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1912697440

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.

Signs of Life

Signs of Life
Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher:
Total Pages: 255
Release: 1998-01
Genre: Flight
ISBN: 9780006546047

You Should Come With Me Now

You Should Come With Me Now
Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher: Comma Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2017-11-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 191097434X

M. John Harrison is a cartographer of the liminal. His work sits at the boundaries between genres – horror and science fiction, fantasy and travel writing – just as his characters occupy the no man’s land between the spatial and the spiritual. Here, in his first collection of short fiction for over 15 years, we see the master of the New Wave present unsettling visions of contemporary urban Britain, as well as supernatural parodies of the wider, political landscape. From gelatinous aliens taking over the world’s financial capitals, to the middle-aged man escaping the pressures of fatherhood by going missing in his own house… these are weird stories for weird times. ‘M. John Harrison’s slippery, subversive stories mix the eerie and familiar into beguiling, alarming marvels. No one writes quite like him; no one I can think of writes such flawless sentences, or uses them to such disorientating effect.’ – Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City ‘These stories map a rediscovered fictional hinterland, one tucked behind the glossier edifices of modernity and genre with views down alleyways into pubs and flats where Patrick Hamilton glares balefully at J. G. Ballard.’ – Will Eaves, author of This is Paradise ‘M. John Harrison moves elegantly, passionately, from genre to genre, his prose lucent and wise, his stories published as SF or as fantasy, as horror or as mainstream fiction. In each playing field, he wins awards, and makes it look so easy. His prose is deceptively simple, each word considered and placed where it can sink deepest and do the most damage.’ – Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods ‘With an austere and deeply moving humanism, M. John Harrison proves what only those crippled by respectability still doubt – that science fiction can be literature, of the very greatest kind.’ – China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station

The Rosewater Insurrection

The Rosewater Insurrection
Author: Tade Thompson
Publisher: Orbit
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2019-03-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316449067

The Rosewater Insurrection continues the award-winning science fiction trilogy by one of science fiction's most engaging voices. All is quiet in the city of Rosewater as it expands on the back of the gargantuan alien Wormwood. Those who know the truth of the invasion keep the secret. The government agent Aminat, the lover of the retired sensitive Kaaro, is at the forefront of the cold, silent conflict. She must capture a woman who is the key to the survival of the human race. But Aminat is stymied by the machinations of the Mayor of Rosewater and the emergence of an old enemy of Wormwood. Innovative and genre-bending, Tade Thompson's ambitious Afrofuturist series is perfect for fans of Jeff Vandermeer, N. K. Jemisin, and Ann Leckie. Praise for The Wormwood Trilogy: "Smart. Gripping. Fabulous!" —Ann Leckie, award winning-author of Ancillary Justice "Mesmerising. There are echoes of Neuromancer and Arrival in here, but this astonishing debut is beholden to no one." —M. R. Carey, bestselling author of The Girl with All the Gifts "A magnificent tour de force, skillfully written and full of original and disturbing ideas." —Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time The Wormwood Trilogy Rosewater The Rosewater Insurrection The Rosewater Redemption

Light

Light
Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher: Spectra
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2004-08-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553900692

In M. John Harrison’s dangerously illuminating new novel, three quantum outlaws face a universe of their own creation, a universe where you make up the rules as you go along and break them just as fast, where there’s only one thing more mysterious than darkness. In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn’t yet exist—a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself. In this future, Seria Mau Genlicher has already sacrificed her body to merge into the systems of her starship, the White Cat. But the “inhuman” K-ship captain has gone rogue, pirating the galaxy while playing cat and mouse with the authorities who made her what she is. In this future, Ed Chianese, a drifter and adventurer, has ridden dynaflow ships, run old alien mazes, surfed stellar envelopes. He “went deep”—and lived to tell about it. Once crazy for life, he’s now just a twink on New Venusport, addicted to the bizarre alternate realities found in the tanks—and in debt to all the wrong people. Haunting them all through this maze of menace and mystery is the shadowy presence of the Shrander—and three enigmatic clues left on the barren surface of an asteroid under an ocean of light known as the Kefahuchi Tract: a deserted spaceship, a pair of bone dice, and a human skeleton. Praise for Light “Uproarious, breath-taking, exhilarating . . . This is a novel of full spectrum literary dominance. . . . It is a work of—and about—the highest order.”—Guardian “An increasingly complex and dazzling narrative . . . Light depicts its author as a wit, an awesomely fluent and versatile prose stylist, and an SF thinker as dedicated to probing beneath surfaces as William Gibson is to describing how the world looks when reflected in them. . . . SF fans and skeptics alike are advised to head towards this Light.”—Independent “Light is a literary singularity: at one and the same time a grim, gaudy space opera that respects the physics, and a contemporary novel that unflinchingly revisits the choices that warp a life. It’s almost unbearably good.”—Ken MacLeod, author of Engine City

Fifty Sounds

Fifty Sounds
Author: POLLY. BARTON
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781913097509

I Still Dream

I Still Dream
Author: James Smythe
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2018-04-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0007541961

‘The best fictional treatment of the possibilities and horrors of artificial intelligence that I’ve read’ Guardian In 1997 Laura Bow invented Organon, a rudimentary artificial intelligence.

Annihilation

Annihilation
Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher: FSG Originals
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374710775

A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM ALEX GARLAND, STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that "reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world" (Kim Stanley Robinson). Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.