Tag: M John Harrison

  • subjective and iterative magratheanism / the whys and wherefores of worldbuilding

    It’s always nice to get an insight into the creative process from an expert, and this short bit on worldbuilding by Paul McAuley is exactly that. Worldbuilding as a concept is having a bit of a moment, or so it feels, having jumped out of genre fiction theory and metastasised more widely, following in the…

  • sunken lands, rising remorselessly

    I guess now we get to start going on about how we liked him before he was popular. Congrats, Mike. Clip on and keep climbing—you’re leading a route that the rest of us can barely read, let alone send.

  • the course of the heart

    It’s not news that if you successfully follow your heart, people who thirty years ago advised against it will reappear quietly but persistently at the edges of your career. Back then, all they wanted you to do was what someone else did. Thirty years later, all they want you to do is what you were…

  • Harrisonian addendum

    The pursuit of fantasy in every single cultural, political, corporate & media arena since the mid 1970s is what led us all here; and fantasy is not, whatever absurd rationale you’re tempted to use to wriggle out from under, an antidote to itself. From this, which neatly codas that.

  • not oppositional, but negatory

    An interview with M John Harrison by Jonathan Lethem, done earlier this year at Festival Internacional de Literatura de Buenos Aires; scroll down for the (original) version in English. (Hat-tip to the man himself for linking to it.) I recall joking to a colleague a few years back that part of me wished Harrison wrote…