Nova Swing - M. John Harrison's mix of Space Opera, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Biopunk, New Wave, New Weird, Alien Invasion, Parallel Worlds and Retro Futurism to create his own unique literary brew. Wow! What a blastoff.
Signature M. John Harrison since, after all, he told an interviewer he's the type of author who could see no good reason why you couldn't combine genres and do all types of fiction at once, the type of author who uses literary fiction to undercut sf and sf to undercut literary fiction, an author continually on the lookout for a surprise ending, an ending that flips the direction the reader thought the story was going, an ending to recontextualize a story - in this way, you can keep things alive, fresh and fluid and bring exciting, uniquely individual ideas to your story.
Nova Swing is Book Two in the British author's Kefahuchi Tract Trilogy, Trilogy, bookended by Light and Empty Space. As a way to shake up my own energy in reading the trilogy, I've started with Nova Swing and plan to move outwards.
M. John Harrison frames his tale thusly: We're on a distant planet very much like Earth, in a rundown neighborhood within the coastal city of Saudade in the year 2444. With its bars and nightclubs, shoddy streets and restless young men and women hankering after fried food, sex and hard drugs, this future world has a frightening resemblance to our own modern culture; however, one aspect is truly distinctive: many years ago, a space/time disturbance known as the Kefahuchi Tract touched down in the city, radiating chaos every which way. It's no accident Nova Swing carries an epigraph from the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic.
Since our highly original author enjoys telling readers the backgrounds in his novels are closely intertwined with story, I'll shift immediately to the main players and a bucketful of background weirdness:
Vic Serotonin - In similar spirit to Stalker Red Schuhart from Roadside Picnic, Vic makes his living the dangerous way – illegally crossing over into the Kefahuchi event site, sometimes retrieving artifacts, sometimes performing the services of a tour guide, leading others into this mysterious realm. And like Red Schuhart, Serotonin, called Vic Testosterone by a gal detective, exudes the aura of a tough-guy, coarse and vulgar in manner and speech, but there’s an undeniable humanity at the core of M. John’s main character.
Irene the Mona – This lady frequents a chop shop for her “one-shot cultivars” to keep her appearance up as a “Mona,” a luscious sexpot with the face and hair of Marilyn Monroe (so retro!). Monas swing their stuff all over the lower class neighborhoods. Meanwhile, men like Joe Leone transform their bodies by hitting the shop for a new infusion of chemical energy to keep them in fighting shape. Hey, Joe! Don’t overdo it, boy, or you’ll wind up like many other combatants, a sack of toxic waste flushed down the drain.
Colorful Cast - Several other men and women strut and fret their hours on the novel's stage: a sexy tourist, a knockout with sleek, dark hair, seeks out Vic for a tour of the site; a detective who looks like Albert Einstein and his athletic, cyborg female assistant are more than a little interested in the happenings in the site and Vic's involvement in new developments; Emil Bonaventure, an old veteran explorer of the site shares his wisdom or craziness (although his daughter, Edith, loves her daddy and judges him a man of great insight, as readers, we pronounce the final verdict.)
Shadow Operators – Creepy miniature robots complete with recording equipment that fold up like moths in the corners of rooms. Beware of what you say since someone with power might be listening. But who ultimately is in power in this future world? Governments and nations receive not a mention but the Corporate World (my caps for emphasis) looms on the richer, upper class side of the city. In an eerie way, M. John Harrison anticipates the dissolving of the state and the rise of corporations as the absolute authority.
Oddball Object – Vic Serotonin’s last find in the site that he sold to one Paulie DeRaad: “It was half bone, half metal, or perhaps both at the same time; or perhaps neither. . . . it had been an animal, a one-off thing no one but him would ever see, white, hairless, larger than a dog . . . it had huge human eyes.” Once out of the site, the damn thing takes the shape of an 18" worm and emits light that infects both humans and cyborgs. And to think, power hungry Paulie actually paid good money for Vic's find. Well, Paulie, as Vic told you - risk comes with the goods.
Twilight Zone Bunch – At one cool jive joint, saxophone and piano play music that’s a joke of older, bygone era music (so post-postmodern). The music can cause a weird bending of the laws of physics: “the band squeezed out two or three thin boys in white singlets, earrings and studded leather belts, and into the prismatic light . . . They looked incomplete, and surprised to find themselves here.” Did they come from the fourth dimension? Well, perhaps we shouldn’t be overly concerned since these youthful visitors can vanish as instantly as they appear.
Annies – Youthful women pay a visit to Uncle Zip for the extreme package – to be lean and as fast and as big as a pony (Annies are all about 7’ tall), an ideal size for their job as rickshaw drivers. Oh, my, in their iridescent pink or green lycra suits these supersized Annies perform all varieties of extracurriculars. M. John leaves their sexual exploits to a reader’s vivid imagination.
Far-Out Kitties – At dawn black cats and white cats teem out of the site and then in the evening they all pour back in. Curiously, it doesn’t appear any of the city’s denizens adopt one of these cute creatures as a house pet. Well, maybe not so curious, since all is not what it seems in a world where biology and physics can morph most unpredictably.
John Clute wrote in his review of the novel for the Guardian: "The miracle a writer of the fantastic such as Harrison performs is to expand the possibilities of perception." I entirely agree. Along similar lines, I'll end with a quote from Nova Swing that speaks to the magic age of thirteen when many future sf authors and avid fans were first introduced to books within the genre that set their imagination on fire: "At thirteen you lived on a orbital factory. or a farm planet with infinite horizons and no room for you anywhere. Or you lived in a port city which stank of the outright bizarreness of things and made you raw all your childhood with . . . what? Delight. Anticipation. The desire to escape. The desire to know. Thirteen years of age, you looked older. You were a girl, you were a boy, your gender was indeterminate."
Nova Swing - to fire your imagination. Read it.
British author M. John Harrison, born 1945
“Perception of a state is not the state.”
― M. John Harrison, Nova Swing
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