M. John Harrison - Light

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'Light is a remarkable book — easily my favourite sf novel in the last decade, maybe longer' Neil Gaiman

'The ride is uproarious, breathtaking, exhilarating . . . This is a novel of full-spectrum literary dominance,

making the transition from the grainily commonplace now to a wild far future seem not just easy but

natural, and connecting the minimal and the spectacular with grace and elegance. It is a work of — and

about — the highest order.' Iain Banks, Guardian

'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

'M. John Harrison's jubilant return to science fiction constitutes something of an event. Light depicts its

author as a wit, an awesomely fluent and versatile prose stylist, and an sf thinker as dedicated to probing

beneath the surfaces as William Gibson is to describing how the world seems when reflected in them, SF

fans and sceptics alike are advised to head towards this Light.'

Independent

'M. John Harrison proves what only those crippled by respect- ability still doubt — that science fiction

can be literature, of the very greatest kind. Light puts most modern fiction to shame. It's a magnificent

book.' China Miéville

'Light is dark, and heavy. Certainly quantum mechanics — both propellant and unifying force in this

remarkable novel — is nobody's idea of falling off a log. But its strange conjunctions, disregard for

causality and meticulous examination of the coming-into-being of things are the background to Harrison's

first pure science-fiction book for 30 years. This is a serious philo-sophical book, beautifully constructed

. . . it will soon be regarded as one of the most dazzling novels of its genre.'

Daily Telegraph

'Having read (not by choice) all the shortlisted Bookers for the last seven years, Light knocks the shit out

of the majority of them. It's profound, unique, complex, but the drawback it has on the Booker front is

that it's also incredibly entertaining and gripping. Who cares about literary prizes. You'll sell warehouses

full of this one.' Muriel Gray

'The novel's style alternates between terse pointillisme and a lyrical intensity that is almost hallucinogenic

. . . Harrison writes with fearsome, dextrous certainty about pretty much everything . . . Light is a novel

of visionary power.' The Times Literary Supplement

'Post-cyberpunk, post-slipstream, post-everything, Light is the leanest, meanest space opera since

Nova. Visually acute, shot through with wonder and horror in equal measure, in Light's dual-stranded

narrative M. John Harrison pulls off the difficult trick of making the present seem every bit as baroque

and strange as his neon-lit deep future. Set the controls for Radio Bay and prepare to get lost in the

K-Tract. You won't regret it.' Alastair Reynolds

'Part of the bliss of Light is that he is as interested in the hearts of his characters as he is in their worlds . .

. it juggles storylines with exemplary balance and alternates beauty, terror and wild farce to keep us

perpetually on edge' Time Out

'Dense and complex — but also action-packed and fast-moving. An impressive novel, rare proof of what

science fiction can be' Complete Review

'I loved it. The multilayered plot worked stunningly well: in most such cases I tend to prefer one or the

other, but with Light I was delighted to return to whichever came next. The story is somehow both

bewildering and utterly clear, razor-sharp and wide enough to encompass worlds, and the language is

beautiful, nailing both the bizarre and mundane with eerie skill. On every other page there's a line which

makes you think 'it can't get better than this', and then it does. An amazing book: not just a triumphant

return to science fiction, but an injection of style and content that will light up the genre.'

Michael Marshall Smith

'One of the most important books of science fiction to be written for a very long time. The man whom

most of Britain's young guns of science fiction claim as a major inspiration is back, and he has lost none

of his skills. Furthermore, he wants to travel with us into a future that is frightening but pregnant with

exciting possibilities.' Foundation

'At last M. John Harrison takes on quantum mechanics. The first classic of the quantum century, Light is

a folded-down future history bound together by quantum exotica and human en-durance. Taut as

Hemingway, viscerally intelligent, startlingly uplifting, Harrison's ideas have a beauty that unpacks to

infinity.' Stephen Baxter

'Here we have "space opera" that brilliantly transcends its humble pulp origins while simultaneously

glorying in them. The result is a gripping, thrilling, meditative novel which can be read and enjoyed on

multiple levels.' SF Weekly

LIGHT

Also by M. John Harrison

THE COMMITTED MEN

THE CENTAURI DEVICE

THE ICE MONKEY

VIRICONIUM

CLIMBERS

THE LUCK IN THE HEAD with Ian Miller

THE COURSE OF THE HEART

SIGNS OF LIFE

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS

LIGHT

M. JOHN HARRISON

The right of M. John Harrison to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2003 by

Gollancz

An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

ISBN 0575 07403 5

Printed in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Visit M. John Harrison's web-site at:

www.mjohnharrison.com

To Cath, with love.

ONE

Disillusioned by the Actual

1999:

Towards the end of things, someone asked Michael Kearney, 'How do you see yourself spending the

first minute of the new millennium?' This was their idea of an after-dinner game up in some bleak

Midlands town where he had gone to give a talk. Wintry rain dashed at the windows of the private dining

room and ran down them in the orange streetlight. Answers followed one another round the table with a

luminous predictability, some sly, some decent, all optimistic. They would drink until they fell down, have

sex, watch fireworks or the endless sunrise from a moving jet. Then someone volunteered:

'With the bloody children, I expect.'

This caused a shout of laughter, and was followed immediately by: 'With somebody young enough to

be one of my children.'

More laughter. General applause.

Of the dozen people at the table, most of them had some idea like that. Kearney didn't think much of

any of them, and he wanted them to know it; lie was angry with the woman who had brought him there,

and he wanted her to know that. So when i; came to his turn, he said:

'Driving someone else's car between two cities I don't know.'

He let the silence develop, then added deliberately, 'It would have to be a good car.'

There was a scatter of laughter.

'Oh dear,' someone said. She smiled round the table. 'How dour.'

Someone else changed the subject.

Kearney let them go. He lit a cigarette and considered the idea, which had rather surprised him. In the

moment of articulating it -of admitting it to himself- he had recognised how corrosive it was. Not because

of the loneliness, the egocentricity, of the image, here in this enclave of mild academic and political

self-satisfaction: but because of its puerility. The freedoms represented — the warmth and emptiness of

the car, its smell of plastic and cigarettes, the sound of a radio playing softly in the night, the green glow of

dials, the sense of it as an instrument or a series of instrumental decisions, aimed and made use of at

every turn in the road — were as puerile as they were satisfying. They were a description of his life to

that date.

As they were leaving, his companion said:

'Well, that wasn't very grown-up.'

Kearney gave her his most boyish smile. 'It wasn't, was it?'

Her name was Clara. She was in her late thirties, red-haired, still quite young in the body but with a

face already beginning to be lined and haggard with the effort of keeping up. She had to be busy in her

career. She had to be a successful single parent She had to jog five miles every morning. She had to be

good at sex, and still need it, and enjoy it, and know how to say, in a kind of whining murmur, 'Oh. That.

Yes, that. Oh yes,' in the night. Was she puzzled to find herself here in a redbrick-and-terracotta

Victorian hotel with a man who didn't seem to understand any of these achievements? Kearney didn't

know. He looked rounc at the shiny off-white corridor walls, which reminded him of the junior schools of

his childhood,

'This is a sad dump,' he said.

He took her by the hand and made her run down the stairs with him, then pulled her into an empty

room which contained two or three billiard tables, where he killed her as quickly as he had all the others.

She looked up at him, puzzlement replacing interest in her eyes before they filmed over. He had known

her for perhaps four months. Early on in their relationship, she had described him as a 'serial

monogamist', and he hoped perhaps she could now see the irony of this term, if not the linguistic inflation

it represented.

In the street outside — shrugging, wiping one hand quickly and repeatedly across his mouth — he

thought he saw a movement, a shadow on the wall, the suggestion of a movement in the orange

streetlight. Rain, sleet and snow all seemed to be falling at once. In the mix, he thought he saw dozens of

small motes of light. Sparks, he thought. Sparks in everything. Then he turned up the collar of his coat

and quickly walked away. Looking for the place he had parked his car, he was soon lost in the maze of

roads and pedestrian malls that led to the railway station. So he took a train instead, and didn't return for

some days. When he did, the car was still there, a red Lancia Integrale he had rather enjoyed owning.

Kearney dropped his luggage — an old laptop computer, two volumes of A Dance to the Music of

Time — on to the rear seat of the Integrale and drove it back to London, where he abandoned it in a

South Tottenham street, making sure to leave its doors unlocked and the key in the ignition. Then he took

the tube over to the research suite where he did most of his work. Funding complexities too Byzantine to

unpack had caused this to be sited in a side street between Gower Street and Tottenham Court Road.

There, he and a physicist called Brian Tate had three long rooms filled with Beowulf system computers

bolted to equipment which, Tate hoped, would eventually isolate paired-ion interactions from ambient

magnetic noise. Theoretically this would allow them to encode data in quantum events. Kearney had his

doubts; but Tate had come from Cambridge via MIT and, perhaps more importantly, Los Alamos, so he

had his expectations too.

In the days when it housed a team of neurobiologists working on live cats, the suite had been set on

fire repeatedly by extreme animal rights factions. On wet mornings it still smelled faintly of charred wood

and plastic. Kearney, aware of the science communi-ty's sense of moral outrage at this, had let it be

known he subscribed to the ALF and added fuel to the fire by importing a pair of oriental kittens, one

black and male, the other white and female. With their long legs and savagely thin bodies, they prowled

about as unassuagedly as fashion models, striking bizarre poses and getting under Tate's feet.

Kearney picked the female up. She struggled for a second, then purred and allowed herself to settle

on his shoulder. The male, eyeing Kearney as if it had never seen him before, flattened its ears and

retreated under a bench.

'They're nervous today,' he said.

'Gordon Meadows was here. They know he doesn't like them.'

'Gordon? What did he want?'

'He wondered if we felt up to a presentation.'

'Is that how he put it?' Kearney asked, and when Tate laughed, went on: 'Who for?'

'Some people from Sony, I think.'

It was Kearney's turn to laugh.

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M. John Harrison - Light

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