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Amazon.co.uk Review
Light marks that fine writer M John Harrison's first return to the heartland of SF--including spaceships and hair-raising interstellar chases--since his apocalyptic anti-space opera The Centauri Device (1975).
The heavy SF action begins in 2400. Space-going humanity is the latest of many civilizations to be baffled by the impenetrable Kefahuchi Tract; that vast stellar region where an unshielded singularity makes physics itself unreliable. Along its accessible fringe, the "Beach", solar systems are littered with crazy, abandoned devices used to probe the Tract since before life began on Earth. A whole dead-end culture is based on beachcombing this rubble of industrial archaeology...
25th-century characters include a woman who's sacrificed almost everything to merge with the AI "mathematics" of a crack military spacecraft; a former daredevil who once surfed black holes but has retreated into a virtual reality tank; the lady proprietor of the Circus of Pathet Lao, with an alien freakshow and a hidden agenda; and a variety of raunchy, smelly, gene-sculpted lowlife, some comic, some menacing. Many are not what they seem.
Meanwhile in 1999 London, physicists Kearney and Tate--remembered in 2400 as the fathers of interstellar flight--are getting nowhere. Kearney's personal problems occupy familiar Harrison territory: urban paranoia, a seedily unreliable guru, bad sex, guilty rituals to propitiate a metaphysical-seeming threat called the Shrander--a pursuing image out of nightmare. In the lab, both Kearney and Tate fear the increasing quantum strangeness of their results.
The cosmological wonders and hazards of the Beach form a backdrop to space pursuits and violent skirmishes whose duration is measured in nanoseconds, reported in tensely lyrical prose. Eventually everything comes together as it should--even that oppressive 1999 story strand--with revelations, transformation, transcendence, and ultimate hope. Harrison demands your full attention and rewards it richly. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Harrison's lyrical prose and penetrating philosophy on experience intersect to give you an SF adventure that is way beyond the norm. We need more [writers] like him. This is literature with a capital 'L'. Read it." (Guy Haley DEATHRAY )
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Towards the end of things, someone asked Michael Kearney, 'How do you see yourself spending the first minute of the new millennium?' Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Towards the end of things, someone asked Michael Kearney, 'How do you see yourself spending the first minute of the new millennium?' Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm not surprised that this book has polarized opinions, don't read this if you think it's going to be another formulaic space opera. Light is a book that asks more questions than it answers and certainly isn't from the Clarke or Asimov branch of "science" fiction. Instead you get something a lot like the film Pi, an exploration of madness and obsession mingled with the strangeness that is pure math and quantum theory. Nothing much is explained, it's just left for the reader to piece together in whatever way they want.
This is a challenging read, but if you're tired of the same old formula of derivative fiction try this guy out. It is a truly intense book that might not be on everyone else's wavelength but is all the better for that. I've been devouring his work since rediscovering him a while back. I had read the Virconium books a long time ago but had lost them (and his name wouldn't come to me) until I found Light.
Reading Harrison's work you begin to see his influence refracted through all that is good in SF/Fantasy at the moment, from Iain Banks to China Mieville. His strength, apart from some wonderful prose, is his ability to transcend genres; moving through the full spectrum of pastiche, science fiction and literature, sometimes in the same paragraph.
Highly recomended if you like to think about what you're reading.
This is a challenging read, but if you're tired of the same old formula of derivative fiction try this guy out. It is a truly intense book that might not be on everyone else's wavelength but is all the better for that. I've been devouring his work since rediscovering him a while back. I had read the Virconium books a long time ago but had lost them (and his name wouldn't come to me) until I found Light.
Reading Harrison's work you begin to see his influence refracted through all that is good in SF/Fantasy at the moment, from Iain Banks to China Mieville. His strength, apart from some wonderful prose, is his ability to transcend genres; moving through the full spectrum of pastiche, science fiction and literature, sometimes in the same paragraph.
Highly recomended if you like to think about what you're reading.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was not aware of any of the hype surrounding this book until after I had read it - so my views were not influenced by propaganda - I also have no author bias. I find the comparisons to Iain M Banks very interesting. To be honest, Banks is one of the few SF writers I read consistently, but I struggled with 'Look to Windward' and had to give up half way through. This was something completely different. I found Harrison's style dark, harrowing, brutal but always stylish and compelling - to the extent that I wanted to re-read it immediately after finishing it. Some of the other SF authors get bogged down in overtly technical aspects of science or they give descriptive text which while sometimes impressive, detracts from the characters themselves. Harrison does the descriptive bit but ignores the waffle - he achieves in 50 clear, harsh and vivid words what takes others 5000. The only way I can compare it is to the first time you see Pulp Fiction - it was shocking, unreal and awesome in equal measures. For me it was a masterpiece, like nothing that was seen before it - with style and content you won't forget - ever. The comparisons get more similar when you look at the characters; they are also unpleasant and more importantly human. The story deals with humanity, darkness, internal conflict and ultimately character progression in a way that I feel is completely new and uncharted. If you haven't read the book yet, please do so, but do it with an open mind. I really feel that this is a book that many SF writers would have loved to have written and even if they had the abilities to do so, they may not have had Harrison's bravery to publish it. It has taken the game to a new and exciting level.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Interesting how this book polarises opinion. I loved it. I fail to see how some reviewers view it as "infantile" or "puerile", referencing the few sex scenes and the character name Billy Anker. Playful and honest, but not puerile. And I can see how the opening is a bit disorientating: it does take a fair while before you can tell what's going on, and even longer before the threads start weaving together. But that's part of the manic pleasure it provides as you're carried along through one atmospheric environment after another. I thought the writing was absolutely extraordinary in places, tight, precise, evocative. Yes, it is a bit overwrought in places, overwritten, too stylish for its own good. But overall, it's stunning. The characters aren't particularly sympathetic, but one of the strands (Seria Mau) concerning a human in a symbiotic relationship with a starship, is superbly imagined and moving; as another reviewer noted, it captures actual sensation of N-dimensional space fantastically (comparable in quality to Christopher Priest's capturing of the perception of infinite width in Inverted World). Read it, unless you only like thick books which come in series and have swords on the front.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
My favourite book
This genuinely is the best novel I've ever read (and yes I have read quite a few). For decades, the Harrison waited and watched the world of science-fiction, given away only by the... Read more
Published 4 days ago by Even more pretentious than this makes me sound
Too weird
I am just over half way through this book. Admittedly it is unusual to review a book before the end. But we spend more time reading a book than finishing it. Read more
Published 13 days ago by DohnMegah
Outstanding in Every Sense
I have been reading M. J. Harrison's work for over 40 years, and I find it difficult to understand the strange polarization of opinion engendered by this outstanding SciFi novel. Read more
Published 2 months ago by mjbaker
A boundary-pushing, beautifully written book
I've just spent the last few days listening to this book on Audible, and I find it an impressive, if flawed, work. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Ian Hocking
Forget it!
This gets one star because reviewers cannot award no stars or, as this crap deserves, about MINUS TEN stars! Read more
Published 11 months ago by Yellow Duck
Rubbish
Got half way through before abandoning it and skimming the rest, realizing that the favourable reviews that induced me to buy it must have been written by the author and his... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Tom Nor
A lovely lightness of touch
This is the first SF novel that I've read in some time and I'm glad I have been brought back to the genre by such an enjoyable book. Read more
Published 17 months ago by A. Wilson
Disappointing....
A review on the cover from Alistair Reynolds strongly suggested this book would offer a grand experience of space opera. It has not. 3 (or is it 4? Read more
Published 17 months ago by I. E. Pownall
A bit of a misfire
It took three goes to start this book. I only persisted because I had enjoyed the Centauri device so much. Read more
Published on 7 April 2010 by G. Flecknell
Unique and captivating
It's really interesting to see the differences of opinion concerning this novel - there are almost as many 1 star reviews as there are 5 star ones. Read more
Published on 8 Feb 2010 by xenny
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