Viriconium

by M. John Harrison

Bantam/Spectra; $16; 462 pgs.

As strange and lush and foreign as a twilight stroll through unexpected, undiscovered Mayan ruins seen wrapped in a fog, this collection of tales centers around the far-into-the-future city of Viriconium. Harrison is a master wordsmith; an author of consummate skill.

This is no light trip through a fantasy world. It is a hallucinatory wander through human civilization gone moldy and eccentric, swallowed by rot and decay; thousands and thousands of years into the future. The detritus of what Harrison calls the “Afternoon” Cultures.

Characters have names like Ansel Verdigris, the Grand Cairo, Ogersby Practal, Gunter Verlac, and Tomb the Dwarf. There are quests and battles; lost technologies and a pale isolated Queen; eccentrics living in even stranger abodes, insectoid invaders aided by the bloated body of an ancient “airboatman” whose collapsed form (still viable) is the incubator for their race. And this is just the tip of the three novels and seven tales contained in this collection.

As an idea, Viriconium has obviously haunted Harrison’s mind for sometime. The first entry, “The Pastel City” was written in 1971. But as you go through these tales you can see the attraction, the addiction that Viriconium has for the author.

In the final story “A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium” we are given a hint; a fetid breath, if you will, of Viriconium in our own contemporary world. A curious soul in Huddersfield, England tries to track down a lavatory mirror that will provide ingress to Viriconium (even though, as a destination, Viriconium sounds a bit…extreme.)

Harrison is very found of arcane and creative verbiage. You will not find common variety descriptions or words here: induviate, groughs, a fohn wind, bullace, planished, gloottokoma, seracs…I learned a lot of new words (and some of them real).

This is also not a light read over a weekend. It takes time to savor, if you go too quickly you’ll miss so much. Harrison’s command of imagery is outstanding. Weird; but outstanding. The book, its characters and their environment are completely unique. There are still hints of the world we know: there are streets with names like the Rue Montdampierre and the Rue Sepile. There is a Bistro Californium and Blackpool, Vienna and Venice are mentioned. But Viriconium and the world it inhabits are strange and unusual; a hard place to categorize.

Let me quote part of a paragraph from “A Storm of Wings.” “The city! Its end is near. It expands and contracts, like a lung. Regular spasms of dissolution shake it like the vomits and distempers of a dying king. It is full of fires, not all of them real; memories of a history never achieved, a future unrealized. Sketchy and counterfeit, the towers of its sister city Virconium advance and recede through a roseate smoke.”

Visit. I think you’ll discover an amazing new land. - Sue Martin