ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.Viriconium sits on the ruins of an ancient civilization that nobody remembers. The society that was technologically advanced enough to create crystal airships and lethal energy weapons is dead. These Afternoon Cultures depleted the world’s metal ores, leaving mounds of inscrutable rusted infrastructure with only a few odds and ends that still work. The current citizens of Viriconium are baffled by what they’ve dug up, but they have no idea what any of it is for. The Pastel City, published in 1971, is the first part of M. John Harrison’s science fantasy epic VIRICONIUM which, according to sources, was inspired by Jack Vance’s DYING EARTH and the poetry of T.S. Eliot. Characterization and pacing are sometimes a bit weak, but the scenery in The Pastel City is grand, and I enjoyed the story. In many ways it reminded me of THE LORD OF THE RINGS — a group of comrades (including a dwarf) travel through beautiful and desolate landscapes (across rivers and marshes, through mountain tunnels, etc.) on a quest to destroy something so they can save the world. A major difference, and what saves the book from being simply another quest fantasy, is the post-apocalyptic vision of an unknown advanced civilization which died out mysteriously, leaving samples of their devastating handiwork behind. Thus, the dwarf arms himself with an 11-foot tall mechanical skeleton and carries some sort of laser. Cromis and his friends ride into one battle on horseback, but leave in a glass blimp. Cool.A Storm of Wings is the second part of M. John Harrison’s VIRICONIUM sequence. Viriconium has been at peace for eighty years after the threat from the north was eliminated, but now there are new threats to the city. Something has detached from the moon and fallen to earth. A huge insect head has been discovered in one of the towns of the Reborn. The Reborn are starting to go mad. Also, a new rapidly growing cult is teaching that there is no objective reality. Are the strange events linked with the cult’s nihilistic philosophy? And what will this do to Viriconium’s peace? Tomb the dwarf and Cellur the Birdlord, whom we met in The Pastel City, set out to discover the truth.A Storm of Wings was published in 1980 — nine years after The Pastel City — and M. John Harrison’s writing style has evolved. In some ways it’s better — characterization is deeper and the imagery is more evocative. This world feels fragile and moribund and the reader gets the sense that, as the cult proclaims, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s just a warped perception. Or perhaps Viriconium is slipping from reality into a dream. Or into a different reality altogether. The story is strange, outlandish, and blurry. In the third part of the VIRICONIUM omnibus, The Floating Gods (aka In Viriconium), we visit the old artists’ quarter of Viriconium — a lazy decaying place where gardens bloom and the smell of black currant gin exudes from the taverns where the increasingly lackadaisical citizens used to sit and talk about art and philosophy. This part of the city used to be vibrant and innovative, but it has been deteriorating as a psychological plague has been creeping in from the high city. The artists’ patrons, infected by this plague of mediocrity, have become dreamy and only want to purchase uninspired sentimental watercolor landscapes. And all they want to talk about is the debauched antics of the Barley Brothers, a couple of twins who act like buffoons but are rumored to be demi-gods.This part is funny, witty, and brilliantly written with sharp humorous insights into disagreeable human behavior. As the plague crept closer, I could feel the beloved city of Viriconium decaying — its fountains drying up and its gardens becoming unkempt and shabby. Like the previous book, A Storm of Wings, The Floating Gods is intensely atmospheric. This is a better book, though, because the atmosphere is balanced by humor and plot.Viriconium Nights is the last book in M. John Harrison’s VIRICONIUM epic. It’s a collection of seven short stories set in and around the city of Viriconium which contain some of the characters we’ve met in the previous VIRICONIUM books and include many allusions to recurring events and motifs: mechanical metal birds, tarot cards, locusts, the fish mask, big lizards, the Mari Lwyd, etc. Each story stands alone but focuses on the city of Viriconium and particularly the bohemian residents of the Artists’ Quarter. All of Viriconium is decaying, but this part of the city feels especially bleak, probably because it’s peopled with brooding artistic types whose desperation results in freakish hedonistic behavior.Though there are recurring characters in the VIRICONIUM works, we never get to know any of them very well. The haunting, weird, incomprehensible city is the main character. M. John Harrison has explained at his blog that he didn’t want Viriconium to be “tamed” or “controlled,” so he has confused and disoriented the reader by making it impossible to understand what it would be like to live in his world: “I made that world increasingly shifting and complex. You can not learn its rules. More importantly, Viriconium is never the same place twice.” I think this is more successful in the last three parts of VIRICONIUM — the first novel, The Pastel City, is almost a traditional quest fantasy. VIRICONIUM is one of those works that I feel like I should give 5 stars just because it’s original and M. John Harrison’s prose is brilliant. Harrison is a master of style and his writing is superior to most of what’s offered on the SFF shelves. However, the truth is that though I recognize Harrison’s genius, I can’t say that I enjoyed every moment of VIRICONIUM, which may be a reflection on me more than on the work itself. Spending so much time in a city that’s unknowable and decaying resulted, for me, in an overwhelming feeling of disorientation and hopelessness. The characters and the plot, which feel like they are there only to support the role of the city, don’t make up for this. A month from now, I probably won’t remember any of the plots in Viriconium Nights. But I will remember Viriconium.I listened to the audiobook version of VIRICONIUM which was produced by Neil Gaiman Presents and is narrated by Simon Vance who is one of the absolute best in the business. This is a high-quality production and highly recommended for anyone who wants to read one of M. John Harrison’s best-loved works.
This is an omnibus edition of three novels and one short story collection. The original books are quite different from one another, and the collection does not feel like a unified work, even though in this edition the short stories are interspersed with the novels. Overall it was not an easy collection to read, but I'm glad I did.THE PASTEL CITY is a fairly conventional fantasy quest novel, albeit an absolutely beautifully written one. The distant future setting is portrayed not as ruined so much as polluted, with vast swamps and deserts made of the industrial wastes of dead civilisations.A STORM OF WINGS is also a fantasy quest story, in which the city must be defended from insect invaders, but the story is overwhelmed by one conceit, that reality is largely determined by perceptions, and the clash of perception between humans and insects causes reality to break down. The protagonists wander, barely sane, through grotesque, mutating landscapes, and it sometimes feels as if the author is using the reality-warping conceit as an excuse to delay explaining to the reader what is going on.IN VIRICONIUM is the only novel set mainly inside the city, and its plot feels less important than the picture it paints of the setting.The short stories vary in style and I'm not sure I understood all of them. For the most part they feel more similar to IN VIRICONIUM than to the other two novels.
What do You think about Viriconium (2005)?
This book was like reading a dream; I can't really say I enjoyed reading it (in fact, I had to force myself to keep reading at times), and yet I was constantly stunned by Harrison's brilliant prose and convoluted, illogical world. Almost more of a writing exercise and deconstruction of the fantasy genre than a collection of short-stories, this book starts from a simple fantasy setting and then slowly unwinds itself into near meaninglessness. If you have the fortitude to follow the thread to its end, its very rewarding, but more like finishing a marathon than reading a book.
—Chris
Viriconium is, nominally, a series of short stories and novellas set in (or related to) a city of the same name. In practice, the author is trying to more than that, and unfortunately the result is that the collection is somewhat the lesser for it.The first novella, entitled The Pastel City, is an entertaining adventure in a land far past its prime. The standard hero tropes are in play, albeit set against a more dark backdrop (reminiscent of Jack Vance's Dying Earth), and the story does a good job giving the reader a sense of familiarity with the setting. This first story is also the last in the collection that "plays by the rules."The second novella (entitled A Storm Of Wings) is dense, deeply confusing, and seems at odds with the initial setting. The author's descriptive style is radically different, and slightly surreal twists that introduced us to the setting explode into a phantasmogoric stream of consciousness so vivid and unsettling that it wasn't until about halfway through that I was able to figure out what the hell was going on. Subsequent stories show a similar character to the second novella, albeit to a more controlled degree.What Harrison is trying for in the first novella is obvious: a standard science fantasy romp with heroism, peril, and skullduggery, flavored with postmodern nihilism. What he trying for in the rest of collection is a more devious game. By his own admission, Viriconium deliberately frustrates the reader. Tired of the "fantasy tourism" made popular by Tolkien, Harrison sought to write a world that was always familiar but never the same. Making repeated use of the themes of a world in transformation, Harrison's protagonists are usually as confused as the reader.From a literary perspective, Harrison's efforts are probably laudable. Speculative fiction is an oddly stagnant genre in which most authors introduce us to their various worlds in the same ways. The literary is often overwhelmed by the "escapism formula" and Harrison's world is difficult, textured, challenging, and rich.At the same time, however, Harrison's writing is often pretentious, overwrought, and stultifying. As a work that is entertaining, Viriconium often stumbles. There's something annoying about a story that is written to make a point, but the point that it's making is a reflection on (or criticism of) the reader rather than anything to do with the story itself. Like the artist who presents a blank canvas as art just to see the reaction of patrons, Harrison is writing a story while implicitly shaking you at the shoulder and shouting "You get it? You get it?"
—Belarius
Bought this partly because SF fans I knew in the 1980s raved about how good the Viriconium stories were, and partly because I really liked Harrison's Light. But now they seem to me to be mainly pale imitations of Michael Moorcock - not too surprising, as they originated from stories published in New Worlds. There is obvious satiricial content, being fantasy about a decaying world living for past glories (a fairly clear parallel to attitudes in Britain to the legacy of empire in the sixties and seventies), with some interesting imagery. Mostly dull though.The most interesting and different of these stories, A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium, is placed last in this omnibus, telling of people who are searching for a way into the fantasy world from real world Britain; the addition of the conspiracy theory style elements makes this far more entertaining.It feels to me that the reputation of these stories has been increased by lengthy periods over which they were unavailable - and they don't live up to it.
—Simon Mcleish
