Light and death in the 24th century

Light by M John Harrison

M John Harrison's jubilant return to full-on science fiction after a lengthy sabbatical in literary fiction constitutes something of an event. If Harrison was a musician rather than a writer, he would be a revered patriarch of blues or avant-garde jazz, venerated by young rock hotshots who sang his praises, waxed rhapsodic over his talents, and acknowledged his influence over their own work while outselling him 10 to one. His book jackets are festooned with tributes from the likes of Iain M Banks, Clive Barker, Ken MacLeod, Michael Marshall Smith and Pat Cadigan, all of whom rightly consider him a grandmaster of his craft.

Like so many SF radicals, he made his 1968 debut in Michael Moorcock's New Worlds magazine. Unlike the editor, however, he had not first taken the precaution of producing a body of populist work, like Moorcock's much-loved Elric fantasies, in order to capture a loyal young audience willing to stand between wolf and door during times of more ambitious and eclectic writing. His recent collection of short fiction, Travel Arrangements, assembled work published from 1983 onwards, drawn from a dizzying variety of periodicals: Woman's Journal to The Times Literary Supplement, as well as the more predictable Interzone; and from disparate anthologies.

Light presents a three-pronged narrative, with two interlocking tales set in the 24th century. They illuminate, and are illuminated by, the present-day activities of a quantum research scientist, Michael Kearney. We learn that the scientific breakthrough which makes the future world possible is based on the work of Kearney and his partner, and also, within the first few pages, that Kearney is a serial killer. Indeed, the first of his murders which we witness takes place so early in the story, and is described so casually and economically, that the inattentive reader might miss it entirely.

Why Kearney is committing these crimes, and what this has to do with the 24th-century protagonists – the starship captain Seria Mau Gemlicher, interfaced with her vessel to an extent which redefines the notion of getting lost in your work, and the drifter known as Chinese Ed – steadily reveals itself. An increasingly complex and dazzling narrative demonstrates that Harrison is, as Iain Banks puts it, "equally attuned to the essential strangeness of both quantum physics and the attritional banalities of modern urban life".

Light depicts its author as a wit (a key character bears the unfortunate name of Billy Anker, but nobody makes any jokes about it), an awesomely fluent and versatile prose stylist, and an SF thinker as dedicated to probing beneath surfaces as William Gibson is to describing how the world seems when reflected in them. If this novel is not already heading the shortlist for the next Arthur C Clarke Awards, then the world is in even worse shape than we thought.

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

The reviewer's book 'Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and postwar pop' is published by Faber.