Weird Fiction - with M. John Harrison | Virtual Futures Salon

Virtual Futures presents M. John Harrison in conversation with Dr. Helen Marshall on weird fiction and his new book, You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts (Comma Press, 2017).
Considered one of the most important stylists of modern fantasy and science fiction working today, and a pioneer of the New Wave, M. John Harrison is a cartographer of the liminal. His work sits at the boundaries between genres - horror and science fiction, fantasy and travel writing - just as his characters occupy the no man’s land between the spatial and the spiritual.
In his first collection of short fiction for over 15 years, we see the master of the New Wave present unsettling visions of contemporary urban Britain, as well as supernatural parodies of the wider, political landscape. From gelatinous aliens taking over the world’s financial capitals, to the middle-aged man escaping the pressures of fatherhood by going missing in his own house… these are weird stories for weird times.
M. John Harrison is the author of eleven novels (including In Viriconium, The Course of the Heart and Light), as well as four previous short story collections, two graphic novels, and collaborations with Jane Johnson, writing as Gabriel King. He won the Boardman Tasker Award for Climbers (1989), the James Tiptree Jr Award for Light (2002) and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Nova Swing (2007). He reviews fiction for The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, and lives in Shropshire.
In conversation with Dr. Helen Marshall (Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing and Publishing, Anglia Ruskin University).
Dr. Helen Marshall is an acclaimed writer, editor and book historian. Her first collection of fiction, Hair Side, Flesh Side, takes its name from the two sides of a piece of parchment-animal skin scraped, stretched and prepared to hold writing. Gifts for the One Who Comes After, her second collection, borrows tropes from the Gothic tradition to negotiate issues of legacy and tradition. Collectively, her two books of short stories have won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic.
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Credits
Produced by Virtual Futures
Camera by Luke Robert Mason
Sound by Luke Robert Mason
Edited by Luke Robert Mason
Thanks to Comma Press
Thanks to Dr. Helen Marshall
Hosted at LIBRARY London: www.lib-rary.com
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[@markreep7841]

Most enjoyable conversation about writing I've heard in awhile.

[@nonpolygon]

This video should have a bajillion likes

[@davechan3761]

Most enlightening, utterly enjoyed it.

[@shanemolloy2824]

Thing about his writing style is that it's as if he's teasing the story out of your and challenging your own imagination. I think that's what makes you feel invested and believe in the characters even in high Sci Fi parts. Very thought provoking author.

[@jerrycornelius2261]

Harrison fails to understand something fundamental about, say, Jerry Cornelius, that it was never about the future but about the living present (note THE TANK TRAPEZE 1968) or the stories about Diana's death and 9/11, The technique was specifically designed to confront immediacy and the proof that it still works is that Moorcock still writes them and readers still find them relevant, Indeed, other writers still do them. Harrison tends to apply generalisations to fit his own work, excelent though it often is. Cornelius as a character and as a technique has changed to suit the moment, suggesting that he and Womack, say, are still essentially genre writers in spite of claims otherwise. There is too much academic talk here, a trap MJH has often fallen into, and not enough unselfconscious writing. This tends to produce nonsensical statements about what can't be done, allowing the writer an over-comfortable position.