SF is an opportunity to have an intense relationship with your own imagination. It's a kind of drive-by poetry, trashy and addictive; it's fun. After that, for me, it's an opportunity to explore that kind of imaginative artifact from inside, and use a little camped-up contemporary science as a way of generating new metaphors around my typical obsessions.
M. John HarrisonWhat is literature, and why do I try to write about it? I donโt know. Likewise, I donโt know why I go on living, most of the time. But this not knowing is precisely what I want to preserve. As readers, the closest way we can engage with a literary work is to protect its indeterminacy; to return ourselves and it to a place that precludes complete recognition. Really, when Iโm reading, all I want is to stand amazed in front of an unknown object at odds with the world.
M. John HarrisonHappiness and beauty are the worst things you can have in a life, because you never forget them. They go on and on ambushing you, presumably until you die.
M. John HarrisonAfter all why should our goal be the reinstatement of an illusory 'exact' relationship between events and words? If you probe in the ashes you will never learn anything about the fire: by the time the ashes can be handled the meaning has passed on. Every adventure is a cup so empty it can be drunk from again and again and again. Every adventure is so perfect it verges on silence.
M. John HarrisonManufacture dooms in your head and you will go mad. Reality is incontravertible. Also, it will not be anticipated.
M. John HarrisonSF is an opportunity to have an intense relationship with your own imagination. It's a kind of drive-by poetry, trashy and addictive; it's fun. After that, for me, it's an opportunity to explore that kind of imaginative artifact from inside, and use a little camped-up contemporary science as a way of generating new metaphors around my typical obsessions.
M. John Harrison