The Centauri Device

by M. John Harrison

John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. But he was also the last of the Centaurans, or at least half of him was, which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which might hold the key to settling a vicious space war.

M. John Harrison's classic novel turns the conventions of space opera on their head, and is written with the precision and brilliance for which is famed.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Speculative Fiction, 20th Century, Science Fiction Fantasy, Novels

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

aka Gabriel King (with Jane Johnson)

Michael John Harrison, known for publication purposes primarily as M. John Harrison, is an English author and literary critic. His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories, Climbers, and the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, which consists of Light, Nova Swing and Empty Space.

Reviews

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1974, The Centauri Device purposely subverts just about every (at the time) Space Opera trope. It still packs a punch, almost half a century later.

I can see, just from the reviews here, that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. And isn’t that just marvelous?

The prose is deliriously (and, arguably, divisively grandiose), with much use of both metaphor and simile. I found it positively exhilarating, and arresting. Occasionally abstract, I felt the novel to be extremely visual and atmospheric, although often in somewhat grotesque fashion; a bit like reading a futuristic fever dream in which both Tim Burton and H.R. Giger had a hand (but that could be my own interpretation). I haven’t read other books by this author, so I don’t know whether the prose is specific to this novel, or representative of style.

A blue-grey waxy light drowned her pentacular command-bridge, running like tepid fire down the slippery perspectives of an extraGalactic geometry, forming optical verglas on planes of alien metalwork, tracing the formal interlacing designs that covered the inner hull. Every four or five seconds, banks of stroboscopic lamps fired off, freezing and quantifying jagged areas of shadow, but defining no shape the eye could appreciate. Nothing was perpendicular or dependable.
Now white and dazzling, now hard black silhouettes, the quarterdeck crew moved at ease through this disjointed medium, tending the bizarre original equipment of the ship or settling like insects among more identifiable machinery bolted roughly to the deck. They trailed loops of cable from portable computing facilities, calling off queries and co-ordinates in a rising chant. A subsonic ground bass reverberated through the body cavities; other voices chattered and decayed in the foreground like the cries of autistic children heard in a dream.

This future is bleak as hell, and nihilistic in the extreme. Again, it has been done since, and taken even further, but this seems to have been the precursor right here. Harrison has the “Used Future” concept down pat. Everything here is rough around the edges, and evokes that gritty realism of the “new space opera” that followed. This is a galaxy that has gone to seed, populated with all kinds of dregs. The backdrop is quite impressive, filled with industrial detritus and all kinds of big junk. The Centauri Device apparently had a big influence on the likes of Alastair Reynolds and Iain M. Banks, which actually makes a lot of sense.

Outside the gate, the androgynous whores of Golgotha crowded about him as he went, like subtly depraved children: all chemise and mutated orchids and their heads bobbing no higher than his waist, calling to him in soft, empty voices. Their minute hands plucked at his legs as he passed; some made offers of muted obscenity, others sang or raised their arms to be picked up, many simply clutched his hand and stared with ultimate cryptic promise. They flowed like a grey stream down the boulevards of the native quarter, sometimes leading him, sometimes following, all the while smiling seriously as though reflecting all acute desires.

Instead of a hero, The Centauri Device features an anti-hero that has almost no impact on the plot at large (such as it is). The protagonist is swept up in events that he hardly understands, and as such, the reader doesn’t have too much of an idea what is going on either, for large portions of the book. That said, it is not a particularly long book and I charged through it in no time (couldn’t put it down).

Chuck in a big old “bet you didn’t see that coming” ending, and Bob’s your uncle. All-in-all an occasionally bizarre, always eerie, book that I enjoyed more than I had any right to (I suppose).

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can definitely see why the reviews of The Centauri Device are all over the place and that stated, YMMV tremendously with this one. Harrison has a unique prose style coupled with a very dark and gritty future. Further, the politics in this, along with rather dark humor animating the various 'ideologies', may also put a twinkle in your eye or make you toss this across the room.

The Centauri Device, first published in 1975, is rooted in the cold war, despite this being set about 400 years into the future. Earth is now ruled by two superpowers-- the Israeli World Government (IWG) and the United Arab Socialist Regime (UASR)-- but each one 'today' only has the names of the original governments. Further, while Earth itself is largely free of war, being somewhat evenly divided among the two powers, many 'proxy' wars take place in the space colonies, waged for 'free markets' or 'socialism'.

Our main protagonist, John Truck, is basically a lowlife spaceship captain, owning a freighter he purchased with his discharge money from the IGA fleet. Living to get fucked up in one spaceport or another, he suddenly finds himself the object, or pawn, of both the superpowers along with a bizarre religious organization and organized crime figures. Why? It seems John Truck is actually the most pure Centauri left in the galaxy. 200 years before the events of the novel, Earth went to war with Alpha Centauri, which was populated by a pan-human race. The Centaurians created an artifact, the Centauri Device, but never used it, keeping it hidden in a deep bunker. The war destroyed the world, leaving nothing but radioactive ash. Yet, the bunker survived and the artifact found. The problem? The device can tell the genotypes of the potential user and will only 'work' with a Centaurian. It seems everyone wants John Truck, along with the mysterious device, to push their own agenda...

The worlds and places John Truck visits are bleak and surreal. England, for example, is just a massive spaceship yard, long since abandoned, like the rust belt cities in the USA. Most of the characters populating the place are 'losers' like John; the dregs of society, be they petty crooks, prostitutes ('dock ladies'), drug addicts and so forth. These folks are beyond the simple ideologies professed by the two superpowers and just want to be.

Quite an emotional journey for sure, and the stark, at times almost stream of consciousness prose pull the reader along through mud and tears. Rather bleak to be sure, but good stuff. 3.5 stars, rounding up!!

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of such concentrated grittiness and scuzziness you feel you missed a bath reading it. A proto-cyberpunk, Bester inspired space opera that Harrison turns into a prose poem and a long shriek of despair. Bizarre and dark, this is not one of his best but fans of his and of Banks and Reynolds will find it worth a look.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a SF Masterwork?

An odd thing happened during the first few hours in Stomach. John Truck was later to regard it as symbolical (to the extent that he could regard anything in so astract a way - it came in the end to little more than an itch down among the sordid experiential and intellectual gleanings of a spacer's skull), but at the time it filled him with a peculiar horror.

The florid, overwritten, prose with its snide contemptuous sub-clauses completely fails to disguise the almost total lack of a plot, character or point (as far as this sordid intellectually deficient reader can see).

Some of these Sci-Fi Masterworks would benefit greatly from an introduction (Movie Master Class style) that explains why this work is regarded as classic.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Centauri Device is a bitter anti-space opera and a vital precursor to cyberpunk. Important reading for anyone interested in sf.

The plot concerns the voyages of Captain Truck as he shambles around the galaxy being pursued by military superpowers. The latter convince the former to help find the title's ancient superdevice. In the end and after much suffering Truck finds the device, then uses it to destroy the Earth and nearby stars.

There's a lot going on in Centauri, and I'll mention a few things.

First, the grimness and bitterness of the story smacks science fiction space opera upside the head. Almost nothing in the far future is gleaming, awesome, or even very decent. Most of the scenes take place in bad bars, police interrogation chambers, trashed alleyways, and bedsits for nearly starving people. Characters are junkies, poor people, failures, thugs, prostitutes, beggars, losers. The two military interstellar empires (based on Arab nations and Israel, weirdly, sort of hilariously) are powerful but disgusting and entropic. Most plots ends badly, quests failing, human civilization flopping towards mediocrity. Call it grimdark space opera, or a response to Flash Gordon.

It's a melancholy book, lacking any sense of a future. Most of the characters look to the past, all too often the 20th century, or their own sorry backstories. There isn't much hope for a better tomorrow.
(That 20th century fixation is one of the few imaginative weaknesses of the novel.)

Second, and following this, Centauri lays important groundwork for cyberpunk. We see the world dominated by stupid powers, and the hero an antihero who can't really make the world a better place. We also see some culture mixing of the kind Gibson did well in Neuromancer. Not much cyber, but plenty of punk.

Third, the novel shows once again Harrison's excellent style. Each snarling, brooding paragraph is beautifully shaped, setting up ideas with a precise minimum of words.

Recommended for anyone remotely interested in sf.

[Krysia o książkach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Koncept jest niesamowicie ciekawy, ale strasznie się męczyłam z czytaniem tej książki.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know exactly what it is that draws me to Harrison's writing so strongly. I think it's a mix of his prose and his take on the nature of mankind.

As with Viriconium, Light, and Nova Swing this sci-fi Materworks novel has an excessively dark and some would say depressing, yet entirely compelling, take on the nature of man. Harrison paints a somewhat sympathetic picture of the lower class- which he always portrays as hopelessly disposable, in their own eyes and the eyes of those in power, and self-destructive.

It is not only the darkness of his themes but Harrison's heartbreakingly brilliant prose that I really admire. Sci-fi or not, his individual sentences evoke the type of visceral feelings that only true literature can. This novel, without a doubt, deserves its placement in the Sci-fi Masterworks collection

[Graham P · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the nebulous regions between pulpmaster E.E. Doc Smith's Skylark series and anti-novelist William Burroughs' Nova Trilogy, THE CENTAURI DEVICE is a poisoned love letter to the Space Opera canon. But it's the un-stitched delivery that makes this 1975 novel shine glorious. This is a dense and colorful adventure with a swashbuckling air to it, chrome and leather and amphetamines, but oddly also in line with Dashiel Hammett's 'Red Harvest' more than any other book. Our hero John Truck is a bitter born-loser akin to the Coin-Op, a lone wolf on the run with skills undiscovered, and a depressive, fatalistic integrity that rubs everyone the wrong way. The Arab corps is pissed at him, the European government is watching his every move, and a divine monk intent on remodifying his human anatomy into ungodly regions that would make Clive Barker's Cenobites proud. Of course, John Truck is the last Centaurian, and the only one able to control the Device -- in this case a divine weapon that can only be controlled by its architect's descendants, and either rewire the galaxies, or put an end to them for once and for all (another Noir reference, in this case, the otherworldly doom box in 'Kiss Me Deadly.')

Entropy, Entropy, Entropy. Double crosses, Triple crosses, and lots of murder and mayhem. I haven't had this much fun with doom since Moorcock's Cornelius quartet, and M. John Harrison takes his interstellar gloom into territories that bleed colors on every page with both density and divine misanthropy. Besides the unnecessary and tagged-on epilogue which only insults the readers by trying to tidy up a glorious mess, this is still a classic of the UK New Wave, and while this epilogue derails the power, it is still a five-star novel because it is so intent on breaking and reshaping the codes of the Space Opera, including its well-deserved spot alongside its obvious influences, Nova (Delany) and Stars My Destination (Bester). Coffin ships, rebel armies hiding in meteors, drug dealers and revolutionaries, space raves and all the overdoses that follow.

Jesus H....Harrison even brings us to a boiler room where street junkies congregate around a dying nuclear reactor, inhaling off an infected sheep and flying high in a blistering last trip:

"The fleece had fallen away from its hindquarters in great lumps, like stuffing from an armchair left to rot in the rain: small red blisters connected by thin raised threads of poisoned epidermal nerves covered the exposed hide where the Paraphythium infection had got to it....It look sadly up at him, dull brown eyes running and pained, and he stared dispassionately back. He studied the rapt, revelatory faces of the users, searching for some human distinguishing mark, but they all looked like animals, too. Staring at the nearest end of the semicircle, he went round and shot them, one by one. They never made a sound. It was like being underwater; quiet, removed."

[Buck · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison is not my cup of tea. Harrison was a force in the new wave of science fiction. I like the golden age. The Centauri Device has been called 'proto-cyberpunk'. I prefer literary. The Centauri Device seemed to me to be a second rate pastiche of the styles of Philip K Dick, William S Burroughs, and maybe Douglas Adams. It occasionally crawled into the light of cogency only to stagger and stumble back into the garbage strewn dark alleys of scrambled imagery. There were obvious attempts at subtle satire, but it was a swollen tongue stuck through rotten teeth into a pimply cheek. The second half had marginally less blithering than the first but that hardly justified my not having abandoned this book. I didn't much care for it.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Purple prose and a listless, largely unsympathetic protagonist make a surprisingly action-packed political thriller cum space opera an unexpectedly difficult read. Additionally, I'm not sure what message I'm meant to take home, other than ideology and individuals in power do not serve the people at large. The final 30p or so are completely baffling. I here-by formally give up on Harrison SF novels.

[fonz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vine buscando el origen de La Cultura y acabé encontrando el de Neuromante, a William Gibson esta novela le debió gustar una barbaridad; el personaje de Case al completo, las drogas omnipresentes, William Burroughs, los ambientes marginales, la poética de cf, todo eso está ya aquí. Incluso podría afirmarse que "The Centauri Device" es la primera y única space opera punk de la historia de la cf.

Bueno, qué dificil es siempre escribir sobre una novela de John Harrison. Hablamos de una space opera que toma el testigo donde lo dejó "The Star Virus", de Barrington Bayley, añadiéndole la importante influencia de William Burroughs y sus experimentos con la cf de obras como "Las ciudades de la noche roja", a lo que hemos de añadir la sempiterna figura de Bester revoloteando por encima de todo esto. Porque hay un hilo fundamental que recorre desde "Tigre, Tigre" a "The Centauri Device", pasando por "Nova" o la ya mencionada "The Star Virus" y es la de la figura protagonista en la space opera. Si ya Bester desechó la figura del héroe por la del antihéroe, en "The Centauri Device" el antihéroe se desecha a su vez como fantasía narcisista, sustituido por un "punk" como lo entendía Harry Callaghan, John Truck, un matao, un traficante de poca monta, un buscavidas, que, a diferencia de los héroes o antihéroes de space operas anteriores, es un personaje completamente pasivo que en su interior acogería a todos los perdedores que somos incapaces de controlar nuestras vidas, que nos definimos por lo que no queremos porque en el fondo no sabemos qué deseamos y que damos tumbos arrastrados por fuerzas y circunstancias fuera de nuestro control y de las que sólo somos capaces de huir.

John Truck es el hallazgo más interesante de "The Centauri Device", pero no el único. Por supuesto es una space opera sin glamour alguno, sin heroísmo, sin hipocresía. El espacio que nos presenta Harrison es un lugar de barrios bajos en planetas infernales, sectas enloquecidas, mundos muertos, combates en el espacio que derivan en crueles masacres, puertos espaciales en decadencia donde los cohetes son desmantelados antes de que se pudran, kitchen sink dramas en ciudades inglesas bajo la sombra de naves espaciales en descomposición... La Tierra ha exportado a la Vía Láctea su eterna historia de guerra, destrucción y exterminio, pero ya a escala planetaria, un ciclo destructivo donde tipos como John Truck se buscan la vida traficando con lo que pueden y consumiendo mucho más de lo que deben. Los seres humanos, que tanto soñábamos con salir al espacio exterior, acabamos haciendo lo de siempre y, bordeando el nihilismo, la novela acaba proponiendo la destrucción creativa a escala galáctica como única manera de limpiar el tablero.

Y pasando a cosas más prosaicas, ¿me lo he pasado bien leyendo "The Centauri Device"? Pues en general sí. Quizá sea un poquito irregular, al desenlace le falte un pelín de contundencia y el argumento no deje de ser el típico correcalles detrás de un mcguffin mientras los malos persiguen al prota, pero como suele ocurrir, no es el qué, es el cómo y The Centauri Device es extravagante, es bizarra, es imaginativa, es desagradable, goza de un retorcido sentido del humor y Harrison escribe las mejores metáforas del mundo. Y porque por una vez no es una novela de aventuras espaciales sobre adolescentes de las mil caras, ni románticos antihéroes rebeldes, es sobre nosotros, la escoria de la tierra.

[John Defrog: global citizen, local gadfly · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is my first time reading M. John Harrison. It may be my last. I get that it’s heralded as a pioneering and influential “anti-space-opera”, and there’s little doubt Harrison has a kind of lyricism to his writing. But for me, the latter really gets in the way of the story – which is not a good thing when yr describing a universe 600 years in the future. It’s a shame too because the story – in which space captain John Truck, the only man alive who can operate the title device, is being pursued and harangued by different political and religious factions who want the Centauri Device for their own purposes – sounds like a winner. But honestly I really had trouble following it and figuring out what was going on (or at least why). That might be my problem instead of Harrison’s, but the author himself has long since disowned the novel. I wish I’d known that before I started this.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several things I read about Harrison's book described it as proto-cyberpunk. I thought of it as sf noir, which come to think of it maybe makes it proto-cyberpunk. The future Harrison describes is one dark place. Escalations of the Arab/Israeli conflict has divided the Earth, which is no longer hardly worth visiting, between the two forces. Other planets offer their own special hells, often little more than spaceports and port cities filled with junkies and prostitutes. John Truck, our hero, has given up peddling amphetamines, and now looks for whatever long distance hauls he can pick up. But he finds himself the most sought after drifter in the galaxy, wanted by both Israelis and Arabs because he is the bastard son of one of the last, purebred Centaurians, a race wiped out in a genocide a century or so ago. In the ruins of Centauri, an archeologist as discovered a"device." Everyone assumes it is a weapon, but one that can only be operated by a person bearing Centaurian genes.

This is hard-boiled space opera with the body count and colorful characters you would expect to go with it. Genreral Gaw, female leader of the IWG (Israeli World Government), is a squat, tough broad given to calling everbody "duckie," The leader of the UASR (United Arab something-or-other) has the prescient name Kadaffi. There is a femme fatale, one Angina Seng, but the most fascinating characters are members of a religious sect known as Openers. They replace more and more of their epidermis with plastic in a effort to achieve total transparency. John Truck falls victim to one of their non-elective surgeries.

From 1968 to 1975, Harrison was literary editor of the British sf magazine New Wave. So along with J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Thomas Disch, and others he oversaw a genuine transformation in the literary style and subject matter of the genre. His leftist political stance delivers a good solid bitch slap to Margaret Thatcher's England and is a message worth keeping in circulation.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

How many of you have a list of books that you want to read? Well, I have a Reading List from a book--"A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction" by Baird Searles (and three others), published in 1979. The list has 50 titles of the essential books of SF to read-- as of the end of the 70s, that is. At this point, more than 40 years later, I have read almost all of them. "The Centauri Device" (published in 1974) was one that I hadn't, so when I spied a copy of the book at a used bookstore, I snapped it up.
I give it 3 stars, which is not bad, but I have to admit that, if I had never seen this book, I would not have missed anything (unlike many of the other books on the List)! It's the story of anti-hero John Truck, who uses his spaceship to smuggle drugs... He also has an awesome power that he is unaware of. He is the only person in the Universe with the power to activate the Centauri Device, a superweapon built by the Centaurans, aliens who were exterminated by Earth ( for some reason they had not used it!). Two rival governments are after Truck and he leads them on a merry chase through the galaxy. It's a bleak, grim and gritty future; this is a very dark "Star Wars" without any Light Side at all, just the Dark Side...
Anyway, I'm wondering if I should find and read other books on the List that I haven't read before many more years pass--the books are "Vermilion Sands" by J.G. Ballard ( I like Ballard!), all of The Perelandra Trilogy by C.S. Lewis ( I read one of the books decades ago--forget which one!) and "The Night Land" by William Hope Hodgson--anyone out there read this one? Maybe I'll check Goodreads! And maybe I'll draw up a list of Hugo and Nebula Award winners from 1980-the Present and start looking for those books...

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

M John Harrison has made it clear that he doesn't this is one of his better works,and whilst it may not be in the same class as The Course Of The Heart, Climbers or The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again this is still head and shoulders above any normal Space Opera.

Our protagonist (John Trunk) is at the mercy of various forces all trying to gain control over the mysterious Centauri Device and which he is uniquely able to assist with. However he's not in control of events at all, these forces represent the major ideologies of our time: Capitalism, Communism and Religion. Trunk himself represents the vast mass of humanity at the mercy of these larger warring forces.

Whilst this might all sound rather high falutin and heavy duty, the novel is executed with wit and is really rather good. I don't think Harrison is capable of writing a bad one

[Strix · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The reader must judge for himself." A final insult, from a vile, beautiful, gross, nihilist book that rejects everything about its own existence - it rejects science fiction, it rejects the future, the present, the past. Its hero is characterized by his indecisiveness and lack of character. Its moral is that no ideology can or will stop the suffering. Its moral is that the sufferers will seek out their own doom. It speaks to ghosts as a ghost.

This book gets five stars for being something at war with itself, for having beautiful prose, for being creative, for being a wreck of a book. For being something beyond the norm.

I hate it. I want to set fire to my copy. I want to give it one star. I reject the nihilism. I reject the rejection. I reject that the only "good" ending in the book was to leave the universe altogether!

Read this book, but don't give your heart to it.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the face of it, this is a science fiction novel about the legacy of an alien device discovered after they had been wiped out by the forces of earth.

Underlying that is a story of a man caught up in a whirlwind of conflicting ideologies and grasps for power.

I found the writing style quite disengaging and abrasive. I was annoyed by the use of psudo intellectual metaphores. But it picked up a bit towards the end and all in all, wasn't a bad book.

[Jack (Sci-Fi Finds) · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this bizarre space opera tale, we follow a character named John Truck - a down-and-out, self-described loser and spaceship captain who has been peddling drugs between planets, indulging in them himself and drinking himself into oblivion. He is approached by someone who claims that he is the last living descendant of a now extinct humanoid alien race called the Centaurans.

A Centauran artefact has been found, which is a mysterious device that various factions are fighting for control of, each believing it has a different purpose. These factions include the hugely powerful Israeli World Government, an Arabic socialist federation and a strange religious group referred to as the Openers. The latter is headed up by a fanatical archaeologist called Dr. Grishkin, who has numerous glass windows grafted into his skin to allow full sight of his insides. He is one of the most memorable antagonists that I have ever come across in the genre.

Each one of these factions believes that John Truck is the only one who can operate the device due to his Centauran heritage, but he is reluctant to aid any of them. This leads to a nebulous plot in which he attempts to evade his pursuers and their conflicting ideologies.

Harrison's prose style is ornate and stylish, to the point that you could describe it as purple. He doesn't hold your hand and thrusts you into this bizarre world, expecting you to get on with it. This leads to a pretty hard landing early on, where it can be difficult to follow and understand. As I settled into it, though, I found moments of sheer brilliance and creative vision. It feels kind of like a combination of Neuromancer by William Gibson and The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, with a sprinkling of Delany strangeness. I don't like the Centauri device as much as those other books, and I don't think I like Harrison as much as those other authors, but for the right reader, this will hit in a big way.

[Nathan Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A ragged space opera that defied conventional tropes of the genre. Harrison thinks this is the worst thing he had ever written-- though it's not as well realized as Viriconium, it still has a lot of Harrison's hallmarks in that the writing can be quite lyrical, and presents a dichotomy of beauty and decay. Visually arresting as well, just clearly not as thematically focused as most of his other SF work.

[Rog Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is friggin’ great.
I’m gonna stew on it some more before I write a review.
This Pan edition has a rad Chris Foss cover.
*Update three weeks later: This is my first Harrison read, and the man’s a real painter with words. His structural sketch is there under everything, and he develops each aspect of the drawing to various levels of finish based on its importance to the story. Backgrounds can be misty and vague while foregrounds are fully rendered, but each are atmospheric and informative and essential to the composition.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

A jumbled, confused, confusing, excessively overwritten piece in yet another dive port town on the edge of another nowhere, this time laced with drugs with vast reams of complex names without any context that after a short while I skipped over as meaningless. Character is suborned to creation of ghoulish atmosphere, energies (of what must be a smart mind) dissipated in favour of cramming in as much clutter as in the imagination of a delirious inmate. We don't really know much about this loser, and after the exposition, we don't really care. You've got to care by a quarter the way in, and you've got to have your bearings, the world revealed around you like newly painted segments unfolding inside a giant globe as wide as the theatre of action. But the jumble of words, striving for way-out-there while penning jagged lines to follow, means you follow in zig-zag drunken steps. I'm still slightly queasy. It's a fair guess that there will be a few who follow, and some willingly. But I got stuck, soon.

Far, far too many times places and descriptions veered off into some smack-hazed hinterland of meaningless metaphors and similes that went nowhere I know of. If you're laying down your exposition, keep it less obtuse. Then we can follow, and willingly. Where Truck went, I didn't care, and only had the vaguest idea where, despite the florid, parenthetically-raddled language. Who he kept company with, neither did I care. I read on because I wanted to see what this weapon was for; or for it to be all over. To see what they were saying about him, about his language, his imagination. And realised one thing early on: it wasn't for me.

Too much junk: drugs, the detritus of industrial waste and wastelands, back alleys up back alleys, the lost in wretched poverty, heaps of rubbish, contending extremist politics pretending their ideologies rule the galaxy, politicese by the power-mad, more rubbish, another junkyard, junk upon junk, and if he uses the word 'hinterland' one more time I'll scream! He did! Several times! Not a single character was of any interest. There was no relief from the incessant descriptions of muck, dross, detritus and junk. Truck fell from one tedious place and situation to another. Not the slightest relief from his complete imbecility. Not a saving grace of a character, a place, a situation, not a nauseous abstraction. It was like being forced to take drugs I didn't want. A bad acid trip. And did any of it advance plot one iota? Any of it? Not until 60 pages to go, and the dense nauseous description falls away - but does not disappear.

Hype is one thing; sheer nonsense is another. This was nonsense. And then, one evening, turning to it with some lingering semblance of hope - I realised it was all one big joke; or an unbearable cyannic dream. He thinks he can keep us happy with Hell. Banks did it with so much more finesse. But at least now I know where he got his ship names from, and where the plot of Consider Phlebus [1987] with its subterranean tunnels came from...

[Will Sargent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Welcome to poetry hour. Every sentence is so incredibly intricate, a rolling, endless puzzle. Back-to-front, staccato observations that start and finish with unusual words. It's Scat jazz in word form. 'What the heck's he on about here,' I say in my head three times per page as I go back to read it for the fourth time. Ahh, I get it now...
I sometimes wish I was a better reader. I do struggle to focus on unusual styles like this and, say, Tiptree jnr (who also writes deliciously but trickily).

if I stripped out and simplified 3/4 of this thick sauce it would be fantastic. Harrison's characters and environs are scintillating, fizzing with life. Drugs, prozzies, smokey joints. Bitches. Bastards. Losers. Diners, drive-thrus and dives. Sweating space hulks, steaming space ports, cultists with see-through stomachs, - he's the real deal, streetwise and savvy. He's clearly been there and lived it among the swingin' New Wave crowd. Half the characters are damaged, drug-raddled losers - it's a dirty, dangerous world, but it moves fast and often loses you down back alleys.

I can handle a poetic para or two between calm flowing copy, but i'm afraid Harrison demands too much of his reader. He's obsessed with brevity at the expense of readability. Everything's back-to-front then upside-down. More poetry than novel which must be read with great care. Am I savouring this or struggling with it I kept asking myself. I wanted to like this so much, as I know how much craftsmanship has gone into it.

I punched the air with joy during the odd half page when he wasn't tyiing me in knots. hooray! - I understand this bit - The joy! the pride! A whole half page without stopping to check. We're in space, we've taken off, the radar's beeping. Something's happening... but wait... Mjohn's feeling naughty. The thesaurus is a-twitchin' and that adjective machine gun is reloaded and cocked. Did he really need to describe that bloke's brown, chubby hand as being like a Greek man's.

There's an awful lot of 'like a' actually. Why, sweet jesus, is he a lineal descendant and not just a descendant. Every object has two adjectives if not three. Every sentence has two smoothing, soothing conjunctions removed to make it painfully, eye-achingly tight. It's like driving in the city with clutch foot ache. Stop start. On off. On off.

I made it to the end after many comfort breaks. I'm exhausted, but it's worth the effort.

[EmBe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dieser Roman ist schon ein eigenartiges Werk. Für den Vorwortschreiber Adam Roberts ein Meisterwerk, für den SF-Durschschnittsleser ein harter Brocken. Es ist zum einen eine Space Opera mit allem drum und dran. Kriege, Planetenbündnisse, Raumfahrer, Außerirdische und einer ultimativen Waffe, der titelgebenden Centauri-Maschine. Ein zeitgenössischer Leser wird aber sofort die verfremdete globale Situation der 70er Jahre erkennen, der Roman wurde 1975 geschrieben. Es passiert zum einen viel in diesem relativ kurzen Roman, Action satt bis zum hochdramatischen Finale, das ich um diese Bewertung zu schreiben, eine zweites Mal gelesen habe. Zum anderen ist die Schreibweise sehr literarisch. Der Stil ist nuancen- und metaphernreich, Harrison schwelgt geradezu in der Sprache. Die Fähigkeiten Harrisons decken sich dabei sehr gut mit seiner Vorstellungskraft.
Man kann diesen Roman nicht als Unterhaltung lesen, weil er zu unkonventionell ist. Man sollte Sinn für sprachliche Qualitäten haben und sich Zeit nehmen.
Es ist ein Werk der New Wave, es war eine interessante aber auch für mich eine herausfordernde Lektüre.

[Carl Barlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ticks all the Space Opera boxes (big spaceship battles, other worlds, alien(?) artefacts of such power they may as well be magic, an unwilling hero who can save or damn the galaxy) - but it's written by M. John Harrison, so you're getting more for your money... some of it, arguably, whether or not you actually want it.

Squalor -and living in/with it- is a major theme; insanity abounds, drug -and other- addiction(s) is/ are everywhere; folk are out for their own ends to the exclusion of everything else; there are violence and disgusting things (and sometimes disgusting violence); characters seem to be future rejects from the north of England (or at least the good ones are); there is a dwarf with a big axe; the conclusion, while not a happy one, is better than the way things could have gone. And it's all depicted in wonderful, black and wry and knowing style. It's Samuel R. Delany and Thomas M. Disch combined in an Englishman... and it turns out this is a good thing.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent but flawed science fiction novel. I thought it was worth reading but not especially remarkable. The Centauri Device is a classic McGuffin used to drive the seemingly arbitrary plot involving the everyman protagonist John Truck and a lot of paper thin characters. There are influences from decadent literature and William Burroughs and affinities with his friend Michael Moorcock. There are some great images and some great flourishes of prose. I thought the Openers religious sect was quite original and interesting. M John Harrison writes in a dense, poetic style which, for me, descends into purple prose all too often. This kind of dense poetic prose can work, but it isn't easy to pull off. Mervyn Peake is a master of it. Harrison veers into overwriting.

[Stu · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't get on with this, I found I had to read quite a lot of sentences over and over a few times. I can't put my finger on it but maybe someone else who has read it and has more knowledge of grammar than me would be able to point out why the construction of the sentences are so frustrating at times to read. The language didn't flow for me. Like a car stalling. It felt constantly like the words were going somewhere and then it would come abruptly to a halt. I found it hard to follow who was talking. I just wasn't interested in the story. I read that the author thinks its crap, so I don't feel too bad about abandoning it. Oh well.

[Regine]

Apocalyptic.

[Marcin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok. ;)

A space opera condensed on 200 pages. Narration and language very often remind the style of Hitchhikers Guide to a Galaxy ... but in very distant way. And it's hard to call is an interesting way of leading a story in fact.

But still the book isn't bad, it just has its own unique style.

And after all we have here space colonies, dark murky future of humanity, a cowboy like space pilot, a bard like singer and a lot of other strange personas chaotically running around.

Just don't recommend it to anyone who wants to start reading SF :)

[Allan Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting novel, a classic of 70’s New Wave, of which Harrison was a leader. While the plot is fairly basic - a space opera with different groups pursuing a person with a power they can use - it’s twisted, and the language is very diverse and colorful, almost psychedelic. It’s been described as a mix of Philip K Dick, Alfred Bester & Douglas Adams. a fairly predictable payoff, but here the language & the tone have their day.

[Lars Dradrach · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 52 % so I’m invoking the 50% rule and mark it as read.

This might have been spectacular at publication time (1974), but now it’s just annoying, with over flowery language, endless parenthetical sentences and references to (for me) unknown characters. But worst off all I never really cared about the characters or the plot.