Signs of Life

by M. John Harrison

Clive Barker says of M. John Harrison, "His books are fictions of elegant delirium, dark and transcendent by turns." Ramsey Campbell calls him "the master of enigma, whether human or supernatural." Like Jonathan Carroll, Harrison is a British writer who transgresses conventional genre boundaries. Signs of Life is about Mick "China" Rose, an unassuming fellow who runs a shady and lucrative medical-transport-cum-waste-disposal business. Along with his partner, Choe, and his lover, Isobel, China drives souped-up vehicles at ferocious speeds through a dreamlike world where dystopian fantasies of biomedical wrongdoings blend with the subtly shifted reality of Harrison's Britain. Choe is a self-destructive child-man who thrashes from an unattainable idyllic past to an unstructured future full of gangsters and rancid waste dumps. Isobel values beauty and longs for physical transformation. As their destinies unfold, the story is not quite horrific, but it's superbly written and chilling, the kind of novel that will haunt you for days.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Literary Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your Amazon package arrives with a dented corner. The used book it contains is absent a dust jacket. On the spine, the beginning of the author's name has been peeled away, only "n Harrison" remaining. Page 180 appears faded, as if someone left it open in the sun for too long. It smells exactly like a used book is expected to.

This is the way Signs Of Life is written. Everything is described in terms of its proof of existence, the various wear and tear things accumulate over the years of simply being. The narrator is fascinated by such details, as if confused about how things can have such history, as if he was expecting it all to have never existed before he entered the room. I've said it before, but I'm pretty sure someone dropped M John Harrison on his head as a baby and never had the heart to tell him, because the dude seems to be in a constant state of disassociation.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Harrison here, though he is never less than great. An icy fable of destructive dreams involving bioengineering, toxic waste dumps, and Russian gangsters. A ghostly landscape wrapped in dreams and odd events containing alien yet recognizable characters.

[Clint Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

China, Isobel and Choe's dreams have a way of cross-pollinating in Signs of Life. Their individual drives and pursuits become a shared experience where hope is anchored to corruption and corruption buries the truth.

It's difficult to find a sympathetic character among them. The best candidate might be Choe's ex-lover, Christiana. Christiana's survival depends on recurrent pig heart transplants, in contrast with Isobel’s self-destructive wish fulfillment.

The fact that China cares deeply for Isobel, and later for Christiana (despite their harrowing problems), does help redeem him slightly, but his life with Isobel is increasingly self-effacing, and his undying love for her pulls him away from Christiana.

There's a Frankenstein-like warning for technology out of control without a clear aim. Harrison explores bioengineering to question both its purpose and its cost. Isobel's pursues experimental cosmetic treatments, following her dream to literally fly, no matter its threat to her life.

True to his body of work, Harrison uses setting and environment in a way that becomes almost a separate character of its own. Bioengineering waste disposal is institutionalized crime, polluting the environment: it's the cost of pursuing our dreams and the price for compromising our responsibilities and principles. Parasitic crime lords like Ed Cesniak feed off of these dynamics and benefit the most.

The story itself starts out mildly until chapter 3, which presents an odd unravelling quality. Early in their relationship China is eager to know Isobel's life story.

She was a resource, densely stratified, embedded with objects whose significance I might never understand.

Choe and Isobel had no common ground. There was no language that would describe them to each other.

China tells Isobel a story from his early friendship with Choe:

In the town of Mumbles, Wales China and Choe meet up with Choe's friend, Stevie. Choe met Stevie when they worked together doing steeplejacking jobs. At the bar Choe and Stevie do some Ecstasy, have a few drinks, then decide to drive to the coast where they plan do do more Ecstasy. They never make it: Stevie takes Choe in his van, along with a girl in the back who they met at the bar. Stevie misses a sharp turn, barely misses hitting a phone booth, but crashes into a 'De Gwyr' sign ('gwyr' translates to ‘crooked’).

It's an amusing story, and it develops Choe's irresponsible chaotic character. Harrison masterfully describes Choe through China:

People like Choe are like moths in a restaurant on a summer evening just as it gets dark. They bang from lamp to lamp, then streak across the room in long flat wounded trajectories. We make a lot of their confusion but less of their rage. They dash themselves to pieces out of sheer need to be more than they are.

Isobel is both motivated and confined by her dream of flying, to a point where dream and reality blend the further she goes into her transformation

She stared at me as if she had just thought of something. 'How could I see a sunrise, China? It was dark when we landed.' Her dreams had always drawn her away from ordinary things.

China straddles the two nihilistic views: he's an accessory to Choe's amoral and criminal dumping business. He may question it along the way, but he and Choe appreciate the same masculine stereotypical interests that the business brings: fast cars, drugs and thrill-seeking. China's an enabler for Isobel's destructive idealism. He introduces her to one of his shady bioengineering customers, Brian Alexander, not knowing that Alexander will help Isobel further than China can. Alexander feeds Isobel's desires disregarding her own safety, but it's not clear whether China would have drawn a line himself if he were the one providing experimental treatments instead.

A recurring question appears throughout. It's not particularly tied to China, but he does ask 'what could I have done' with a despairing shrug at crucial points, attempting to distance himself from responsibility. The question suggests that all of us are complicit:

If you're so clever, you tell me what else I could have done.

The way characters switch relationships, dropping in and out of each others lives gives Signs of Life a somewhat meandering plot, making it perhaps weaker than some of his other stories.

Harrison has a lyrically revealing style which manages to also be clean, sparse and meditative:

Some events take language away from you. The pieces of the world settle into a shape that won't be said. It is a kind of vertigo.

On observing Lar gibbons at a zoo:

... send out their call, aching and musical. It is raw speech, the speech of desires that can never be fulfilled, only suffered.

On travel, speed, and something more...:

... braking only when the bend filled the windscreen with black and white chevrons, pirouetting out along some undrawn line between will and physics.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A startling look at where our current obsession with having it all might lead us.

I re-read this shortly before going into hospital. Probably not a good idea in some respects, but the central theme of transformation had resonance...

[Tapani Aulu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mielenkiintoinen idea, mutta jäi kyllä hyvin raapaisuksi. Aivan kuin lyhyt novelli vähän laajennettuna. En tiedä oliko tässä tavaraa ihan romaaniksi asti?

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great this is. Middle period MJH is an absolute vibe. Another love story, told with subtle, foreboding genre elements sprinkled throughout the text. I actually enjoyed the characters and dialogue from this more than Course of the Heart (Choe is going to be an all time character for me forever I think), but I don't think this quite squares the circle in the way that book does. The themes seem a little less consistent and a few plot elements could have been emphasized more strongly earlier in the book. Or maybe this is just too subtle for me.

On a different note, I'm just about ready to stop reading about very sick women having a bad time. I'm hoping Climbers will have less of this!

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd book, as I suppose all of Harrison's are, but in general I liked it better this time than The Course of the Heart, which I finished reading yesterday. Signs of Life is about a man named Mick 'China' Rose, his friend Choe Ashton, and his lover Isabel Avens. It's a literary novel for the most part with low-level, understated SF stuff in it, but to me it has the texture of literary fiction first and foremost.

This is a good book but I can't help but feel it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts. The first half is primarily concerned with China and Choe's work illegally dumping toxic waste in England, and the second half is mainly about Isabel's illnesses after she gets all this genetic engineering done on herself to make her into a bird. Really. The two halves don't seem to mesh together especially well, and I tended to like the parts that focused on Choe better.

Incidentally, Choe is an avid Harry Crews fan, which endears him to me further. I hadn't heard of Crews when I first read this, in 2002 or so, but I know his work well now.

Last point: there's an awful lot of vomiting in M John Harrison's work. So much that this time I decided to keep a vomit count. Signs of Life has five separate instances of a character vomiting, not to mention several other references to vomiting. When you read so much of an author's work back to back so quickly, as I have done these past four days, you start to see patterns developing. Vomiting is one of Harrison's.

So, it's a good book but there's a real tension between the realistic and fantastic elements, and the whole thing seems a bit underdone to me. This isn't to say that Signs of Life isn't worth reading, because it is.

[Brendan Newport · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with many of Mike Harrison's novels, this one covers a lot of territory. From the North of England, to North London and all points in-between, and even an excursion to Budapest. Like Climbers it has its share of quirky characters, notably Choe, the largely loopy mix of misogynist, down-right undependable, car-crash of a human whose lack of commitment to anything is driven really by a tendency to be easily bored. Indeed all of the characters are damaged; Choe, Isobel, Mick Rose...The dialogue, like all of Harrison's books is realistic - he captures what real people say to one another vividly, and its a shame that his books haven't been filmed as this would come over well. As with The Course of the Heart there are moments of profound beauty.

No-one though in a Harrison novel enjoys a long-term relationship, and a constant thread is the striving for something to latch onto to give some degree of permanence. Even Choe seeks that and Mick, the narrator, now 50, clings to his relationship with Isobel like he's drowning and has been thrown a lifeline that isn't very well secured.

The weakness is in the late development of Isobel's thread, which doesn't get the preparation it really needed, but in any case isn't really convincing. If Isobel had been portrayed learning to fly, up in The Peak District every weekend by Castleton hang-gliding, taking every opportunity possible to actually do that, it would have helped. Rather, her obsession never really manifests itself, and I think that was a narrative opportunity missed.

Nonetheless, I certainly enjoyed Signs of Life.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Signs of Life' does not have the intense mystical atmosphere of 'The Course of the Heart', but it is much easier to understand. The characters are well drawn and the late-90s milieu is catalogued so carefully that I could get in my time machine and go back there with this novel as a guide. As ever with MJH, there are remarkable individual scenes (the depiction of the toxic waste dump, for example) and a strong sense of sociological observation. There's also the familiar MJH 'found dialogue' which is entertaining at times ('Seafood platter!'), needlessly disruptive at others. Harrison's books always seem to second or third guess the reader, daring them to think anything could be obvious or unexamined, or else assessing people and events in a subtly discriminating way beyond the powers of ordinary mortals. He is easy to admire but he can be hard to love (something I always think of Catriona Ward, too). If this novel were filmed, it would be spoiled, yet there is something cinematic about its best moments, and actors would surely queue up for the chance of playing Choe Ashton. A haunting, troubling book whose prophetic elements remain powerful nearly thirty years later.

[Joe Connell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly of that exceptional Harrison vintage of torpor weary men half-aimlessly living through late c20th Britain whilst hints and whispers of plot, sort of, happen to them or wholly pass them by. Does to sci-fi what The Course of the Heart does to the fantasy genre, but I have to say that the inherently ineffable quality of the occult and demons and such in COTH does lend itself to better writing than this novel's brief foray into hard sci-fi when it discusses gene splicing and the like - baffled how people read whole novels of that kind of shite

[Sara]

I smell her rose field
even if she was over fly
dream gohstly she want
even that thee from me broke
the wind take her from me
and fly
to another earth
where she fly
loss memory can that be prind
ugly ink
that the end
but i hug her body in my home
with lost car and dust cd
i love her
even she take her dance
tango without me
fly without wing
to cure earth
far from me
but i hug her body tight
in jasmin field

[Nikki Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book for me, started a little rough, seemingly green with experience. But transitioned into good writing and the story picked up to be far more interesting than I expected from the start. An enjoyable read.

[Nino Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lost in the writing the way I've been lost in cities unfamiliar to me: confused, nervous, and perpetually delighted.

[George K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ο Μ. Τζον Χάρισον έχει γράψει διάφορα ενδιαφέροντα βιβλία όπως το Light (το οποίο έχω στην βιβλιοθήκη μου), το Viriconium που αποτελείται από τέσσερα μικρά μυθιστορήματα, το The Centauri Device και κάμποσα άλλα, το Signs Of Life όμως είναι το μοναδικό που μεταφράστηκε στα ελληνικά και αναρωτιέμαι γιατί επιλέχτηκε αυτό. Εντάξει, είναι αρκετά περίεργο σαν βιβλίο και το στιλ αφήγησης έχει τρόπον τινά κάτι το ξεχωριστό, όμως γενικά η ιστορία μπορώ να πω ότι με άφησε αδιάφορο και σε αρκετά σημεία με κούρασε. Και παραδέχομαι ότι μερικές σελίδες (καμιά δεκαριά) δεν τις διάβασα καν!

Η περίληψη σε προδιαθέτει για κάτι καλό: Ο Μικ "Τσάινα" Ρόουζ κατέχει μια εταιρεία υπηρεσιών μεταφορών στην βιομηχανία της γενετικής, με λίγα λόγια ασχολείται με την μεταφορά και καταστροφή διαφόρων αποβλήτων. Αυτά μαζί με τον φίλο του Τσόι. Μια μέρα γνωρίζεται με την όμορφη αλλά παράξενη Ίζομπελ, που όνειρό της είναι να πετάξει. Κυριολεκτικά. Γι'αυτό κάποια στιγμή η Ίζομπελ θα κάνει μια ειδικά θεραπεία με βάση το ανασυνδυασμένο DNA για να το πετύχει. Ο Τσάινα θα μάθει πράγματα που αγνοούσε για τον χαρακτήρα της αγαπημένης του, αλλά και για μερικά προϊόντα που μετέφερε τόσα χρόνια η εταιρεία του.

Το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της ιστορίας αναλώνεται σε άσχετες και αδιάφορες (για μένα) στιγμές της καθημερινότητας των ηρώων και σε διαλόγους που δεν καταλήγουν κάπου. Τα κομμάτια που είχαν να κάνουν με την μεταφορά των γενετικών υλικών και την "θεραπεία" της Ίζομπελ με σκοπό αυτή να πετάξει, είχαν το ενδιαφέρον τους, αλλά δυστυχώς δεν έπιασαν και πολύ χώρο. Από την άλλη η γραφή του Χάρισον μου άρεσε, είχε κάτι το ξεχωριστό, μια δική της φωνή, δεν περνά απαρατήρητη. Θα είμαι (σχετικά) αυστηρός με την βαθμολογία, γιατί περίμενα κάτι καλύτερο.

[Arax Miltiadous · Rating 3 out of 5]

Η Ίζομπελ είναι ερωτευμένη με τον κόσμο και τα πάντα γύρω της ενώ ο Τσάινα είναι ερωτευμένος με την Ίζομπελ. Είναι μια από εκείνες τις περιπτώσεις που ο ένας είναι πιο ερωτευμένος από τον άλλον.
Φυσικά, υπάρχει και ο Τσόι... Μια υπέρ ιδιάζουσα περίπτωση. Και μια περίεργη εταιρία μεταφορών στην καρδιά της Αγγλίας. Ο Τσάινα και ο Τσάι ίδρυσαν την εταιρία κατά την διάρκεια μιας οξύτατης κρίσης βαρεμάρας. Μετά αντικατέστησαν τον εθισμό τους με έναν άλλον εθισμό με αποτέλεσμα να ελίσσονται συνεχώς σε διαφορετικούς επαγγελματικούς χώρους ούτως ώστε να μην βαριούνται ποτέ . Ο Τσόι, αφοσιώνεται στην αυτοκαταστροφική εμπειρία της υπερβολής και της ιδιορρυθμίας και ο Τσάινα μα φυσικά.... Στην Ιζομπελ .
Η Ιζομπελ θέλει να πετάξει. Το πιστεύει πως μπορεί. Πανικοβάλλεται και παραλύει όταν ονειρεύεται το βράδυ πως δεν μπορεί να πετάξει. Και πιστεύει επίσης πως τα βιβλία έχουν αισθήματα.. Και αυτή, η ίδια δεν αφοσιώνεται σε κανέναν άλλον εκτός από το αιώνιο όνειρο της πτήσης της.
Η εταιρεία ... Αχ αυτή η εταιρεία .... Κοσμικό "ο,τι να ναι"!!!! Λατρεύω τον τρόπο γραφής του. Απευθύνεται σε σένα κατευθείαν.. Λατρεύω τους κυνικούς διαλόγους των πρωταγωνιστών. Λατρεύω την τραγική ειρωνεία του... Τις περιγραφές των προαστίων του Λονδίνου και της Βουδαπέστης... Λατρεύω όλο το σύνολο!!! Αντικατέστησε την πραγματικότητα μου με απόλυτη επιτυχία... Έγινε ο Τσαινα... Άνθρωπος δικός μου τώρα πια!
Αλήθεια λέω... Είναι και πολύ τυπάς!!!!
Με μπέρδεψε λίγο προς το τέλος.. Δλδ με έχασε σε κάποια φάση με εντάξει. Δεν το λες και τραγικό. Οπότε.. σαφώς - για τους πρωταγωνιστές του εν αρχής και εν συνεχεία για το σύνολο..- συνιστάται ανεπιφύλακτα.

[Kafka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read 'Signs of Life' almost right after 'The Course of the Heart', and in some ways, it does with science fiction what the latter does with fantasy, or the fantastic impulse: use both genres/modes to dissect the nature of desire, and understand how desire ultimately fails when it is essentially escapist. M. John Harrison is the ultimate genre contrarian writing in English in this regard, in that he takes an unflinching view of the literature and politics of escapism, and deconstructs it systematically, but also beautifully. This is no bloodless exercise in revealing the faultlines of genre fiction; Harrison clearly loves what he does, and his fiction shines because of this dedication. But he is not a blind loyalist either. His is veiled meta-fiction, and will be appreciated the most, I suspect, by those who understand what the fantastic truly is about: something that can never be distinct in itself without intersecting with our world. If it doesn't seem to, thanks to some clever literary contrivance, it will ultimately ring hollow, or at least, that's what I strongly suspect Harrison hints at. However, to say only that of his fiction is to damn it. This novel is a magnificent exercise in a close study of modern life and the loss of affect it engenders.'Signs of Life' is, one one level, a story about two lovers, and how one of them yearns for the impossible and the other yearns for someone who she isn't. In that, it is timeless, but it is also very timely, for the horrors of bio-science that it slowly reveals as being an essential part of the story is as apt as such things are for our age.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in July 2001.

The still quite new industry of bioengineering has always been an ethically controversial one. This is the subject of Harrison's novel, which describes the human relationships in a small firm of couriers specialising in the field. Their business hovers around the border of the illegal - biological waste, cultures and sometimes even live hosts are what they carry. The main characters, Mick "China" Rose and Choe Ashton, run the company; Rose narrates, and seems always to be more fastidious about what they do - quite often, he doesn't want to know what they are carrying.

The novel is set rather vaguely around the end of the twentieth century, though the event which drives the second half of the novel, the decision of Rose's girlfriend to have some experimental cosmetic surgery, definitely belongs to today's future. While not feeling like a science fiction novel, Signs of Life is full of ideas and certainly makes the reader think about the ethics of the industry and the lack of ethics of those working in it. As Harrison's past work leads us to expect, the novel is extremely well written; its subject matter, however, is not for the squeamish.

[Rev. Nyarkoleptek · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoyed Light, even if it did show up at the cyberpunk party ten years too late. But Signs of Life just did not work out for me. Thirty pages into the book and all I'm being presented with is a desiccated, passionless tale of apparently star-crossed love? I was expecting some wild sci-fi woo-woo craziness, but instead found a lame Brit romantic comedy minus the comedy.

Harrison, in an attempt to provide grim foreshadowing, was way-the-hell over-judicious with his placement of clues as to what was to occur later in the book. So the love-interest chica wants to fly, huh? And it's gonna prove to be her undoing, yeah? Well, would the writer please staple falcon wings to her ass and send her to the sun so we can get past this interminable, foot-dragging doom-and-gloom melodrama?

Maybe this book improves considerably. But there are too many books on my shelf that I'm eager to read, so this book gets the Banhammer at page 46.

[Owain Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll read anything by Harrison (I think I've pretty much read it all now) but this wasn't his best. I just never really felt like he was leading me anywhere, even though where he usually leads you is not where you thought you were going, which is what I enjoy most about his work. I guess this was Harrison's version of a romance, albeit one played out against a back drop of some of the least romantic scenery - both interior and exterior - you could imagine; a kind of anti romance if you like. As usual Harrison's characters - and i mean all of them - are at the mercy of their own desires and impulses, and as usual things do not go well, but neither do they go anywhere clichéd or obvious. All of this is fine and fair but there is an event close to the end that just didn't really work for me, it's something that bares a remakable similarity to an event in a later novel to which it seemed more suited. Not his best but you always feel, at the very least, that you had a decent psychogeoraphical tour of some fairly unusual places.

[Eija · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elonmerkit kuuluu samaan kategoriaan Eilisen mystisen sydämen kanssa (josta muistaakseni pidin enemmän kuin tästä kirjasta). Elonmerkeissä on yhtä vähän scifiä kuin Eilisen mystisessä sydämessä on fantasiaa. Kirjan tunnelma toi mieleeni Simon Ingsin Rautakalan kaupungin tai Donna Trattin Jumalat juhlivat öisin. Juonissa ei niinkään ole samankaltaisuuksia, mutta kaikissa näissä kirjoissa on sellainen vahva elämisen maku. Elonmerkit kertoo neljän ihmisen elämästä ja kerronta on välillä hyvin pikkutarkkaa ja huomioivaa. Teksti on laadukasta ja sujuvasti luettavaa, mutta en oikein tiedä... ei tällaiset ihmissuhde tragediat ole ihan mun juttu kuitenkaan, vaikka ei missään vaiheessa tullut tunnetta, että olisi pitänyt lukeminen jättää kesken.

[Jukka Häkkinen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harrisonin kirja kertoo ongelmajätteitä dumppaavien pikkurikollisten ihmissuhteista, joihin liittyy scifi-henkisiä bioteknologiahaaveita. Tarinan henkilöt laukovat lakonisia kommentteja tarinan oudoissa käänteissä, ja välillä juonen kulkua on vaikea hahmottaa. Harrison kirjoittaa kyllä fiksusti ja viihdyttävästi, joten tämän lukee mielikseen jo monien oivallusten vuoksi. Hauskaa on myös tapa, jolla scifi-ainekset näkyvät kirjassa lähes pelkästään epäsuorien viitteiden kautta.

[Pekka Ahonen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite liked the way the book is written. The "sci-fi element" is handled in a very subtle manner, which is enjoyable - the focus is on the characters, who are interesting enough to make this a worthy read. Also, the pacing was great.

[Darcie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book ever. Beautiful.

[Taija O · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark, not that scifi. Good translation.

[Valissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

"How can you be so jealous of a dream?"