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The Committed Men
AFTER THE APOCALYPSE
Mounting radiation levels have brought about widespread mutilation and the collapse of society. In a devastated Britain divided between bizarre tribal communities, a small group of people journey on a desperate mission: to take a mutant baby, one of the new but vulnerably few humans, to its own reptilian kind...
M. John Harrison, already well known to discriminating science fiction readers for his brilliant shorter work, has created in The Committed Men a devastating novel of adventure, violence and horror.
Mounting radiation levels have brought about widespread mutilation and the collapse of society. In a devastated Britain divided between bizarre tribal communities, a small group of people journey on a desperate mission: to take a mutant baby, one of the new but vulnerably few humans, to its own reptilian kind...
M. John Harrison, already well known to discriminating science fiction readers for his brilliant shorter work, has created in The Committed Men a devastating novel of adventure, violence and horror.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
170 people want to read
About the author
M. John Harrison
110 books828 followersaka 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 29, 2009
Harrison’s beautiful prose and sense of the absurd place this, his first novel, in good company with the rest of his work. Very much a piece with the 60’s new wave(especially Ballard and Moorcock) with an unnamed Jerry Cornelius stopping in for some fun. This also features a mechanically inclined and violent dwarf which seems a Harrison obsession. Soul scrapping bleakness pervades this very odd take on the post-apocalypse tale.
September 15, 2019
A lot of this made very little sense. And a lot was harsh, cruel, hard-hearted. But I enjoyed the "motley crew" of an older doctor, a tough-but-not-cruel young man, a young woman nursing a scaly mutant baby, and a down-to-earth dwarf. I liked their friendship.
But the negatives--almost impossible to follow, not enough emotion as someone else said, and the wiping out of an entire village by one of the "heroes," including men, women, and children--unfortunately outweighed any positives.
But the negatives--almost impossible to follow, not enough emotion as someone else said, and the wiping out of an entire village by one of the "heroes," including men, women, and children--unfortunately outweighed any positives.
August 24, 2019
Too wordy for the sake of wordiness, too much action, not enough emotion. I gave up partway through.
August 8, 2016
In a post-apoc UK a dishevelled ex-doctor leads a group of weird stragglers on a quest to find sanctuary for a mutated baby which was to be killed by its tribe. Along the way they are confronted with endless exhibits of inhumanity, vulgarity, cruelty, ugliness and so on.
A very chilly story which has little regard for the reader's sympathetic functions. Paints human interactions in the face of an apocalypse scenario as oblique and awkward, without any pathetic appeals to rekindling social order, which most works in the genre fall back on. But there is still a glint of warmth in the support group that the main characters build with each other and Harrison demonstrates that although he is not a hopeful writer he is not blind to the actuality of love and friendship.
Prose is very canny when it comes to characterisation, and at its best when describing lushly the eroded, overgrown landscape of abandoned roads and dreary public housing units. Although obviously riffing off Moorcock and Ballard the aesthetic of desolation is uniquely informed by Harrisons bleak outlook which he sustains to the very end. As with Ballard the plot is secondary to a movement through psychic landscapes, and some aspects might be too silly for some to swallow. Mad cults of nuns in hovercars, for example.
A very chilly story which has little regard for the reader's sympathetic functions. Paints human interactions in the face of an apocalypse scenario as oblique and awkward, without any pathetic appeals to rekindling social order, which most works in the genre fall back on. But there is still a glint of warmth in the support group that the main characters build with each other and Harrison demonstrates that although he is not a hopeful writer he is not blind to the actuality of love and friendship.
Prose is very canny when it comes to characterisation, and at its best when describing lushly the eroded, overgrown landscape of abandoned roads and dreary public housing units. Although obviously riffing off Moorcock and Ballard the aesthetic of desolation is uniquely informed by Harrisons bleak outlook which he sustains to the very end. As with Ballard the plot is secondary to a movement through psychic landscapes, and some aspects might be too silly for some to swallow. Mad cults of nuns in hovercars, for example.
March 7, 2025
(...)
But gradually, I felt the book began to suffer under its own weight. Sometimes phrasing boarders the pretentious, and as the story progressed, it also started to show its seams: weirdness for the sake of the weird, so to say – that generally disengages me as a reader. The writing and staging draws attention to itself rather than to the characters or the story. I’m aware this is Harrison’s intention, but I started to lose interest because of it.
In its choices about the particulars of weird it’s also clearly dated, and I’ve noticed before I have a harder time these days to read primarily through a historical, forgiving lens. I don’t want to be a speculative fiction scholar, I want to be immersed first and foremost.
Harrison could probably distill 40 pages of brilliant flash fiction from this book. As it stands now, I don’t think The Committed Men will appeal to many contemporary readers. It does make me curious about Viriconium, a fantasy series considered to be classic, as it still gets high ratings. Its first book, The Pastel City, was also published in 1971. But if I’m honest, I’m way more interested in what Harrison – 79 nowadays – will publish later this year. In 2025, the future is clearly already here.
Full review on Weighing A Pig
But gradually, I felt the book began to suffer under its own weight. Sometimes phrasing boarders the pretentious, and as the story progressed, it also started to show its seams: weirdness for the sake of the weird, so to say – that generally disengages me as a reader. The writing and staging draws attention to itself rather than to the characters or the story. I’m aware this is Harrison’s intention, but I started to lose interest because of it.
In its choices about the particulars of weird it’s also clearly dated, and I’ve noticed before I have a harder time these days to read primarily through a historical, forgiving lens. I don’t want to be a speculative fiction scholar, I want to be immersed first and foremost.
Harrison could probably distill 40 pages of brilliant flash fiction from this book. As it stands now, I don’t think The Committed Men will appeal to many contemporary readers. It does make me curious about Viriconium, a fantasy series considered to be classic, as it still gets high ratings. Its first book, The Pastel City, was also published in 1971. But if I’m honest, I’m way more interested in what Harrison – 79 nowadays – will publish later this year. In 2025, the future is clearly already here.
Full review on Weighing A Pig
January 4, 2021
Harrison's prose is far too good to be contained in a cheap science fiction paperback. (Actually, not cheap anymore -- I waited a few YEARS before finding an affordable copy on the internet, so best of luck to my fellows in poverty.) The mood created in this novel is also far more bleak and barbarous than most genre writers dare to describe. I think most people would consider it as "too depressing." In fact I think it was such a comment that initially made me interested in reading it. The book is harrowing, disturbing, sometimes terrifying, and totally pointless -- just like life, with or without a nuclear holocaust.
August 24, 2018
Harrison's take on the new wave post-apocalyptic novel, and his first novel. It's a wisp of a novel, and while there are clear similarities to Ballard's novels of the time, this is decidedly Harrison's work. A darker and weirder vision, and Harrison also relies on a cast of odd characters, he puts considerably more focus into fleshing them out. It's a novel of implications, the plot is a pittance of a thing, yet manages to impart how irrelevant the what's and why's of the apocalypse that Harrison has ignored really are.
March 15, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
4.5/5
"Entropic visions of decay and despair inhabit M. John Harrison’s first novel The Committed Men (1971). Possessed by destructive melancholy, the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptical UK–where political powers have sunk into oblivion–attempt to recreate a semblance of normalcy. Clement St John Wendover, teeth long since rotted, still administers to the skin diseases [...]"
4.5/5
"Entropic visions of decay and despair inhabit M. John Harrison’s first novel The Committed Men (1971). Possessed by destructive melancholy, the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptical UK–where political powers have sunk into oblivion–attempt to recreate a semblance of normalcy. Clement St John Wendover, teeth long since rotted, still administers to the skin diseases [...]"
March 11, 2022
A stylish post apocalyptic tale similar to the works of J.G. Ballard. The world (presumably) has become contaminated with radiation. The survivors eke out a primitive existence their bodies riddled with cancers. A group of survivors rescue a mutant baby with strange skin that seems able to resist the radiation. The set off on a quest across the ravaged landscape to take the infant to a colony of similar mutants. A depressing and engaging novel.
May 21, 2022
M John Harrison's first novel and very much in debt to Ballard and Moorcock but already finding his own voice. A grim post-apocalyptic tale that sadly remains relevant.
June 25, 2025
My comment after reading it in 1972: “Well written, but dismal and aimless in plot.”
April 18, 2016
Short simple story from a new wave misanthrope. Plot concerns a journey across the roads of a toxified "present future" Britain. The protagonist is a world weary doctor protecting a mutated child from various psychotic tribes of normies who want to kill it.
Definitely inspired by J. G. Ballard, who even receives a namedrop in the narrative. The descriptions of eroded urban areas, slowly overgrown and constantly misted by toxic rain are very competent. More so than his later works this follows a clearly Ballardian aesthetic style, what one critic of the latter called "reappropriation of cinema" - in one telling descriptive passage Harrison says the rain "filmed" the landscape. Towards the end the authors own idiosyncrasies stand out more clearly (This was one of his first books) especially in the motif of an incomprehensible decayed billboard which prefigures the wordplay-centric style he was to develop later.
Plot is similar to that boring movie "Children of Men" but Harrison has more interesting territory in mind, namely the emergence of a fantasy world within the drudgery of this one. He handles the theme better here, in periphery, then he does in later works like "Course of the Heart" which take it as their central principle. The imagined place in this book is the future world belonging to the emerging society of the armadillo people. At some level the protagonist sees some mysterious value in mutant child, and seems to protect it out a submerged hope for a better kind of life. We only get a slither of this enchanted future, which is grounded firmly in the parameters of the books scientific realism, in the form of the imp-like mutant tribes, and their horned ponies. The last word, unexpectedly, belongs to these little people, in whom we are invited, tentatively, to place some hope for a redemption of this horrible present in the evolutionary future...
Unfortunately a few of these literary turns verge on art school blandness like the inclusion on one page of an illustration from a comic, which feels inessential in such a short book. The other complaint would be that despite Harrisons obviously grounded worldview he still packs the book with explosive action set pieces, all of which are well-written but break with the grim lethargy of the rest and threaten to spill out into macho power fantasy. Maybe he felt obliged to add these scenes due to genre expectations. On this note, as a sci-fi book it is remarkably without delusions (macho violence aside) and Harrisons powers are best deployed in social psychological observations. Sometimes these are genuinely funny, in a bitter way.
Definitely inspired by J. G. Ballard, who even receives a namedrop in the narrative. The descriptions of eroded urban areas, slowly overgrown and constantly misted by toxic rain are very competent. More so than his later works this follows a clearly Ballardian aesthetic style, what one critic of the latter called "reappropriation of cinema" - in one telling descriptive passage Harrison says the rain "filmed" the landscape. Towards the end the authors own idiosyncrasies stand out more clearly (This was one of his first books) especially in the motif of an incomprehensible decayed billboard which prefigures the wordplay-centric style he was to develop later.
Plot is similar to that boring movie "Children of Men" but Harrison has more interesting territory in mind, namely the emergence of a fantasy world within the drudgery of this one. He handles the theme better here, in periphery, then he does in later works like "Course of the Heart" which take it as their central principle. The imagined place in this book is the future world belonging to the emerging society of the armadillo people. At some level the protagonist sees some mysterious value in mutant child, and seems to protect it out a submerged hope for a better kind of life. We only get a slither of this enchanted future, which is grounded firmly in the parameters of the books scientific realism, in the form of the imp-like mutant tribes, and their horned ponies. The last word, unexpectedly, belongs to these little people, in whom we are invited, tentatively, to place some hope for a redemption of this horrible present in the evolutionary future...
Unfortunately a few of these literary turns verge on art school blandness like the inclusion on one page of an illustration from a comic, which feels inessential in such a short book. The other complaint would be that despite Harrisons obviously grounded worldview he still packs the book with explosive action set pieces, all of which are well-written but break with the grim lethargy of the rest and threaten to spill out into macho power fantasy. Maybe he felt obliged to add these scenes due to genre expectations. On this note, as a sci-fi book it is remarkably without delusions (macho violence aside) and Harrisons powers are best deployed in social psychological observations. Sometimes these are genuinely funny, in a bitter way.
June 12, 2015
M John Harrison's first novel, published in 1971 is a work of post-apocalyptic science fiction. What that apocalypse is, is never stated, but it has caused radiation levels to rise, blighting humanity with cancers, and society has fallen apart.
We meet our protagonist, Dr. Wendover, just at the point when things begin to disintegrate. There is civil war and illness. Hi wife leaves him. Then we leap forward 30 years to a time where people have reverted to an almost tribal existence. Mutants have appeared, specially adapted to survive the high radiation levels, anarchists roam the countryside.
Wendover and two other men, Arm (a dwarf mechanic) and Harper (a crippled young man) find themselves bound together on a journey to escort a young woman, Morag, and a mutant child from the ramshackle shanty town of Tinhouse, ruled over by the half mad Pauce, to deliver the child into the arms of other mutants further south.
There follows a surreal journey across crumbling motorways and deserted towns, encountering strange remnants of humanity who cling to old habits and rituals like some kind of safety blanket. There is violence and madness. Everything is breaking apart.
The style of the novel is a curious amalgam of Moorcock and Ballard. Harrison is a good writer and the story never flags, but he would go on to write better stories and novels. This is a writer struggling to find his novelistic voice. To my mind he found that voice with the second Viriconium novel, A Storm of Wings. This is a good book, but if you have never read any of his work, start with The Viriconium omnibus and move on from there.
We meet our protagonist, Dr. Wendover, just at the point when things begin to disintegrate. There is civil war and illness. Hi wife leaves him. Then we leap forward 30 years to a time where people have reverted to an almost tribal existence. Mutants have appeared, specially adapted to survive the high radiation levels, anarchists roam the countryside.
Wendover and two other men, Arm (a dwarf mechanic) and Harper (a crippled young man) find themselves bound together on a journey to escort a young woman, Morag, and a mutant child from the ramshackle shanty town of Tinhouse, ruled over by the half mad Pauce, to deliver the child into the arms of other mutants further south.
There follows a surreal journey across crumbling motorways and deserted towns, encountering strange remnants of humanity who cling to old habits and rituals like some kind of safety blanket. There is violence and madness. Everything is breaking apart.
The style of the novel is a curious amalgam of Moorcock and Ballard. Harrison is a good writer and the story never flags, but he would go on to write better stories and novels. This is a writer struggling to find his novelistic voice. To my mind he found that voice with the second Viriconium novel, A Storm of Wings. This is a good book, but if you have never read any of his work, start with The Viriconium omnibus and move on from there.
November 6, 2016
An unspecified disaster has caused radiation levels in the UK to rise significantly. Cancers are widespread and mutations of various forms have begun to occur. Following a collapse of society as we know it, and a series of civil wars (but it appears not a nuclear war involving the UK) we join the story around 30 years after the catastrophe.
A hermit former doctor is asked to examine a new-born infant that turns out to have a severe mutation involving a think skin that would be a benefit in surviving exposure to radiation. The doctor saves the child from execution and, along with three companions, attempts to make his way along an abandoned motorway to try to deliver it to a tribe of similar mutants. Of course, the journey isn't straightforward and the group encounters a few odd characters along the way. The backstory isn't totally explained, but enough clues are given to give a flavour of the world that exists following the disaster.
I think I would have given this book three stars based on my enjoyment, but the original ideas deserved another star! I can't believe that it took me around a decade of reading apocalyptic fiction to come across this book as it deserves to be better known.
A hermit former doctor is asked to examine a new-born infant that turns out to have a severe mutation involving a think skin that would be a benefit in surviving exposure to radiation. The doctor saves the child from execution and, along with three companions, attempts to make his way along an abandoned motorway to try to deliver it to a tribe of similar mutants. Of course, the journey isn't straightforward and the group encounters a few odd characters along the way. The backstory isn't totally explained, but enough clues are given to give a flavour of the world that exists following the disaster.
I think I would have given this book three stars based on my enjoyment, but the original ideas deserved another star! I can't believe that it took me around a decade of reading apocalyptic fiction to come across this book as it deserves to be better known.
June 26, 2021
This isn’t the first-novel stunner I had hoped for, but enjoyable enough. Some areas presage the more famous Viriconium landscape to come. The transition into the apocalypse is confusing in terms of the period covering the mutant evolution: very different from the sprawling approach Miller takes in A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Overreaching tribal leaders are eager to claim power. Another segment dips into black comedy to attack bureaucracy and socialism as self-serving cover for despots.
All of this slicing-up of social structure forces the medical protagonist to abandon his Hippocratic oath in favor of holding savagery in check. Wendover backs the strongest species: mutants, poised to inherit the new world. A mysterious figure in the story (known only by a few kindly acts, and a flamboyant physical description) seems to be the last human figure, suggested to be a roaming spirit. He wanders on, more myth than fact.
Overreaching tribal leaders are eager to claim power. Another segment dips into black comedy to attack bureaucracy and socialism as self-serving cover for despots.
All of this slicing-up of social structure forces the medical protagonist to abandon his Hippocratic oath in favor of holding savagery in check. Wendover backs the strongest species: mutants, poised to inherit the new world. A mysterious figure in the story (known only by a few kindly acts, and a flamboyant physical description) seems to be the last human figure, suggested to be a roaming spirit. He wanders on, more myth than fact.
June 17, 2014
An old man, a cripple, a dwarf and a simple-minded girl are menaced by primitive bureaucrats and a nun with a hovercraft. Sounds ridiculous. It's not. It's bloody grim in fact, even with the unnamed appearance of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius character to shoot his lace cuffs every now and again while dropping grenades. All the characters are constantly on the brink of not coping at all with the terrible situations they find themselves in: this has no easy resolutions, no structured character arcs: "The world was psychotic and tasted of bile." Makes Terry Nation's 'Survivors' look like a picnic.
March 31, 2014
More of a novella than novel but its 139 pages pack in far more interesting imagery and well rounded characters than many modern SF works seven times that length. What more could you want than a nun on a hovercraft running a village based around a ritual hunt.
July 24, 2019
First published in 1971, this novel is about a future Britain devastated by mounting radiation levels.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews