The Centauri Device

This book is a clear picture of its time. Written with strange analogies, a peculiarly inconsistent (and unlikable) protagonist, and a maguffin that seems to mutate every few chapters, this was one of the tougher reads I've been thru in years. I pride myself on never putting a book down before it's finished. This book tested that ... a lot. I'd love to say there's a big, impressive payoff at the end, but I can't.Put simply, this book is a slog. Every so often, there's a line here or there that's brilliant -- a line of dialogue, a description, an image. But, they're rare enough that the rest of the story is just murk to bull thru.I didn't hate it. But, I can say I'd have regretted paying anything resembling full price for it and won't be reading it again.

Please make available on Kindle. Wonderful story and writing, like all MJH. Note: not for juveniles or those not up to literary fiction.

I read this book 20 years ago, and didn't care for it. But ... since it kept popping up on lists of "classic sci fi books you need to read" I decided to reread it and give it another chance. I found it obtuse. It was hard to figure out exactly what was happening much of the time. While Harrison can certainly put together a great sentence or even paragraph when he wants to, it didn't make up for the rather boring, mundane narrative about John Truck - not only an antihero with few redeeming qualities, but a massively uninteresting character. I just couldn't root for him. The writing style seems like a "proto-cyberpunk" which I didn't care for either. The plot (if you can call it that) meanders along rather aimlessly until a conclusion that puts it (and the reader, I suppose) out of its misery. Why this dreck is considered a scifi classic is beyond me.

I can only imagine the shock that readers received and still receive (according to amazon reviews) after diving into M. John Harrison’s The Centauri Device (1974) expecting a standard space opera. This is a subgenre where the anti-hero still has not found a firm place to roost… You know the rubric: Empathizing with the hero. Positivism. Saving the world. The good guys win.I suspect the shock to the system that Stephen R. Donaldson’s leprous and bitter (and reluctant) savior Thomas Covenant in Lord Foul’s Bane (1977) and subsequent novels had on high fantasy was something akin to impact The Centauri Device‘s drug-addled, inarticulate, and passive spacer John Tuck had on space opera. To give you a taste: as Harrison’s plot spiral with vast strokes of almost grotesque satire towards the utterly nihilistic ending, Tuck doped-up on amphetamines becomes “quickly depressed—at first disturbed, then obsessed by the puzzling, fibrous consistency of the mud” (162).While M. John Harrison himself might proclaim that “I find it deeply ironic—but absolutely predictable—that my best books are out of print while the crappiest thing I ever wrote—The Centauri Device-–tootles along under the rubric ‘masterwork,’” I found the novel a heady subversion of a lot of the tropes that we associate with space opera. It is even more ironic that The Centauri Device, “that reads like hate mail directed at space opera clichés” (Ken Macleod quoting Patrick Hudson) despite its satirical purposes was influential in revitalizing and inspiring new authors of the subgenre. The anti-space opera pastiche that eventually became passé?Brief Plot SummaryFirst, the powers at play…In M. John Harrison’s far future world the Israeli World Government (IWG), with is engaged in an endless struggle with the Union of Arab Socialist Republics (UASR) who control large swathes of the settled Galaxy. And both powers have sniffed out the discovery of a mysterious weapon, a relic from an extinct people, a relic from a past war that has the power to destroy the universe: the Centauri Device.Earth has been irrevocably transformed by the “infamous ‘Rat Bomb’ wars of 2003-215″ (25). The remaining inhabitants UK, or rather “that 60,000 square mile complex of bunker-docks, keelyards, freight terminals, and warehouses that had once been called “Great Britain,” eek out an existence melting and selling the remains of the megaport, bathed in the type of “cultural decay peculiar to ports” (28). The power is centered around Chalice Veronica, the “intellectual pusher-king.” He lives in a massive warehouse plying his nefarious trade (drugs, prostitution, etc) in a series of giant abandoned fuel cisterns where “the longest-running part in the history of the universe was still in progress. People were born, people died there; some were said to have lived entire lives there” (33).Various other powers operate across the settles regions of space including the mysterious Openers who inhabit the planet Stomach where the androgynous natives “distill a perfume from the wings of insects” (100). The Openers, in their central city of Intestinal Revelation, practice Openerism: an “eclectic” faith involving perverse rituals, and choirboys and organs, where transparent windows are inserted into the bodies of the faithful. Their Grand Master desires above all else to achieve “total transparency” (107)! A priest of the Openers named Dr. Grishkin, with his plastic windows that peer into the operations of his internal organs, has also heard news of the weapon.And then there is the interstellar anarchist named Pater who resides with his son Himation out in the “interminable void” inside of a “spherical asteroid perhaps two miles in diameter at its equator” (69) filled with the massive hulks the most decadent spaceships that harken back to distant eras: New English Art Club, Driftwood of Decadence, Melancholia that Transcends All Wit, Atalanta in Calydon, etc. Even their hulls evoke the artifice of orientalist productions: “turquoise arabesques glimmered mysteriously down her [the Driftwood of Decadence] side; the smell of hot metal drifted about her like the musk of a sleeping, barbaric priestess; the light of plasma torches exploded soundlessly off her hull to fill the silo with a ceremonial aurora” (81). Pater spouts French and drifts from room to room of the vast complex musing on art and artifice and politics: “we live in a sick charade of political polarities; of death, bad art, and wasted time” (77). Pater too wants the Centauri Device, or at least, he does not want the others to have it.And at the center of it all……is John Tuck, a spacer, who hauls freight, runs after Denebian whores, fights with his wife, drifts from port to port, almost perplexed or unaware of the world around him. But, he is the last descendent of the Centaurians, Tuck’s mother was a Centaurian drug addict port woman. Tuck is the only one who can activate the weapon. And everyone wants to get their hands on him! And as the battles rage, as the anarchist ships are blasted to pieces and the forces of the IWG and UASR hunt for him across space, he remains inactive, he cannot or refuses to acknowledge the implications of his position. SF’s most frustrating anti-hero.Final ThoughtsThe Centauri Device exudes a pungent charm. Gorgeous prose drifts languidly across the page and Harrison’s characters move “to the invisible rhythms of their ennui” (59), pieces in on the vast galactic tapestry where all the moves are preordained.The character of John Truck is subversive to the extreme and bound to frustrate the average reader. He operates across a world familiar to many readers of space opera—the lushly realized sects, and decadent locals, space-battles, and pseudo-historical ramblings—but continues to act according to his immediate whims and desires.The Centauri Device reminds me of Norman Spinrad’s superior The Iron Dream (1972). Both seek to subvert SF. Both critique SF’s treatment of ideology, and character…. Both infuriate the unsuspecting. Both are worth reading for fans of the more experimental SF (inspired by the New Wave Movement). The Centauri Device is literary, satirical, and incredibly seductive.And for the curious, the complete list of spaceship names: Driftwood of Decadence. New English Art Club. Liverpool Medici. Gold Scab. Whistler. Seventeenth Susan. Solomon. Nasser. Strange Great Sins. Maupin. Trilby. Green Carnation. Les Fleurs du Mal. Madame Bovary. Imagination Portraits. Syringa. White Jonquil. Forsaken Garden. Let Us Go Hence. Melancholia that Transcends All Wit. My Ella Speed. Fastidious. La Vie de Bohème. Atalanta in Calydon.

The Centauri Device - M. John Harrison [0573 - 10-22-2014 - Novel - SF] The novel "The Centauri Device" by M. John Harrison (b1945) was first published in 1974. To be perfectly candid the plot is quite thin and is, I believe, a deliberate and contemptuous slap down of the tedious conventions of far to many dreary space operas. Our protagonist is one John Truck a low down, broken down drugged out spaceship captain. The Arab - Jewish conflict has morphed across the galaxy as both sides' lust for and look for the allegedly ultimate weapon: the Centauri Device. John Truck is the key to the "device" since he is the last of the Centaurans and only his genetics can control the weapon. Not much to go on here, but it is what it is. The author takes us, reluctantly so, on a stoners journey among the low life's of the galaxy until things get somewhat tided up at the end. In some respects forcing myself to finishing this novel was comparable to consuming a foodstuff I suspected was tainted but desired to taste no matter what. As a Mr. Smith is quoted on the back cover of my Gollancz edition, "No one can use words like M. John Harrison". The author's ability to fashion descriptive phrases and terms is quite extraordinary. Here are a few I noted: "There is a kind of cold particular to the dawn. All night side losers know and revere it for its healing stimulant properties". P26; "he studied Truck, and it was like being measured by Death". P38

This human populated space is galactic wide thank to the usual interstellar travel conventions. However its settings are consistently downbeat; kingdoms of industrial decay, neglect, and grubbiness. We never see the higher ground of technological development; nothing is clean, efficient or utopian. Out hero is a passive resigned self confessed loser who more by luck than judgement ekes out a living as a trader on the margins. He is special in a genetic sense and that quality makes him valuable to the various powerful elites dominating this galaxy. We move from scene to scene, as our hero is tossed about by whores, gangsters, junkies and chased by corporations (no- more like Blocs and Pacts) and other corrupt forces. We get battles, a space battle and other things that speak to the background anxiety of the Cold War (the first one!).All of this is delivered in a unique pared down, poetic, surreal, lyrical quality by Mr Harrison that makes you want to read every paragraph twice just in case you missed some prose that was essential or beautiful.Apparently this book influenced later writers of Space Opera- notably Iain M.Worth reading for that if nothing else.Its hard to say I found page turner enjoyment with this novel, but I will certainly remember it; like the one poem of the few you did in school English classes that you still recall to this day..

One of my favourite SF novels. Very pleased to own it again after all these years. The fact that is a Kindle book makes it doubly pleasing.

This wasn't for me. Pretty shallow story with difficult prose style making the whole read hard work and ultimately unrewarding. Certainly 'dark' in style and content but slow paced and tedious.

Nice to find this classic in a handsome modern edition

Adventures are an entertaining series of unpleasantnesses that happen to other people. Those having adventure thrust upon them are, in real life, unaware at the time of the entertainment and have far more important things to worry about. That adventures are actually enjoyable for the participants is a significant difference between the worlds of fiction and reality, and to read something that breaks that mould is refreshing.John Truck, the nominatively determined protagonist (I dare not call him a hero, for he spends an awful lot of time running away) is the future's equivalent of a white van man, just scraping a living from his battered and barely legal ship, one of society's losers. A self-confessed loser too. For reasons completely outside his control he is bullied, cajoled and threatened by governments and cults who want the eponymous Centauri Device under their control. Of course, in reality it would all go horribly wrong and one of the antagonists would get their way, but Narrative demands that Truck win through - although unlike the traditional hero he does so entirely by accident and would really like to just be left alone to continue as a loser orbiting around the fringes of society. I suppose that in a way he's like General Flashman - he ends up appearing to be heroic despite spending most of the time wetting his pants with terror - although unlike Flashman he's not himself a bully and makes no effort to hide his cowardice.So we have a splendid, refreshing story, in which at least some characters are rounded, detailed and sympathetic even if some of the antagonists are a bit less well developed. It's already excellent and verging upon getting five stars.We also have the most superb writing. It's clear and direct, but peppered with biting commentary. For example, "he leered at a receptionist ... as long-legged and unapproachable - by losers - as any ice-princess. She smiled back politely, because that year it was polite to be polite to the underpriveleged", "for a narcotics offence ... no one could reasonably expect a lawyer, but the twenty-fourth century admits - indeed insists upon - your right to religious representation". It's also - and I was initially somewhat annoyed at this - full of surreal imagery. But that annoyance soon evaporated, when the surrealist anarchist "Pater" (is it a coincidence that his name is Latin for "father"?) is introduced. He gives the text-book definition of surrealism as his manifesto - "here we begin to guess at the nature of space ... We infer reality". Surrealism is not all about melting clocks and elephants with too many joints in their legs, it's the exploration of the underlying functioning of thought and morals, the prefix sur- meaning "the basis of". Surprise and odd juxtaposition of images are only tools for finding that basis through challenging conventional ideas.So, it's enjoyable, which is of course the most important thing about fiction. It's populated, it's relevant to today despite being written in 1975, and it's literate. It's not just literate in terms of language, it's also historically and artistically literate. This is a superb book, and you should read it. Five stars isn't enough.