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Hi, all! I'm in Edinburgh now, that beautiful city, and subsequently too busy hurrying off to museums and pubs and above all the Royal Mile to do a decently long post. So what you get is a postcard from London.Above: Yours truly (right) together with the indisputably great M. John Harrison. Mike, as his friends and acquaintances call him, is the author of (among a great many other worthy works) the Viriconium books which a quarter-century ago revolutionized fantasy. Not that anybody noticed back then. Except, possibly, me. I remember reading "The Lamia and Lord Cromis" and thinking: This changes eveything.
And so it did. Eventually. Today, Mike Harrison is acknowledged as the originator and ancestral influence of the New Weird. He has followers and acolytes. But if we'd all had any sense, way back when, he'd've been simply the first among equals.
Oh well. A great opportunity almost wasted -- but then, at almost the last moment, recognized and taken. Better this way than not, eh?
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Happy Draw a Dinosaur day.
ReplyDeleteI know you're having a swell time whereever you go, but it really shows in the photo.
I missed Draw a Dinosaur day?! Why didn't anybody tell me? I can draw TERRIBLE dinosaurs.
ReplyDeleteI felt the same way in Mike Harrison's presence that any fantasist would hanging with Eddison or Peake or Tolkien -- simply delighted to be in the presence of literary greatness.