M. John Harrison - The 1980s

The 1980s

Between 1976 and 1986 he lived in the Peak District. In 1983 he published his second short story collection The Ice Monkey and Other Stories containing seven tales which manage to capture pathos, humour, awe, despiar and pain. In "The Incalling", a story of seedy suburban magic which in some ways foreashadows his later novel The Course of the Heart, an editor is haunted by an author's attempts to cure himself of cancer by faith healing.

Harrison's his interest in rock climbing led to his semi-autobiographical novel Climbers (1989), the first novel to receive the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. Harrison also ghost-wrote the autobiography of one of Britain's best rock climbers, Ron Fawcett (Fawcett on Rock, 1987, as by Mike Harrison). Harrison has repeatedly affirmed in print the importance of rock climbing for his writing as an attempt to grapple with reality and its implications, which he had lost sight of while writing fantasy. The difference in his approach can be observed in the stylistic differences between the first novel of the Viriconium sequence The Pastel City and the second, A Storm of Wings.

Around 1985 Harrison moved in with Jane Johnson, woth whom he would later write the "Gabriel King" books.