Empty Space: A Haunting

M John Harrison is an author you either get, or don't. To me he is one of the finest writers alive today. The breadth of his imagination is staggering.

Empty Space is the third and final (?) book in the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy that began with Light, continued with Nova Swing and concludes here. Characters from both previous books reappear as he weaves a story set in the far future with one set in present day earth. For me this has the edge over Nova Swing precisely because of that duality. The story of Anna Waterman and her fragile mental health provides an emotional counterpoint to the science fiction noir of the far future travails of the crew of Nova Swing, a nameless, dangerous policewoman and a mysterious government agent.

The whole thing hinges on the mystery of the Tract itself and an enigmatic object called The Aleph. No one really knows what this is. There's the Nova Swing on a wild goose chase, collecting parts of a travelling carnival. There are strange events, even stranger characters and a plot that is so hard to summarise it isn't worth my while attempting to so so!

But it is the hallucinatory text that grabs you. Harrison describes a future mired in “bad psychics”, the direct result of the effects of the Kefahuchi Tract. His prose is full of disturbing imagery. Even the Anna Waterman chapters have a dreamlike quality to them, her disordered life affecting both her estranged daughter and her psychiatrist. In the end you are left wondering whether the whole thing was a figment of her imagination. It is an ambitious, enthralling novel.

You may hate it. I thought it was wonderful.