Early years

Harrison was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, in 1945 to an engineering family.^[2] His father died when he was a teenager and he found himself "bored, alienated, resentful and entrapped", playing truant from Dunsmore School (now Ashlawn School).^[2] An English teacher introduced him to George Bernard Shaw which resulted in an interest in polemic.^[2] He ended school during 1963 at age 18; he worked at various times as a groom (for the Atherstone Hunt), a student teacher (1963–65), and a clerk for the Royal Masonic Charity Institute, London (1966). His hobbies included electric guitars and writing pastiches of H. H. Munro.^[5]

His first short story was published during 1966 by Kyril Bonfiglioli at Science Fantasy magazine, on the strength of which he relocated to London. He there met Michael Moorcock, who was editing New Worlds magazine.^[2] He began writing reviews and short fiction for New Worlds, and by 1968 he was appointed books editor.^[2] Harrison was critical of what he perceived as the complacency of much genre fiction of the time. During 1970, Harrison scripted comic stories illustrated by R.G. Jones for such forums as Cyclops and Finger.^[5] An illustration by Jones appears in the first edition of Harrison's The Committed Men (1971).

In an interview with Zone magazine, Harrison says "I liked anything bizarre, from being about four years old. I started on Dan Dare and worked up to the Absurdists. At 15 you could catch me with a pile of books that contained an Alfred Bester, a Samuel Beckett, a Charles Williams, the two or three available J. G. Ballard's, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, some Keats, some Allen Ginsberg, maybe a Thorne Smith. I've always been pick 'n' mix: now it's a philosophy."^[6]

1968–1975: New Worlds, The Committed Men, The Pastel City, and The Centauri Device

From 1968 to 1975 he was literary editor of the New Wave science fiction magazine New Worlds, regularly contributing criticism. He was important to the New Wave style which also included writers such as Norman Spinrad, Barrington Bayley, Langdon Jones and Thomas M. Disch. As reviewer for New Worlds he often used the pseudonym "Joyce Churchill" and was critical of many works and writers published using the rubric of science fiction. One of his critical pieces, "By Tennyson Out of Disney" was initially written for Sword and Sorcery Magazine, a publication planned by Kenneth Bulmer but which was never published; the piece was printed in New Worlds 2.

Amongst his works of that period are three stories utilising the Jerry Cornelius character invented by Michael Moorcock. These stories do not appear in any of Harrison's own collections but do appear in the Nature of the Catastrophe and New Nature of the Catastrophe. Other early stories published from 1966, featured in anthologies such as New Writings in SF edited by John Carnell, and in magazines such as Transatlantic Review, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, New Worlds and Quark.

A number of Harrison's short stories of this early period remain uncollected, gathered neither in his first collection The Machine in Shaft Ten, nor in his later collections.

The novel The Committed Men (1971) (dedicated to Michael Moorcock and his wife Hilary Bailey) is an archetypal British New-Wave vision of a crumbling future with obvious debts to the work of Michael Moorcock and J. G. Ballard. It is set in England after the apocalypse. Social organisation has collapsed, and the survivors, riddled with skin cancers, eke out a precarious scavenging existence in the ruins of the Great Society. A few bizarre communities try to maintain their structure in a chromium wilderness linked by crumbling motorways. But their rituals are meaningless clichés mouthed against the devastation. Only the roaming bands of hippie-style "situationalists" (presumably a reference to the then contemporaneous situationist group) have grasped that the old order, with its logic, its pseudo-liberalism and its immutable laws of cause and effect, has now been superseded. Among the mutants are a group of reptilian humans – alien, cancer-free but persecuted by the 'smoothskins'. When one of them is born of a human mother in Tinhouse, a group of humans sets off to deliver it to its own kind – a search of the committed men for the tribes of mutants. David Pringle called the novel "brief, bleak, derivative – but stylishly written."^[7]

Harrison's first novel of the Viriconium sequence, The Pastel City was also published during 1971. Harrison would continue adding to this series until 1984. During 1972, the story "Lamia Mutable" appeared in Harlan Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions; while this tale forms part of the Viriconium sequence, it has been omitted from omnibus editions of the Viriconium tales to date.

During 1974 Harrison's third novel was published, the space opera The Centauri Device (described prior to its publication, by New Worlds magazine, as "a sort of hippie space opera in the baroque tradition of Alfred Bester and Charles Harness). An extract was published in New Worlds in advance of the novel's publication, with the title "The Wolf That Follows". The novel's protagonist, space tramp John Truck, is the last of the Centaurans, victims of a genocide. Rival groups need him to arm the most powerful weapon in the galaxy: the Centauri Device, which will respond only to the genetic code of a true Centauran.

Harrison himself has said of this book:

I never liked that book much but at least it took the piss out of sf’s three main tenets: (1) The reader-identification character always drives the action; (2) The universe is knowable; (3) the universe is anthropocentrically structured & its riches are an appropriate prize for the colonialist people like us. TCD tried to out space opera as a kind of counterfeit pulp which had carefully cleaned itself of Saturday night appetite, vacuuming out all the concerns of real pulp fiction to keep it under the radar of the Mothers of America or whatever they called themselves. Pulp’s lust for life was replaced, if you were lucky, by a jaunty shanty & a comedy brawl. Otherwise it was lebensraum & a cadetship in the Space Police (these days it’s primarily low-bourgeois freedom motifs & nice friendly sexual release).^[8]

Harrison's first short story collection The Machine in Shaft Ten (1975) collects many (but not all) of his early short tales, from such sources as New Worlds Quarterly, New Worlds Monthly, New Writings in SF, Transatlantic Review and others. "The Lamia and Lord Cromis" is an early Viriconium tale. The moody "London Melancholy" features a ruined future London haunted by winged people. None of the stories, with the exception of "Running Down", (a psychological horror tale about a man who is literally a walking disaster area), have been reprinted in his subsequent short story collections. "The Bringer with the Window" features Dr Grishkin, a character also appearing in The Centauri Device, seemingly in Harrison's recurring fictional city of Viriconium.

Harrison's early novels The Committed Men, The Pastel City and The Centauri Device have been reprinted several times. The lat-named was included in the SF Masterworks series.

1978–1985: Manchester Review, The Ice Monkey, more Viriconium

Harrison later relocated to Manchester and was a regular contributor to New Manchester Review (1978–79). David Britton and Michael Butterworth of Savoy Books employed him to write in their basement (where he did so "amidst stacks of antique Eagles, Freindz, New Worlds and Styng. A basement that reverberates with indecent exposures of stolen sound, bootlegs sucked from hidden mikes, stacked in neat piles.").^[9][10] The commissioned work, originally announced in Savoy publications as By Gas Mask and Fire Hydrant, eventually became the novel In Viriconium.

During the decade of 1976–1986, Harrison lived in the Peak District. In 1983, he published his second short story collection, The Ice Monkey and Other Stories, containing seven tales which capture the pathos, humour, awe, despair, pain and black humour of the human condition. The Ice Monkey was praised by Ramsey Campbell, who stated "M. John Harrison is the finest British writer now writing horror fiction and by far the most original".^[11] In "The Incalling", a story of seedy suburban magic which in some ways foreshadows 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.^[11] The "Incalling" is one of the few of Harrison's tales (aside from "Running Down") in which a male character is physically ill; though many of his stories feature male characters who are psychologically unwell, in many of his fictions, it is women who are damaged - either physically or emotionally ill or both. "The New Rays" here exemplifies this tendency.

In 1980 Harrison contributed an introduction to Michael Moorcock's early allegorical fantasy, written by Moorcock at age 18, entitled The Golden Barge and published by Savoy Books.

Harrison's enduring fantasy sequence concerning the fictitious city of Viriconium consists of three novels and various short stories and novels written between 1971 and 1984. Viriconium is known as the Pastel City. Both universal and particular, the city has a shifting topography and history, and is sometimes known by similar names, such as "Uroconium".

The first book, The Pastel City (1971), presents a civilization in decline where medieval social patterns clash with the advanced technology and super-scientific energy weapons that the citizens of the city know how to use but have forgotten how to engineer. The more complex second novel is A Storm of Wings (1982). It is set eighty years later than The Pastel City. and stylistically it is denser and more elaborate. A race of intelligent insects is invading Earth as human interest in survival wanes. Harrison brilliantly depicts the workings of civilization on the verge of collapse and the heroic efforts of individuals to help it sustain itself a little longer. A third novel, entitled In Viriconium (1982) (US title: The Floating Gods), was nominated for the Guardian Fiction Prize during 1982. It is a moody portrait of artistic subcultures in a city beset by a mysterious plague.

The short story "A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium" (1985, later retitled "A Young Man's Journey to London") is set in our world and concerns the idea of escape from it.

1985–1989: Climbers

Harrison's interest in rock climbing resulted in 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).^[12] 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 largely neglected while writing fantasy. The difference in his approach pre- and post-Climbers, can be observed in the extreme stylistic differences between the first novel of the Viriconium sequence The Pastel City and the second, A Storm of Wings. Around the time of writing Climbers, he declared that he had abandoned science fiction forever.^[13]

Robert Macfarlane wrote an introduction to the 2013 reissue of Climbers. Writing about the book in The Guardian, he said: "...it is surely the best novel about rock-climbing ever written – though such a description drastically limits its achievement".^[3]

1990s: The Course of the Heart, Signs of Life, and Gabriel King novels

Subsequent novels and short stories, such as The Course of the Heart (1991) and "Empty" (1993), were set between London and the Peak District. They have a lyrical style and a strong sense of place, and take their tension from characteristically conflicting veins of mysticism and realism.

The Course of the Heart deals in part with an experiment in ritual magic gone wrong, and with an imaginary country which may exist at the heart of Europe, as well as Gnostic themes such as the Pleroma. It weaves together mythology, sexuality, and the troubled past and present of Eastern Europe. The origin of the narrative lies in the occasion when three Cambridge students perform a ritualistic act (never shown or fully described) that changes their lives. Years later, none of the participants can remember what exactly occurred; but their vague memories can't rid them of an overwhelming sense of dread. Pam Stuyvesant is an epileptic haunted by strange sensual visions. Her husband Lucas believes that a dwarfish creature is stalking him. Self-styled sorcerer Yaxley becomes obsessed with a terrifyingly transcendent reality. The narrator, the seemingly least affected participant in the ritual (who is haunted by the smell of roses) attempts to help his friends escape the torment that has engulfed their lives. Joel Lane has described The Course of the Heart as "a brilliant use of supernatural themes to explore humanity mortality and loss."^[11] The novel incorporates versions of several other Harrison stories including "The Great God Pan", "The Quarry" and "The Incalling".

The novel Signs of Life (1996) is a romantic thriller which explores concerns about genetics and biotechnology amidst the turmoil of what might be termed a three-way love affair between its central characters.

Beginning with The Wild Road during 1996 and concluding with Nonesuch (2001), Harrison coauthored four associated fantasies about cats with Jane Johnson, under the joint pseudonym of "Gabriel King".^[14]

Harrison has collaborated on several short stories with Simon Ings, and with Simon Pummel on the short film "Ray Gun Fun" (1998). His work has been classified by some as forming part of the style dubbed the New Weird, along with writers such as China Miéville, though Harrison himself resists being labelled as part of any literary style.

Harrison won the Richard Evans Award during 1999 (named after the near-legendary figure of UK publishing) given to the author who has contributed significantly to the SF genre without concomitant commercial success.

2002–2012: The Kefahuchi Tract trilogy and other works

Harrison continued to publish short fiction in a wide variety of magazines through the late 1990s and early 21st century. Such tales were published in magazines as diverse as Conjunctions ("Entertaining Angels Unawares", Fall issue 2002), The Independent on Sunday ("Cicisbeo", 2003), the Times Literary Supplement ("Science and the Arts", 1999) and Woman's Journal ("Old Women", 1982). They were collected in his major short story collections Travel Arrangements (2000) and Things That Never Happen (2002).

During 2007 Harrison provided material for performance by Barbara Campbell (1001 Nights Cast, 2007, 2008^[15]) and Kate McIntosh (Loose Promise, 2007^[16]).

During 2002, Light marked a return to science fiction for Harrison and marked the beginning of the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy. Light was co-winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2003. Its sequel, Nova Swing (2006), which contained elements of noir, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2007^[17] and the Philip K. Dick Award in 2008.^[18] The third novel, Empty Space: A Haunting, was published in August 2012.

2012–present: You Should Come with Me Now, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again and Wish I Were Here

Harrison published two short stories on Kindle: Cave and Julia (2013) and The 4th Domain (2014).

In 2014, Rhys Williams and Mark Bould organised a conference on Harrison's work at the University of Warwick, UK, called "Irradiating the Object: M. John Harrison". The keynote speakers were Fred Botting (Kingston University) and Sara Wasson (Edinburgh-Napier University).^[19] The conference papers, including the keynote address by Tim Etchells, was published as M. John Harrison: Critical Essays edited by Rhys Williams and Mark Bould.^[20]

In 2016, he received an honorary D. Litt. from the University of Warwick, UK.^[21]

A collection of short stories, You Should Come With Me Now, was published in November 2017.^[22]

2020 saw two new books: a novel, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again^[23] and Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020.^[24] The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again won the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize,^[25] and was longlisted for the 2020 BSFA Award.

In 2023, Harrison released Wish I Was Here, an "anti-memoir".^[26]