In Viriconium
by John Harrison
1982, reprinted 2005
In Viriconium is John Harrison's third book set in the fantasy city of Viriconium. Compared to the first two, it reads like the total collapse of Harrison's artistic ambitions, both in terms of the story told and the literary style of the telling. The Pastel City is a genuine masterpiece, a deconstruction of the traditional heroic quest, and still an exciting adventure story in its own right, with descriptions so vivid and with such careful word choice they read like poetry. A Storm of Wings was still good, a flawed sequel that tried to top the original, that failed, but went all-out doing so, trying to depict its own fictional world being supplanted by an alien story.
In Viriconium is little longer than a novella. It tells the story of a high-born artist trying and failing to convince a poorer but better artist living in the low city to move in with him while she recuperates from her disease. Since the last two books, hundreds of years have passed, and their events have been forgotten by the public. The city of Viriconium now seems basically like Victorian London, and I kind of want to say there's no longer anything fantastic about it that we can see. The plague that afflicts the city appears as a fog, which was in fact how Londoners at the time believed disease spread, and its symptoms appear to be the same as tuberculosis, which really was endemic then. Harrison suggests a couple times that the plague fog itself is somehow draining the wonder from the city, but it's not an idea he particularly commits to. If his goal was for this book to be a funeral for his dream city, for its dreaminess anyway ... I don't think that was worth doing, and also I don't think he does a very good job of it.
We follow the artist Ashlyme, who keeps sneaking into the quarantine zone to visit Audsley King, whom he admires. He meekly suggests her moving up to the high city for a bit, which she rejects in favor of staying in her own home with the fortune teller who's been acting as her caretaker. Ashlyme returns to the high city where he discusses his disappointment with his friend the astronomer, casts his jaundiced gaze on the hypocrisy of the art world and writes cynical diary entries about them, and is harassed by Tomb the dwarf, who's still alive and possibly now mayor of Viriconium, and who wants to date the fortune teller. There's one exciting scene relatively early on when Ashlyme and the astronomer try to kidnap Audsley King by force, and fuck it up spectacularly, but mostly the rest of the book is just Ashlyme making these rounds ineffectually. By the end it just feels pathetic. Maybe it's good the book's not any longer. Condensed into a short story, it might've been a fitting companion to KJ Bishop's "The Art of Dying".
There's sort of a theme of the magic going away, although even that is undermined by the very ending. We see Tomb acting like a rough practical man trying to put on society airs, more a mafioso than a mayor, ridiculous in his greased hair and brightly colored suits, unwilling to give up his low-born vices of berry gin and imitation coffee, still quick to thuggish violence in a world that has no use for it. We see the wizard Cellur once more, his memory gone from old age, making ordinary taxidermy birds now, in awe of the sight of a metal bird he no longer recognizes as his own creation. We learn that all the Reborn Men went into the wilderness and like, psychically projected themselves back to their own time, all except two twin brothers. Those two hang about the city acting like prattling jackasses, annoying just to read about, where they are inexplicably the darlings of the art world in the way that today's socialites might enjoy a tabloid scandal or reality star.
In the end, Audsley King dies, the astronomer dies, the plague fog which makes everything dull engulfs the whole city, Cellur is nowhere to be found, Tomb and the fortune teller magically go into her tarot cards leaving mundane reality behind, and Ashlyme finally loses his temper and screams at the two dipshit Reborn Men for being such awful pests. They respond by transforming into idealized versions of themselves, becoming giant sized and translucent, and then hovering over the city like guardian angels. So like, maybe the magic came back? Frankly, I no longer really care.
All this is also told not in the mix of formal narration and precise word choice Harrison used so well in the previous two books, but in plain, unremarkable prose, that I guess does succeed in capturing the mood of the author and characters alike having given up and abandoned all hope of anything seeming special or even just authentically nice. The book is adequate rather than bad, but comparison to the other Viriconium books makes it really disappointing.
In Viriconium is little longer than a novella. It tells the story of a high-born artist trying and failing to convince a poorer but better artist living in the low city to move in with him while she recuperates from her disease. Since the last two books, hundreds of years have passed, and their events have been forgotten by the public. The city of Viriconium now seems basically like Victorian London, and I kind of want to say there's no longer anything fantastic about it that we can see. The plague that afflicts the city appears as a fog, which was in fact how Londoners at the time believed disease spread, and its symptoms appear to be the same as tuberculosis, which really was endemic then. Harrison suggests a couple times that the plague fog itself is somehow draining the wonder from the city, but it's not an idea he particularly commits to. If his goal was for this book to be a funeral for his dream city, for its dreaminess anyway ... I don't think that was worth doing, and also I don't think he does a very good job of it.
We follow the artist Ashlyme, who keeps sneaking into the quarantine zone to visit Audsley King, whom he admires. He meekly suggests her moving up to the high city for a bit, which she rejects in favor of staying in her own home with the fortune teller who's been acting as her caretaker. Ashlyme returns to the high city where he discusses his disappointment with his friend the astronomer, casts his jaundiced gaze on the hypocrisy of the art world and writes cynical diary entries about them, and is harassed by Tomb the dwarf, who's still alive and possibly now mayor of Viriconium, and who wants to date the fortune teller. There's one exciting scene relatively early on when Ashlyme and the astronomer try to kidnap Audsley King by force, and fuck it up spectacularly, but mostly the rest of the book is just Ashlyme making these rounds ineffectually. By the end it just feels pathetic. Maybe it's good the book's not any longer. Condensed into a short story, it might've been a fitting companion to KJ Bishop's "The Art of Dying".
There's sort of a theme of the magic going away, although even that is undermined by the very ending. We see Tomb acting like a rough practical man trying to put on society airs, more a mafioso than a mayor, ridiculous in his greased hair and brightly colored suits, unwilling to give up his low-born vices of berry gin and imitation coffee, still quick to thuggish violence in a world that has no use for it. We see the wizard Cellur once more, his memory gone from old age, making ordinary taxidermy birds now, in awe of the sight of a metal bird he no longer recognizes as his own creation. We learn that all the Reborn Men went into the wilderness and like, psychically projected themselves back to their own time, all except two twin brothers. Those two hang about the city acting like prattling jackasses, annoying just to read about, where they are inexplicably the darlings of the art world in the way that today's socialites might enjoy a tabloid scandal or reality star.
In the end, Audsley King dies, the astronomer dies, the plague fog which makes everything dull engulfs the whole city, Cellur is nowhere to be found, Tomb and the fortune teller magically go into her tarot cards leaving mundane reality behind, and Ashlyme finally loses his temper and screams at the two dipshit Reborn Men for being such awful pests. They respond by transforming into idealized versions of themselves, becoming giant sized and translucent, and then hovering over the city like guardian angels. So like, maybe the magic came back? Frankly, I no longer really care.
All this is also told not in the mix of formal narration and precise word choice Harrison used so well in the previous two books, but in plain, unremarkable prose, that I guess does succeed in capturing the mood of the author and characters alike having given up and abandoned all hope of anything seeming special or even just authentically nice. The book is adequate rather than bad, but comparison to the other Viriconium books makes it really disappointing.
