The Machine in Shaft Ten and Other Stories

by M. John Harrison, Chris Foss (Illustrator)

My Lords, Ladies and Aliens...

Panther books in association with M. John Harrison proudly present for your entertainment one of the most amazing science fiction extravaganzas of the year -
The Machine In Shaft Ten

Starring:-
Doctor Grishkin-
galactic pimp extraordinary...

Lord tegus-Cromis-
sometime soldier and sophisticate of Viriconium, the Pastel City, cocaine connoisseur, poet and swordsman...

Lyall-
one-man Disaster Area...

Rotgob The Dwarf Assassin-
whose unique blade is as famous as his name and his unlovable profession...

and many more...

Read - and wonder...

Contents:
The Machine in Shaft Ten (1972)
The Lamia and Lord Cromis (1971)
The Bait Principle (1970)
Running Down (1975)
The Orgasm Band (1975)
Visions of Monad (1968)
Events Witnessed from a City (1975)
London Melancholy (1969)
Ring of Pain (1971)
The Causeway (1971)
The Bringer with the Window (1972)
Coming from Behind (1973)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories

174 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

aka Gabriel King (with Jane Johnson)

Michael John Harrison, known for publication purposes primarily as M. John Harrison, is an English author and literary critic. His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories, Climbers, and the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, which consists of Light, Nova Swing and Empty Space.

Reviews

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled to connect with this interesting collection of short SF stories, my first experience of British writer Harrison. I've heard many good things and some of the books I've picked up have sounded very exciting.

The blurb on this Panther edition made the stories sound quite a lot different to what I actually got; instead of lurid stories of pimps and swords fights etc I found my eyes glazing over more often than not and regularly wondering what the point of the story was.

Hopefully I won't be as disappointed by his long fiction when I read The Centauri Device.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harrison's first collection of short stories is a prime example of the 'new wave' of fantasy and SF writing that emerged during the sixties and early seventies.

Subverting the conventions of genre, these stories exist on a plane of unease and decay, where nothing is certain. It begins with the title story, The Machine in Shaft Ten. A machine buried at the earth's core is the target of one scientists obsessive, destructive madness. It's a minor piece but sets the tone for the rest of the book.

The early classic Running Down features some of Harrison's favourite tropes: the strange loner, the devastating effects of decay, the old friend as narrator. It's a brilliant story.

Elsewhere we have three stories from the Viriconium cycle, including the very first (Lamia Mutable, here called The Bringer with The Window). A world away from Tolkienesque fantasy, these unsettling stories are full of vivid imagery and characters whose motives are hard to fathom.

The whole tone of the book is dark and filled with unease. Decay is everywhere, nothing is certain. In many cases a character's actions lead to disaster. Catastrophes beset the Earth, in some stories the invader is insectile, a trope that Harrison would revisit in the second Viriconium novel, A Storm of Wings.

This style of fiction won't be to everyone's taste, but I'm a fan, so it's been interesting to read Harrison's earliest works. I'd recommend all of his fictions. He really is a great writer.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

For any fans of Harrison's Viriconium series, this book is certainly worth hunting down. Most of the stories feature similarly verbose and hallucinatory descriptions, and several of the stories are either set in Viriconium or feature characters from that series (such as Dissolution Kahn and tegeus-Cromis). Only one of these short Viriconium stories appeared in the omnibus, so for any completists out there, this is a must own. Also the overall quality of stories is very much on par with his novels. Overall a cool little collection of moody, bizarre, mostly post-apocalyptic, surreal science fiction. Recommended.

[Clint Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harrison is foremost a short story writer, most comfortable when he can expound beyond poetry, but stop short of spoon-feeding the reader. Missing details often seem bewildering, but ultimately the stream of conscious fragments convey a sense of carefully edited craft. Some stories are more accessible, such as the title piece, but even these have a way of injecting uncertainty, bending the story in intriguing ways.

The Machine in Shaft Ten provides a view into his exciting new style when he was first breaking. Several of the stories have long since been revised for other collected works, and benefited from improved development.

It's not easy--often impossible--to interpret the stories. Sometimes it is equally futile to simply summarize them. They usually center around an estranged anti-hero facing impossible odds, insurmountable obstacles, taking dubious action. What they have in common is a beautiful style, utilizing uncommon words that subtly emote, or serve to paint a lush mental image. Even his simpler sentences often connect ideas in an unusual way. The plot is an impression, the style is spellbinding, intense, lyrical.

From "Running Down"

That night was one of vast heat and discomfort: the rancid smell I had noticed on my first day in the cottage oozed from the furniture as if the heat were rendering from the stuffing of the cushions some foul grease no scrubbing brush could touch; my sleeping bag was sticky and intolerable, and no amount of force would move the windows, I lay for hours in an exhausted doze poisoned by nightmares and incoherent, half-conscious fantasies.

From "Ring of Pain"

Sad six o'clock light, strained through gaps in the torn chain link fencing.

"The Bringer with the Window"

Eidetic images of ghosts flit on this wind: women weeping weave shrouds at ebbtide; famine-children wail to old men at twilight.

[Martyn Vaughan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is Genre fiction And there is Literary fiction. This collection of short stories is by an author praised by the Guardian for his rich literary abilities. But Literary Fiction and Science Fiction do not mix. At the end of the 1960s, a movement called "New Wave" arose. This was a reaction to American pulp-potboilers with their one-dimensional characters (e.g. E E Smith) and their emphasis on futuristic machines, FTL drives and battles in space. As such, it was a necessary corrective. However, NW and Literary Fiction, with their emphasis on the human condition, do not work in any form of SF, simply because it puts human feelings and reactions at the centre of everything. This is not what science tells us is important in the universe.
Harrison's prose is dense, full of subordinate clauses, lacks a coherent narrative, contains short sentences lacking a verb, not obeying the laws of cause and effect, etc.

One can have character-driven SF without the paraphernalia of Literary Fiction.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"The Machine in Shaft Ten (1975) is a spectacular collection of early short stories by one of the masters—M. John Harrison. Apparently, Harrison has decided that the collection itself and many of the stories in the collection are not worth reprinting. As a result, eight of the twelve stories cannot be found in later anthologies or his single author collections. The scarcity [...]"

[Robbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag but the highs were oh so high. His prose is so damn good and this was so early in his career as well. His influence on New Weird authors like China Miéville was more obvious in these shorts, particularly London Melancholy (possibly my favourite of the collection), Coming from Behind and the few Viriconium shorts that were present - I understand now why they got along so well. The only story I actively disliked was The Orgasm Band - I have little-to-no patience for 'too cool for school' stuff, particularly when guitars are involved.

[Chris Aldridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mindwebs audiobook 60 narrates from new worlds quarterly number 3 edited by Michael Moorcock, “The Machine in Shaft Ten” 1972/5 by pen name Joyce Churchill. Story about a machine discovered in the centre of the earth that feeds on human emotions. Weird.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of the fun of this collection of short stories is following the overlapping oddness as characters from Viriconium and The Centauri Device elide and slide in and out of each story. Viriconium is a very clear setting for at least one story, it is mentioned by name in another story and sort of flavours a few others. Post apocalypse London is another theme and even the titular Machine in Shaft 10 appears in two separate tales. A couple of the tales are over reliant on a stream of (somewhat mad) consciousness approach which didn’t really work for me this time round, even as a Joyce fan myself, but many other readers have praised those very stories.

[Andy]

1ST EDITION SF ANTHOLOGY