The Centauri device

by M. John Harrison

185 pages

English language

Published Aug. 10, 1974 by Doubleday.

ISBN:: 978-0-385-01839-5
OCLC Number:: 979024

(8 reviews)

The Centauri Device is the third novel by English author M. John Harrison. The novel, originally conceived as an "anti-space opera" would ultimately go on to make a major contribution to revitalising the subgenre and influencing the works of later authors such as Iain M. Banks and Alastair Reynolds.

4 editions

Allen Shull reviewed The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison

Between Bester, Delany, and Banks

4 stars

This book definitely has the anti-ideology of Bester's The Stars My Destination, complete with unlikeable loser of a main character, but also with the far-out, drugged-up, hardscrabble technicolor of Delany's spacescapes, especially dock towns. Certainly I see the influence of this novel on Iain M. Banks's Culture series, not merely for the flash of the writing style (vocabulary, scenes, and dialogue) and the gotta-get-there drive of the plot, but also for the way the narrative plays with our expectations, subverting and confounding the reader.