Light - M. John Harrison

Beneath the unbearable light of the Kefahuchi Tract -- a huge, fulminating ocean of radiant energy deep in the galaxy -- three objects lie on the barren surface of an asteroid: an abandoned spacecraft, a pair of what look like bone dice, and a human skeleton. What they are, and what they mean, are the mysteries explored and unwrapped in LIGHT, M. John Harrison's astonishing return to the imaginative terrain of science fiction.

Three intertwining strands of narrative -- one contemporary, ther others set in different parts of the galaxy in the year 2400 -- make up the novel. In the here and now is Michael Kearney, destined to take part in a discovery which will make possible interstellar travel, but at present a tortured individual confronted by a strange and possibly alien entity known as the Shrander. In the future there are Seria-Mau Genlicher, spaceship pilot, surgically and biologically modified to interact directly with her ship, the White Cat; and Ed Chianese, drifter and sensation seeker, currently down and out in New Venusport, with everybody in the universe apparently keen to take from him what he owes.

This is a science fiction novel written with a level of imaginative intensity and literary mastery the genre has seldom glimpsed before. It is, in every sense, dazzling.