M John Harrison’s The Luck in the Head

Of the three novels and the seven short stories that constitute the M. John Harrison's sublime Viriconium sequence, none is more enigmatic or indeed more inscrutable than The Luck in the Head. This short story reconfigures elements of Viriconium's dark fantasy into a surreal and absurdist nightmare. Two city poets, Ardwick Crome and Ansel Verdigris,…