The Centauri Device by M John Harrison

I don’t usually read much science-fiction but I’d been recommended Harrison’s novel Light, which typically wasn’t in the library, so ended up taking this out instead. Bleak and disturbing, it’s nonetheless a truly inventive novel, credited with revitalising the ‘space-opera’ genre.

Lowlife space-ship captain John Truck is loafing his way around a seedy, dystopian future, when the discovery of his connection to the titular device puts him in the middle of a war between the last two Earth based power-blocks who have carved up the galaxy between them, interplanetary drug pushers, a religious cult devoted the human digestion and a gang of aesthetes called the Interstellar Anarchists.

Rescued from the dealer Chalice Veronica by the dandy Himation, Truck and his crew are brought to a hollowed out asteroid floating between our sun and Alpha Centauri, the base of Sinclair-Pater, the Anarchists leader. His domain is an Aladdin’s Cave of art treasures, both authentic and recreated. The white-suited Pater is an artist as well as the pilot of a fantastical space-ship named The Green Carnation. Truck is brought to his apartment and drinks are served:

By contrast, the suite of rooms adjoining the studio was frugal and austere, with little chintz curtains, stained floorboards bordering Turkey carpets and an atmosphere of cherished isolation. In the sitting room, which was achieved by way of a low passage and a Gothic doorway, there were a few short shelves of old books, a scrubbed deal table and some stiff but charming high-backed chairs. For ornament, a bowl of dried rose petals stood in the precise centre of the table. On the walls of this prim apartment were hung two pictures: one of a head of some wine-god, unfathomable and sensually cruel; the other a rough sketch of a morose, stooping young man – thin, heavy jawed, with deep, close-set eyes, dressed in the garments of a defunct High Church order. Here, they sat down, Himation disappeared into the depths of the suite, returning shortly to flourish his cloak over the table-top (rose petals stirred like leaves of another year, and a remote scent filled the room) and manifest a bottle of wine. He held up his hand – prolonged the moment – four glasses appeared, their stems between his fingers. A faint musical tone. Pater smiled on indulgently.

Pater explains that he wants the Centauri Device simply because everyone else does, and goes on to execute a daring and suicidal raid on the convoy he thinks is carrying it. When the dust settles Truck finds himself on the run from his enemies who are prepared to kill anyone in their way. He must now face the device itself alone...

1984 by George Orwell

There’s not much I can add to the acres of writing on Orwell’s nightmare vision of the future. 1984 and its ideas – Big Brother, thoughtcrime, telescreens, newspeak, room 101 – have become embedded in the language, although most of them at a far remove from the author’s original concept.

At the beginning of the book, Winston Smith, a minor bureaucrat tasked with constantly falsifying and updating back issues of The Times to make articles follow the party line, is about to start writing a diary, an act which will inevitably lead to arrest, torture and execution. Small wonder that before embarking on this risky venture, he decides to fortify himself with a spot of gin, the booze reserved for party members in Oceania:

Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow’s breakfast. He took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine. Instantly his faced turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful. He took a cigarette from a crumpled pack marked VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautiously held it upright, whereupon the tobacco fell out onto the floor.

It’s the first step in a journey of deception against the state that can only end one way. By the time Winston finally ends up in the dreaded room 101 at the heart of the Ministry of Love, gut-rot gin is the last of his worries...