Empty Space: A Haunting

after having read this series and thought about it, I'm still not sure what it is about. M John has tied together some of the loose ends from earlier parts of the trilogy, but then added more,I have these observations:You must read all three, in sequence to have any idea at all what's going on.The second "Nova Swing" is perhaps the most coherent.Characters or plot pieces from earlier parts of the trilogy keep reappearing.There is this place where most of the laws of physics don't apply, on the edge of a black hole perhaps? Kefahuchi Tract. Police (of a sort) on a world nearby try to keep people from going into the "event site" where all manner of weirdness happens. It is all rather "psychedelic", perhaps, things from the past manifest for the explorer, floating in space. Various characters are drawn like moths to a flame. .a genius scientist in about our time creates the first quantum computer, and figures out a way to do faster than light spaceship travel to the far ends of the universe. The computer comes alive and his white cat becomes "eaten"? and pixelated by it (quantum-ized?) and thrust into some aspect of the far distant future . The haunting or one of them .some aspect of this scientist is also a serial killer.There is a great deal of pretty bizarre sex, none of which seems at all erotic or appealing.A young girl wants to grow up to pilot a star ship. The only way this is possible is to cut her brain out of her body and attach it to a "Einstein Bridge" so she can perform the 12 dimensional quantum physics math necessary to run the star ship. Her brain with Einstein bridge permanently attaching her directly to the ships operating system, exists in a vat of full of drugs and nutrientsThere is a great deal of psychedelia, junk and memorabilia around from the fifties and early sixties in Saudade.It's full of characters who have had operations to joins parts of their bodies to computers or genetically modify them, so they might perform or function better.there are hundred of other disjointed plots and subplots, too many to listAn very intellectually challenging series of books. Some knowledge of the weirder implications of quantum physics is required...Confused? There are, as I said only parts of theses stories where I have any sense of certainty about Harrisons intent and plot direction.Harrison says about Nova Swing : "It's about being a meme and not knowing it. The set-up is this: we are on one of the Beach planets. A generation--perhaps two--after Ed Chianese took his ship The Black Cat off the Beach and into the Kefahuchi Tract, part of the Tract has fallen to earth in a city called Saudade. It's a zone of the unreliable. It's infected with K-code: or maybe it is K-code, the wrong physics loose in the universe. Everyone is drawn to the "event site" like moths to a flame, from failed entradista Vic Serotonin to middle class tourist Elizabeth Keilar; from Vic's friend Pauli DeRaad, ex vacuum commando and all-round Earth Military Contracts factotum, to Lens Aschemann the dissociated police detective. They're all looking for something their lives don't show them. But for everyone who goes in, something new and weird is coming out... "...Oh and some k-code quarantined space trash energy ball of some sort is spinning around and sucking up people and things...like a infection of wrong-minded physics.. grist for book four?

M. John Harrison continues to amaze with language that stretches the reader beyond the comfort of known, a perfect companion to his stunning concepts which also rocket us far beyond the gray space at the edges of our minds. Dense and fantastically descriptive, the prose weaves a lush tapestry of feelings, ideas, questions, humanity, and all we don't know, somehow wrought into accessible images that create a compelling story in another time and place. Er, make that several times and places.The thing I love most about Harrison's writing is that once is never enough. I've lost count of the times I've re-read Viriconium, each time intrigued and entertained all over again. Light was a bit more problematic for me, but Nova Swing and now Empty Space nail me to my chair.When I'm not immersed in one of his works, I miss being in the worlds he creates. Something of what Harrison knows, what he works toward showing with his writing, are places and times that seem to actually exist, and his writing are struggles to formulate adequate description, to pull back veils of three-dimensional time and frustratingly limited human conceptualization, in order to view its truth.

I sure wish I could get everything this author ever wrote, but some of his books are out of print. This is the last book in his trilogy, but if you expect his books to be like other trilogies, you will be disappointed because these aren't like reading one long book, they are definitely separate from each other. I got the first 2 books at my library, but the third wasn't available and I had to resort to actually buying it, which is something I very rarely do (I read too much to be able to afford to actually pay for my books).All I can say is, this author is simply brilliant. I'm at the stage in my life where I can't stand reading anything 'comforting'; I don't want to read stuff that's formula or familiar, I only want books that make me think. Well, M. John Harrison really makes me think!

I read all three books in this trilogy by Harrison, and I have to say I was fairly disappointing with the way Empty Space ended. In this book he returns to the multiple narrators as he used in the first of the series, Light. There were many returns to previous locals and their events, to show progress I suppose, but overall, unlike Light, this one seemed more disjointed with departures for no reason.I was really holding out hope that it was going to kick into a different gear and wrap up nicely, but to my surprise the last 20% or so of my kindle edition was not the book. It was some interview / sampler. Not pleased by that either.Overall, if your'e like me and you're invested, I guess read it. But if you haven't started this series yet, maybe skip the whole thing.

After the introductory 'Light' and the dull 'Nova Swing', I expected the pace to pick up and the final part of the trilogy to result in a thrilling denouement.Despite the fast pace of events from the present to the future and all other possible spatial and temporal dimensions, the ending was a damp squib.So what was the Kefahuchi Tract? Can someone elucidate. Besides vomit, mucus, pointless sex, cats and a series of elevated rotating dead bodies not much seemed to happen at the end.Despite the vast potential when playing around with quantum stuff this was a real let down!

I’ve just completed this, the third in the “Kefahuchi Tract” trilogy, and I’ve got some processing to do. What a long, strange trip it’s been indeed. If noir, nostalgia, and the plausibly inexplicable are your thing, as well as a future with humanity pretty well the same bunch as we are now, you’ll dig these three volumes.

If you're a "sit down and read the whole book in one or two sessions" kinda person, then you may understand it. I read it over a period of several weeks, and he lost me somewhere. When I read the ending it made no sense. Yet when I read Light, I not only got the ending, I was moved to tears. Maybe it's me.

Ever since M John Harrison's first SF novels, it was clear that he could write most mainstream novelists, not to mention fellow SF writers, under the table. The sheer beauty of his prose has always been my main reason for recommending him to others, and "Empty Space", the culmination of the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy is so well written that you read whole paragraphs with a shudder of pleasure, followed by the urge to go back and read them a second or a third time. In this sense, "Empty Space" confirms Mr Harrison's status as SF's premier poet, someone who takes the old tropes of sciences function - star drives, quantum physics, stellar landscapes, and turns them into verbal artistry of a high order.But the book is not for everybody. There are sections that are so dense and complex they will make your head ache, possible loose ends (depending on how you interpret certain plot developments) and a concentration on flawed and confused human protagonists rather than interstellar heroes. But for me those are virtues. What's he going top follow this with?

Great book - I consumed it in almost a single sitting and then ordered LIGHT and NOVA SWING, from the same author. This is in the best traditions of Ray Bradbury, coupled with almost Asher/Renaulds/Mielville style technological advancement and complexity. The great thing I found was that the author just didn't try to explain some things ... they were just happening and nobody, not even those direct effected or causing them could explain why either. This is a 10/10 sci-fi horror series. Top stuff.

The term tour-de-force is overused, but to me it fits Empty Space like a glove. The novel is, I think, about the interaction of truly alien events - embodied by the Kefahuchi Tract, a vast area of the universe that has appeared and leaks utterly inexplicable and deeply strange phenomena - with the non alien. I hestiate to describe Harrison's "non alien" world as normal, it is very far from we normally understand by the term. But it does have its own internal logic, unlike the alien events of the Kefahuchi Tract. Much of the style is Chandleresque and the text drives forward with incredible energy. I loved it.

I have read many of Harrison's books and enjoyed them all. I especially liked "Climbers" which is a very rewarding story of people obsessed with rock climbing of all kinds. "Light" is another excellent work because it meshes together various stories and times in a clever and entertaining way.Unfortunately though I found Empty Space to be rather like its title.......empty.Empty Space is supposed to be the third part of a trilogy but all three books are so different that only very thin threads hold them together. It is very wordy and Harrison rarely uses 2 words where 5 will do. The characters are mostly cardboard. The story is very fragmented which , for me, meant that for much of the time I only had a vague idea of what was going on. It was difficult to care, most of the time, about what was happenein or why.So to sum up its an okay kind of book, well written of course and imaginative, but leaving one with an empty feeling. It passes the time and their are flashes of brilliance but ultimately is just another modern SF novel from a writer I expected much more from. Perhaps Harrison will come back to form with his next work of fiction.

After reading M. John Harrisons The Ice Monkey, Climbers & Course of the Heart years ago, I came to the Kefaluchi Trilogy with high expectations. The books are divided into action set in the present, and action set in a 'far flung future'. Whilst the present day sequences were what i have come to expect from Harrison, with a bleak vision of people struggling with the meaning of their lives, written in prose that at times soars to poetry, I was baffled and disapointed by the way the quality of the writing seemed to deterioate in the space opera sequences. Confronted by the eternal mystery of the Kefaluchi tract, we have characters and action that seem to have stepped straight out of a comic book. I found the dialogue between the futuristic characters banal and irritating, and seemed to consist of the most infantile use of the F, S & C words with constant references to the reproductive act and other bodily functions. At times, I almost felt I was reading two different authors?Good Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror, should invoke a feeling of awe, 'otherness' and mystery, and I felt this to a certain extent in the 'present' sections of the trilogy, particlularly relating to the 'Shrander' in the first volume - Light. These sections were the only ones that conveyed any profound sense of mystery. Any profundity in the space opera sections were lost due to the trivial dialogue of the characters and the comic book action.I read Light with some interest, waded through Nova Swing with little or no interest, and gave up half way through Empty Space.Fantasy/ Sci Fi should be an escape from the mundane, but no matter how awsome the subject matter (the mysterious Kefaluchi Tract) it becomes banal when seen through the prism of trivial, one dimensional characters spouting mindless chatter.M. John Harrison is a hugly talented writer, and Course of the Heart is an excellent novel, but if felt that his excursions into space opera were far less interesting than his other work.