[1] His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories (1971–1984), Climbers (1989), and the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, which consists of Light (2002), Nova Swing (2006) and Empty Space (2012).

[2] Robert Macfarlane has said: "Harrison is best known as one of the restless fathers of modern SF, but to my mind he is among the most brilliant novelists writing today, with regard to whom the question of genre is an irrelevance.

[2] He ended school in 1963 at age 18; he worked at various times as a groom (for the Atherstone Hunt), a student teacher (1963–65), and a clerk for the Royal Masonic Charity Institute, London (1966).

At 15 you could catch me with a pile of books that contained an Alfred Bester, a Samuel Beckett, a Charles Williams, the two or three available J. G. Ballard's, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, some Keats, some Allen Ginsberg, maybe a Thorne Smith.

He was important to the New Wave style which also included writers such as Norman Spinrad, Barrington Bayley, Langdon Jones and Thomas M. Disch.

As a reviewer for New Worlds he often used the pseudonym "Joyce Churchill" and was critical of many works and writers published using the rubric of science fiction.

Social organisation has collapsed, and the survivors, riddled with skin cancers, eke out a precarious scavenging existence in the ruins of the Great Society.

Only the roaming bands of hippie-style "situationalists" (presumably a reference to the then contemporaneous situationist group) have grasped that the old order, with its logic, its pseudo-liberalism and its immutable laws of cause and effect, has now been superseded.

Rival groups need him to arm the most powerful weapon in the galaxy: the Centauri Device, which will respond only to the genetic code of a true Centauran.

Otherwise, it was lebensraum & a cadetship in the Space Police (these days it’s primarily low-bourgeois freedom motifs & nice friendly sexual release).

"The Bringer with the Window" features Dr Grishkin, a character also appearing in The Centauri Device, seemingly in Harrison's recurring fictional city of Viriconium.

David Britton and Michael Butterworth of Savoy Books employed him to write in their basement (where he did so "amidst stacks of antique Eagles, Freindz, New Worlds and Styng.

A basement that reverberates with indecent exposures of stolen sound, bootlegs sucked from hidden mikes, stacked in neat piles.").

[9][10] The commissioned work, originally announced in Savoy publications as By Gas Mask and Fire Hydrant, eventually became the novel In Viriconium.

The Ice Monkey was praised by Ramsey Campbell, who stated "M. John Harrison is the finest British writer now writing horror fiction and by far the most original".

[12] In "The Incalling", a story of seedy suburban magic which in some ways foreshadows his later novel The Course of the Heart, an editor is haunted by an author's attempts to cure himself of cancer by faith healing.

The origin of the narrative lies in the occasion when three Cambridge students perform a ritualistic act (never shown or fully described) that changes their lives.

The narrator, the seemingly least affected participant in the ritual (who is haunted by the smell of roses) attempts to help his friends escape the torment that has engulfed their lives.

Joel Lane has described The Course of the Heart as "a brilliant use of supernatural themes to explore humanity mortality and loss.

The novel Signs of Life (1996) is a romantic thriller which explores concerns about genetics and biotechnology amidst the turmoil of what might be termed a three-way love affair between its central characters.

Beginning with The Wild Road in 1996 and concluding with Nonesuch (2001), Harrison coauthored four associated fantasies about cats with Jane Johnson, under the joint pseudonym of "Gabriel King".

Harrison won the Richard Evans Award in 1999 (named after the near-legendary figure of UK publishing) given to the author who has contributed significantly to the SF genre without concomitant commercial success.

Such tales were published in magazines as diverse as Conjunctions ("Entertaining Angels Unawares", Fall issue 2002), The Independent on Sunday ("Cicisbeo", 2003), The Times Literary Supplement ("Science and the Arts", 1999) and Woman's Journal ("Old Women", 1982).

During 2007 Harrison provided material for performance by Barbara Campbell (1001 Nights Cast, 2007, 2008[16]) and Kate McIntosh (Loose Promise, 2007[17]).

[20] The conference papers, including the keynote address by Tim Etchells, was published as M. John Harrison: Critical Essays edited by Rhys Williams and Mark Bould.

He has taught creative writing courses in Devon and Wales, focusing on landscape and autobiography, with Adam Lively and the travel writer Jim Perrin.

His work has been acclaimed by writers including Angela Carter,[28] Neil Gaiman,[29] Iain Banks (who called him "a Zen master of prose"),[30] China Miéville,[31] William Gibson,[32] Robert Macfarlane[3] and Clive Barker, who has referred to him as "a blazing original".