The Committed Men
by M. John Harrison | 
The Centauri Device
by M. John Harrison | 
Lord Tyger
by Philip Jose Farmer | 
The Affirmation
by Christopher Priest | 
The Unlimited Dream Company
by J. G. Ballard | 
Star of the Unborn
by Franz Werfel | 
Soul Catcher
by Frank Herbert | 
Beasts
by John Crowley | 
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
by Doris Lessing | 
The Disappearance
by Philip Wylie | 
The Condition of Muzak
by Michael Moorcock | 
The Search for Fierra
by Stephen R. Lawhead | 
The Day After Judgement
by James Blish | 
Aestival Tide
by Elizabeth Hand | 
The Jewels of Aptor
by Samuel R. Delany | 
The Immortals
by Tracy Hickman | 
The English Assassin
by Michael Moorcock | 
Contact
by Carl Sagan | 
Solaris
by Stanislaw Lem | 
Dark Space
by Jasper T. Scott |
Clive Barker says of M. John Harrison, "His books are fictions of elegant delirium, dark and transcendent by turns." Ramsey Campbell calls him "the master of enigma, whether human or supernatural." Like Jonathan Carroll, Harrison is a British writer who transgresses conventional genre boundaries. Signs of Life is about Mick "China" Rose, an unassuming fellow who runs a shady and lucrative medical-transport-cum-waste-disposal business. Along with his partner, Choe, and his lover, Isobel, China drives souped-up vehicles at ferocious speeds through a dreamlike world where dystopian fantasies of biomedical wrongdoings blend with the subtly shifted reality of Harrison's Britain. Choe is a self-destructive child-man who thrashes from an unattainable idyllic past to an unstructured future full of gangsters and rancid waste dumps. Isobel values beauty and longs for physical transformation. As their destinies unfold, the story is not quite horrific, but it's superbly written and chilling, the kind of novel that will haunt you for days.