Science Fiction Reading Group: The Centauri Device

M. John Harrison is the author of a strange breed of science-fiction, written in a style both expressive and stark. The worlds he portrays are grimy, their inhabitants alienated and down-trodden. The Centauri Device follows John Truck, just another lowlife spaceship captain who makes ends meet through smuggling and drug running. But he’s also the last of Centaurans, and might just be the only man in the galaxy able to work the mysterious Centauri Device. Harrison is best known for flouting the sacred tenets of space-opera, and to read his work is to take a trip into an ambitious but somewhat disturbed imagination.