A telling dissection of a relationship, a clear-headed look at what it was to live and love in 80s Britain. An at once surreal and forensically real novel from a critically lauded author who has influenced an entire generation of genre authors "Harrison is a writer who transgresses conventional genre boundaries. Signs of Life is about Mick "China" Rose, an unassuming man 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." Kirkus

Accolades

Shortlisted for British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel 1998.

Author Biography

Mike Harrison is the author of several novels and many short stories - all marked out by their literary excellence and critical reputation. He edited New Worlds Magazine with Michael Moorcock. He writes full time and also reviews for the TLS and The Guardian amongst others. He lives in Shropshire.