Book review: the Centauri Device

This isn't a good book; I feel inclined to put it that way round, rather than saying it is a bad book. But it is a throwing-unpleasantness-in-your-face sort of book: lovingly detailed depictions of grime and misery. There is some literary quality in there; at least, we're above the potboiler level; and yet the literary quality isn't enough to make up for the grime.

Wiki tells us "The Centauri Device is the third novel by English author M. John Harrison. The novel, originally conceived as an "anti-space opera" would ultimately go on to make a major contribution to revitalising the subgenre and influencing the works of later authors such as Iain M. Banks and Alastair Reynolds." Goodreads, as usual, provides a variety of views. But I couldn't find one I liked, to endorse.

At the end, perhaps to justify the blow-it-all-up ending, perhaps to throw nihilistic politics into the nihilistic mix, we get a weird "what has {socialism|capitalism} ever done for the world" competition, which both lose. As politics, it is naif to the point of uselessness.

He does get a point for describing the camels as "sore-footed, refractory" but it isn't enough.