HARRISON, Michael

(1907-1991)

   UK writer in various genres, mostly not sf. He wrote an early film novelization, The Bride of Frankenstein * (1936) as Michael Egremont, and some of the stories assembled in Transit of Venus (coll 1936) are of fantasy interest. His first and most interesting sf novel, Higher Things (1945), is clearly influenced by H.G. WELLS. An impoverished young man,caught in the trammels of a clerical position but with dreams of higher things, finds in himself the power to levitate, which he does at crucial moments in his rather melancholy life to escape his and the world's muddles. He then makes a long (probably delusional) flight to confront the Dictator (Hitler) and to discuss with him the world's fate, amiddle-period Wellsian excursion which is succeeded by a Wellsian quietus: the protagonist, haunted by PARANOIA, decides to escape the world entirely in a levitated, airtight gondola. The Darkened Room: An Arabesque (1951) is like Higher Things set in the mythical town of Rowcester; it features a cat kept artificially alive to further a blackmail scheme. The Brain (1953) devotes itself to a mushroom cloud which becomes sentient.

   JC

   Other works: The Exploits of the Chevalier Dupin (coll 1968 US) and Murder in the Rue Royale (coll 1972) are collections of mystery stories extending the canon of Edgar Allan POE's seminal detective.

   See also: PSI POWERS.