Harkaway, Nick
Entry updated 7 July 2025. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of UK author Nicholas Cornwell (1972- ), who has also written thrillers as by Aiden Truhen; his first novel, The Gone-Away World (2008), applies toxic gouaches of Equipoise to a Post-Holocaust tale set in a surrealized Alternate World, where resemblances to the "real" world can be seen as diversionary: x or y may differ from consensual reality, and the telling of the tale may dwell on these differences, but the alphabet of the story as a whole describes the Near Future we are entering. The plot is gonzo (and unfortunately the protagonist's name is Gonzo) but focuses, eventually, around an attempt to preserve the "Jorgmund Pipe" whose contents are designed to stave off what might be called Ontology Drift as things, literally, fall apart. The noise of the tale is fairly terrific, but is in the end governed by an underlying seriousness; an assessment that might be applied as well to his second novel, Angelmaker (2012), set partially in a Steampunk-inflected twentieth century in the years before World War Two, and aiming its Satire – through an exuberantly overelaborated plot – primarily against the savagery of Utopian thinking, especially as applied to the thoughts and actions of a Villain who wishes the world to reiterate endless images of himself: thus gaining Immortality. Tigerman (2014) is set in a remorsefully predictable Near Future Earth ravaged by corporate Pollution, with most of its over-the-traces action events centred on a Pacific Island due for demolition as it has become irremediably toxic through the deposit of chemical wastes; the protagonist, who assumes a Superhero role, complete with secret identity and a robin sidekick named Robin, attempts to restore justice. Ironies abound.
The Jack Price series of thrillers beginning with The Price You Pay (2018) as by Aiden Truhen are flamboyantly implausible, but not explicitly fantastic. But the Cal Sounder sequence beginning with Titanium Noir (2023), whose typically foregrounded style is signalled through the grotesque pun of its title, plays on the gonzo sf conceit that, channelling the Titans of yore, a Near Future privileged owner class may undergo live-action Genetic Engineering procedures that not only make them effectively Immortal but noticeably bigger with each new injection of a dose of Titanium 7 (see Great and Small). These creatures turn out sadly difficult to kill. In Sleeper Beach (2025), the detective protagonist of the earlier volume, now himself a Titan, becomes something like a Superhero as he continues to solve crimes in a noir world, as members of the vast underclass of the human world come to the eponymous seaside beach to die of torpor. Overall, the series can be read as depicting with metaphorical intensity (though with the literalness expected of a tale of embedded Fantastika) a class system that devours its victims.
The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World (2012), which is nonfiction, argues that with all its dehumanizing potential, the digital information revolution may save us from slavery to international corporations. [JC]
see also: Kitschies.
Nicholas Cornwell
born Cornwall: 26 November 1972
works
series
Jack Price
- The Price You Pay (London: Profile Books, 2018) as by Aiden Truhen [Jack Price: pb/]
- Seven Demons (London: Profile Books, 2021) as by Aiden Truhen [Jack Price: pb/]
Cal Sounder
- Titanium Noir (London: Corsair, 2023) [Cal Sounder: hb/]
- Sleeper Beach (London: Corsair, 2025) [Cal Sounder: hb/]
individual titles
- The Gone-Away World (London: William Heinemann, 2008) [hb/Glenn O'Neill]
- Angelmaker (London: William Heinemann, 2012) [hb/Glenn O'Neill]
- Tigerman (London: William Heinemann, 2014) [hb/]
- Gnomon (London: William Heinemann, 2017) [hb/]
collections and stories
- Keeping Up with the Joneses (London: BBC Digital, 2014) [story: ebook: na/]
nonfiction
- The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World (London: John Murray, 2012) [nonfiction: hb/cabinlondon.co.uk]
links
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