Viriconium

Viriconium is a series of novels and stories written by English author M. John Harrison between 1971 and 1984, set in and around the fictional city of the same name. In the first novel in the series, the city of Viriconium exists in a future Earth littered with the technological detritus of millennia (partly inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series and the poems of T. S. Eliot). However, variations of the city appear throughout the series (most frequently as Uriconium and Vriko), in an attempt by Harrison to subvert the concept of thoroughly mapped secondary worlds featured in certain works of fantasy, particularly those by J. R. R. Tolkien and his host of successors. Both universal and in particular, the city has a shifting topography and history, and is sometimes known by names such as 'Uroconium' (though there does not seem to be any association with the old Roman town of Viroconium).