" Viriconium, the Pastel City; a little cryptic, a little proud, a little mad. Its histories, as forgotten as his own, made of the air a sort of amber, an entrapment; the geometry of its avenues was a wry message from one survivor to another: and its present, like his own, was but an implication of its past - a dream, a prediction, a brief possibility to be endured. "

― M. John Harrison , Viriconium (Viriconium #1-4)