Michael Moorcock

For other meanings, see Moorcock (disambiguation).

Michael John Moorcock (born December 18, 1939) is a prolific British writer primarily of science fiction and science fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels. Moorcock's most popular works by far have been the Elric novels, starring the character Elric of Melniboné, an anti-hero written as a deliberate reversal of what Moorcock saw as cliches commonly found in fantasy adventure novels inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and a direct antithesis of Robert E. Howard's Conan. He has also published a number of parodies of writers for whom he felt affection as a boy, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, and Howard himself. All his fantasy adventures have elements of satire and parody while respecting what he considers the essentials of the form. While these are perhaps his best known works in the U.S., he came to prominence in the UK as a literary author, with books like Behold the Man and The Final Programme being received as non-generic. Novels like the Cornelius Quartet, Mother London, King of the City, and the Pyat Quartet have established him in the eyes of critics in publications such as the Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books as a major contemporary literary novelist.

Moorcock became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the New Wave in the UK and indirectly in the U.S. His serialisation of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.

During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a 'house pseudonym' used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (Jan 1970), written by one 'William Barclay' (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials 'JC', and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ.

In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using 'Warwick Colvin, Jr.' as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.

In his literary novel Breakfast in the Ruins, the introduction refers to Moorcock's early death, a hoax believed by many readers.

Works

His work is complex and multilayered. Central to many of his fantasy novels is the concept of an "Eternal Champion," who has potentially multiple identities across multiple dimensions. This cosmology is called the "Multiverse" within his novels. The "Eternal Champion" is engaged in a constant struggle with not only conventional notions of good and evil, but also in the struggle for balance between Law and Chaos. Thus the criticism of metanarratives common in post-modern critical theory finds its expression in a form widely read and understood at a variety of levels.

In the USA Moorcock's most popular works by far have been the Elric novels, starring the character Elric of Melniboné. Moorcock wrote the first Elric stories as a deliberate reversal of the clichés common in the fantasy adventure novels inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (work that Moorcock despises) as well as the work of Robert E. Howard (which he seems to admire and respect, instead). The popularity of Elric has overshadowed his many other works, though he has worked a number of the themes of the Elric stories into his other works (the "Hawkmoon" and "Corum" novels, for example). His Eternal Champion sequence has been collected in two different editions of omnibus volumes comprising fifteen books containing several books per volume, by Victor Gollancz in the UK and by White Wolf Publishing in the US. Recently, Universal bought the rights to the Elric series to be produced by the Weitz brothers.

One of Moorcock's popular creations is Jerry Cornelius (another JC), a kind of hip secret agent of ambiguous sexuality; the same characters featured in each of several Cornelius books. These books were most obviously satirical of modern times, including the Vietnam War, and continue to feature as another variation of the Multiverse theme. The first Jerry Cornelius book, The Final Programme (1968) was made into a feature film. The Condition of Muzak, the fourth book in the quartet won the Guardian Fiction Award in 1977. Since 1998, Moorcock has returned to Cornelius in a series of new stories, these being 'The Spencer Inheritance', 'The Camus Connection', 'Cheering for the Rockets' and 'Firing the Cathedral', which was concerned with 9/11. All four novellas were included in the 2003 edition of The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius. Moorcock's most recent Cornelius story appeared in Nature magazine in May 2006 and was called 'The Visible Men'.

Most of Moorcock's earlier work consisted of short stories and relatively brief novels: he has mentioned that "I could write 15,000 words a day and gave myself three days a volume. That's how, for instance, the Hawkmoon books were written."^* Since the 1980s, Moorcock has tended to write longer, more literary 'mainstream' novels, such as Mother London and Byzantium Endures, which have had positive reviews, but he continues to revisit characters from his earlier works, like Elric, with books like The Dreamthief's Daughter or The Skrayling Tree. With the publication of the third and last book in this series, The White Wolf's Son, he announced that he was 'retiring' from writing heroic fantasy fiction, though he continues to write Elric's adventures as graphic novels with his long-time collaborator Walter Simonson. He has also completed his 'Colonel Pyat' sequence, dealing with the Nazi Holocaust, which began in 1981 with Byzantium Endures, continued through The Laughter of Carthage (1984) and Jerusalem Commands (1992), and now culminates with The Vengeance of Rome (2006).

Although Moorcock is mostly known for the books mentioned above, he also wrote several novels and novellas which are set on Earth millions of years in the future, at the End of Time. The strange characters inhabiting this world, The Dancers at the End of Time, may seem weird at first, but Moorcock's language and storytelling manage to capture the reader after some pages. Not really fantasy (or dark fantasy, as his writing style has been called by many), these stories are an example for the mastery with which the author handles science fiction, fantasy and classical fiction. His award-winning Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen, while set in an alternate Earth history, is not strictly a fantasy novel.

Moorcock is prone to revising his existing work, with the result that different editions of a given book may contain significant variations. The changes range from simple re-titlings (e.g., the Elric story The Flame Bringers becoming The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams in the 1990s Gollancz/White Wolf omnibus editions) to character name changes (e.g., scout leader "Egan" becoming "Reagan" in the omnibus edition of The War Lord of the Air), major textual alterations (e.g., the addition of several new chapters to The Steel Tsar in the omnibus editions), and even complete re-structurings (e.g., the seminal 1966 novella Behold the Man being expanded to full novel length for republication in 1969).

Awards

Michael Moorcock has won a number of awards both for individual books and 'lifetime achievement'.

1967 Nebula Award (Novella): Behold the Man
1972 August Derleth Fantasy Award (Best Novel): The Knight of the Swords
1973 August Derleth Fantasy Award (Best Novel): The King of the Swords
1974 British Fantasy Award (Best Short Story): The Jade Man's Eyes
1975 August Derleth Fantasy Award (Best Novel): The Sword and the Stallion
1976 August Derleth Fantasy Award (Best Novel): The Hollow Lands
1977 Guardian Fiction Award: The Condition of Muzak
1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award: Gloriana
1979 World Fantasy Award (Best Novel): Gloriana
1993 British Fantasy Award (Committee Award)
2000 World Fantasy Award (Lifetime Achievement)
2002 Science Fiction Writers Hall of Fame
2004 Prix Utopiales Lifetime Achievement Award
2004 Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award

Musical interests

He has also collaborated with the British rock band Hawkwind on many occasions: the Hawkwind track "The Black Corridor," for example, included verbatim quotes from Moorcock's novel of the same name, and he also worked with the band on their album Warrior on the Edge of Time. Moorcock also penned the lyrics to "Sonic Attack," a Sci-Fi send-up of the public information broadcast, that was part of Hawkwind's Space Ritual set. Hawkwind's album "The Chronicle of the Black Sword " was largely based on the Elric novels. Moorcock appeared on stage with the band occasionally during the Black Sword tour. His contributions were removed from the original release of the "Live Chronicles" album, recorded on this tour, due to legal reasons but has subsequently appeared on some double CD versions. He can also be seen performing on the DVD version of 'Chronicle of the Black Sword'.

Moorcock also collaborated with former Hawkwind frontman and resident poet, Robert Calvert (who gave the chilling declamation of "Sonic Attack"), on Calvert's albums Lucky Leif and the Longships and Hype,

An album The New Worlds Fair by "Michael Moorcock and the Deep Fix" was released in 1975, which included a number of Hawkwind regulars in the credits. A second version of the album "Roller Coaster Holiday" was issued in 2004. ("The Deep Fix" was the title story of an obscure collection of short stories by "James Colvin" published in the 1960s).

Moorcock wrote the lyrics to three album tracks by the American band Blue Öyster Cult: Black Blade, referring to the sword Stormbringer in the Elric books, Veteran of the Psychic Wars showing us Elric's emotions at a critical point of his story (this song may also refer to the "Warriors at the Edge of Time," which figure heavily in Moorcock's novels about John Daker; at one point his novel "The Dragon in the Sword" they call themselves the "veterans of a thousand psychic wars"), and The Great Sun Jester, about his friend, the poet Bill Butler, who died of a drug overdose. Moorcock has even performed live with BÖC (in 1987 at the Atlanta, GA Dragon Con Convention) and Hawkwind. The first of an audio book series of unabridged Elric novels, with new work read by Moorcock, have recently begun appearing from AudioRealms.

Views on other writers

Moorcock is a fervent supporter of the works of Mervyn Peake, and an almost equally fervent detractor of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. He met both Tolkien and C. S. Lewis in his teens, and claims to have liked them personally even though he does not admire them on artistic grounds. In Fantasy: The Hundred Best Books (July 1991), however, he and his co-author James Cawthorn are generous to Tolkien's work.

Moorcock criticises works like The Lord of the Rings for their Merry England point of view, famously equating Tolkien's trilogy to Winnie-the-Pooh in his essay "Epic Pooh." ^*

He cites as an example of an author who writes fantasy that is not escapist and contains meaningful themes, Fritz Leiber, one of the pioneers of sword and sorcery fiction. These views can be found in his study of epic fantasy Wizardry & Wild Romance, which was revised and reissued by MonkeyBrain Books in 2004.

Likewise, Moorcock has criticized writers who he perceives as having hidden political agendas. Among his targets are Robert A. Heinlein and H.P. Lovecraft, both of whom he attacked in a 1978 essay. In this essay (caustically entitled "Starship Stormtroopers"), he compared Heinlein's Starship Troopers, to Mein Kampf, calling it "xenophobic." Likewise, he attacked Lovecraft for having anti-semitic, misogynistic and extremely racist viewpoints, which he included in his short stories. However, others have pointed out that Moorcock himself also has hidden, if rather vaguely expressed, anarchist political agendas in his own novels - for example, sympathethically portrayed monarchs in Moorcock's works frequently abdicate or impose exile upon themselves (eg. Elric). King of the City, the Cornelius stories and the Pyat novels all display strong, often explicit, political views.

Sharing fictional universes with others

Moorcock has allowed a number of other writers to create stories in his fictional Jerry Cornelius universe. Brian Aldiss, M. John Harrison, Norman Spinrad and James Sallis, among others, have written such stories. In an interview published in The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Moorcock explains the reason for sharing his character:

I came out of popular fiction and Jerry was always meant to be a sort of crystal ball for others to see their own visions in — the stories were designed to work like that — a diving board, to use another analogy, from which to jump into the river and be carried along by it. All of these have tended to use Jerry the way I intended to use him — as a way of seeing modern life and sometimes as a way of commenting on it. Jerry, as Harrison said, was as much a technique as a character and I'm glad that others have taken to using that method. [http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10115

Graphic novel writers and artists such as Brian Tawn, Grant Morrison and others have also used Moorcock characters either directly or as inspiration for their own work. He is also a friend and fan of comics writer Alan Moore, and allowed Moore the use of several of his own copyright characters in Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The two men appeared to a capacity audience on stage at the Vanbrugh Theatre in London in January 2006 where they discussed Moorcock's work.

In 2000, Moorcock wrote a 50,000 word outline for a computer game, which was then improved upon and fleshed out by Storm Constantine, resulting in the novel, Silverheart. The story is set in Karadur-Shriltasi, a city at the heart of the Multiverse. A second novel, 'Dragonskin' is currently in preparation, with Constantine as the main writer. Moorcock is currently working on a memoir about his friends Mervyn and Maeve Peake and writing a text for first publication in French to accompany a set of unpublished Peake drawings. His book The Metatemporal Detective is scheduled for 2007.

Biographical

Moorcock was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies.

In 1997, Moorcock was one of the guests of honor at the Worldcon in San Antonio, Texas and as Guest of Honour at the World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, Texas.

In the 1990s, Moorcock moved to Texas in the United States. In 2004, he announced plans to spend half the year in Europe, probably eventually settling in France.

Select bibliography

The Elric sequence (1963-1991), including:
- The Stealer of Souls (1963)
- Stormbringer (1965, revised 1977)
- Elric of Melniboné (1972)
- The Sailor On The Seas Of Fate (1976)
- The Vanishing Tower (1977)
Many other Eternal Champion books including the Hawkmoon and Corum sequences
Behold the Man (1966)
The Black Corridor (1969)
The Ice Schooner (1969)
The Warlord of the Air (1971)
The Dancers at the End of Time sequence (1972-76)
Legends from the End of Time (1976)
Gloriana (1978)
My Experiences in the Third World War (1980)
Mother London (1988)
King of the City (2000)
The Jerry Cornelius quartet of novels and shorter fiction:
- The Final Programme (1969)
- A Cure for Cancer (1971)
- The English Assassin (1972)
- The Condition of Muzak (1977)
- The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century (1976)
- The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius (1976)
- The Entropy Tango (1981)
- The Alchemist's Question (1984)
- Firing the Cathedral (novella) (2002)
The von Bek sequence:
- The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)
- The Brothel in Rosenstrasse (1982)
- The City in the Autumn Stars (1986)
The Between the Wars sequence:
- Byzantium Endures (1981)
- The Laughter of Carthage (1984)
- Jerusalem Commands (1992)
- The Vengeance of Rome (2006)
The Second Ether sequence:
- Blood (1994)
- Fabulous Harbours (1995)
- The War Amongst The Angels (1996)
The Elric/Oona Von Bek sequence:
- The Dreamthief's Daughter (2001)
- The Skrayling Tree (2003)
- The White Wolf's Son (2005)

External links

General

Moorcock's Miscellany (formerly Tanelorn, Multiverse.org & Moorcock's Weekly Miscellany) newly redesigned.
Fantastic Metropolis, co-edited by Michael Moorcock
Moorcock Information Node
Michael Moorcock pages at RealityEnds

Nonfiction

"Epic Pooh," by Michael Moorcock
"Starship Stormtroopers," by Michael Moorcock (Internet Archive snapshot from 2002)
Also "Starship Stormtroopers" at the Stan Iverson Memorial Archives

Interviews

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