Michael Moorcock: "a man who excels at saga-making in a timeless magic world" or like the movie Yellow Submarine w/o any of the good bits

"a person of rare goodness and sanity" — the sun (!! this is 1971 btw so i guess the sun is not yet the sun)

Ah, Elric. Androgynous, albino, etc. -- the Ziggy Stardust of epic fantasy. But Bowie killed off Ziggy thoroughly, yet Moorcock still can't entirely let go.

Reread the core Jerry Cornelius books last year for the first time in ages and was struck at how utterly fragmented they are, and not in a good way. The first two are at least draped around a vague sort of plot and I still think A Cure for Cancer holds up, but I'm really not too sure about any of them as extended narratives. Good scenes and set pieces, good caricatures as characters.

My old adviser loved the End of Time series, and I do enjoy that myself. But if I had to pick a favorite, Gloriana -- his most overt Peake homage (dedicated to him too, I think), self-contained, entertaining. Dodgy as all hell, of course -- I suspect a reread these days would leave me feeling somewhat ambivalent about Quine. The Colonel Pyat series was good fun too, what I remember of Byzantium Endures.

'It is the achievement of a master craftsman at the height of his powers. He has the energy of a Golden Age author.'

(ref. presumably 'mother london')

'...the Stevie Nicks of pulp literature.'

I cannot imagine ever re-reading them, maybe the End of Time ones if I was laid up with something. All his fantasy heroes are very weedy, a conscious reaction against Conan-ism I guess.

I liked how MM's publishers repackaged the whole thing in the late 80s in FOURTEEN monster volumes to try and persuade fans of gargantuan fantasy sagas that the 'Eternal Champion' stories are in any way remotely coherent. Yeah right.

the corum books had one scene which i found i'd remembered very vividly, on the precipice at the end of the plain of dried blood

i'd forgotten he wrote them to raise money for new worlds, i guess that was cool in a way

Bazooka Joe

NB I last read this when young and impressionable and I could be completely wrong about it

Basically sexist question: but do any non-males dig MM?

I don't recall any goblins or elves in any moorcock boox, but my memory might be fux0r3d. I suppose elric ws a bit elfin, i dunno.

(haha ie moorcock's humans took the same line as enrique!)

sadly i am just abt to go visit my sister so cannot seek them out

corum had pointy ears and almond-shaped eyes i think

True, I've done neither, what can you do? Actually I might have read The Hobbit once... and it was a big load of wank. (Sorry.)

Mark do us all a favor, before you start preaching take a look in the mirror and find out who the real LaYMoR is you stupid retarded bastard.

:(

no room for red hot poker b/c pointy stick covered in narky bees is already in residence.

actually reading the contents of the thread you've just googled c/d?

promoting the merits of yer fave writer by tossing around k-lame flames c/d?

(etc)

Had a brief "holy shit, I'm old and forgetting stuff" episode and had to check on whether Moorcock is alive or not. He's alive.

Yup and still writing (altho tbh his last book sounded p dopey)

Terrible opinions on this thread btw

Altho i had no idea JCLC was into malzberg!

Lol jljc used the same construction re Delaney and Carol Emshwiller, not that he's wrong on either count.

nb jclc is neither a delaney hater nor a moorcock hater, just a booster of smaller-but-also-interesting names

Love all those folks except for Delaney lol. Emshwiller and Malzberg are both all time greats.

I read a novel by emshwiller, Carmen Dog, about thirty years ago which has stayed with me vividly.

What a lame page obviously you guys are poor uneducated fools. For example Mark is a retard who must not have read any of the Eternal Champion series outside of Corum. I'd Suggest that Mark gets a hot poker and shoves it up is gay ass since the only thing he excelles and gets excited about is "SHIT"

Mark do us all a favor, before you start preaching take a look in the mirror and find out who the real LaYMoR is you stupid retarded bastard.

― Who Really Cares, Friday, November 7, 2003 12:01 AM (12 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL

is Mother London any good? I tried to read it once or twice about 30 years ago and didn't get far but maybe I was expecting something else.

I didnt like it.

If i were british and lived thru wwii i could see feeling differently about it

as far as his overall output goes, I think he's vastly underrated in the US (his rep in the UK seems p solid afaict), I love the New Wave stuff, I love his penchant for marrying pulp trash with high concept shenanigans and politics. His prose doesn't always sparkle or leap off the page, but there's a playfulness and range to his work that is very enjoyable. His indulgence in unreliable narrators, endless tangles of self- and cross-references, the blurring of the fiction and history, his willingness to both discard convention and pen slavish imitations of his idols, are all endearing. His self-assessment as a "bad writer with good ideas" (as opposed to a "good writer with bad ideas") is fair, I think.

The top of the heap in his ouevre imo is the Pyat quartet, the Dancers at the End of Time books, the Oswald Bastable trilogy, and then the Cornelius Chronicles (up to and including the most recent stuff like Firing the Cathedral and Modem Times 2.0, which are great). A handful of one-off books like Breakfast at the End of Time, the Black Corridor and Behold the Man are also top-notch. Not being a huge fan of his fantasy material, I find a lot of that lumped together in secondary tier of not exactly bad but not exactly great either (altho I do really like the first Elric book, which maintains a weirdly creepy and sickly tone throughout) - Elric, Corum, Count Brass, Kane etc. Von Beck books are okay but not much more. And then at the bottom there's stuff that seems like it was just hacked out in a hurry - the Golden Barge, The Ice Schooner, the Hawkwind book etc.