Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock is a well-know author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as other, less easily categorized works. Perhaps his best- known works are his early fantasy stories about the doomed albino prince, Elric, which are part of his Eternal Champions cycle. His Jerry Cornelius books of about the same time are more in the experimental science fiction mode.

Speaking of the Elric and Cornelius books, I’m sure others have noticed the parallels between the opening of The Weird of the White Wolf (the first section of Book One, after the prologue) and the opening of The Final Programme (the first section of Phase 1, after the “Preliminary Data”):

• Six people waiting for the main character,
• on a stormy evening,
• after midnight,
• the entrance of the last starting the scene,
• the last to enter the one who knows the main character the best,
• the doubts of some of the others,
• their need of the main character to enter a guarded place,
• the entrance of the main character unexpectedly,
• his need for three days to visit the place beforehand,
• his insistence that his male and female relative not be harmed,
• his journey by sea to the place.

I’ve probably missed some, and indeed the first Book parallels much of Phase 1, if I remember correctly. (This is another example of how the Multiverses’s Million Spheres intersect in interesting ways. :-)

His more recent books do not seem as well known in the U.S., showing up less often in bookstores; this is especially ironic since he apparently now resides in the U.S. This may be due to the difference in style and subject from his earlier works, which were (with exceptions) simpler. (Some have said he’s moved from Pulp to Post- modern; I think that’s simplistic.) His latter works are well worth finding, however.

I enjoyed his new (April 2001) Elric novel, The Dreamthief’s Daughter, finding it an interesting intersection with the von Bek stories.

His works have inspired others in many fields, from art to music to roleplaying games.

A lot more information about Michael Moorcock is available from The Multiverse.

Michael S. Gentry’s review of Moorcock’s The Dancers at the End of Time has an interesting paragraph on how Moorcock seems to be able to switch at will between writing things to pay the rent and writing things much more complicated. This seems to confuse some of his fans, who only like one or the other branch of his work.

Unlike Tolkien, whose writing he has said he despises, Moorcock is not that interested in the settings and background of his stories. He introduces enough for the needs of the story at hand and doesn’t worry much about whether it’s completely consist with the details introduced in other stories. He never dwells on setting simply because it’s interesting. Many fantasy authors who followed Tolkien also develop their settings as if it was a major character, and this is something we almost never see Moorcock do. I think Moorcock’s more interested with the ideas behind the story than with the setting.