Michael Moorcock

Michael John Moorcock (born December 18, 1939) is a prolific British writer of both science fiction and science fantasy. He has also published a number of literary novels. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at only sixteen, later moving 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.

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 cosmogony 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.

Related Topics:
Cosmogony - Multiverse - Law - Chaos - Metanarrative - Post-modern - Critical theory

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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 cliches common in the fantasy adventure novels inspired by the works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (which Moorcock despised) as well as the work of Robert E. Howard. 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.

Related Topics:
Elric - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien - Robert E. Howard - Eternal Champion

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One of Moorcock's popular creations was 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 was made into a feature film.

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Since the 1980s, Moorcock has tended to write literary 'mainstream' novels, such as Mother London and Byzantium Endures, which have had positive reviews, but continues to revisit characters from his earlier works, like Elric, with books like The Dreamthief's Daughter or The Skrayling Tree. With the writing of the third and last book in this trilogy, The White Wolf's Son (due 2005), 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 announced the completion of his 'Colonel Pyat' sequence, dealing with the Nazi Holocaust, which began with Byzantium Endures, continued through The Laughter of Carthage and Jerusalem Commands and ends with The Vengeance of Rome (due 2005).

Related Topics:
1980s - Walter Simonson

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Although Moorcock is mostly known for the books mentioned above, he also wrote several novels and novellas which are staged on Earth in some million years 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 novel Gloriana, while an alternative world story is not strictly a fantasy but won the John W. Campbell Award in 1978 and the World Fantasy Award in 1979. Other novels have won the British Fantasy Award, August Derleth Award. He received The Guardian Fiction Prize for The Condition of Muzak, the last volume in the first Jerry Cornelius sequence, in 1977. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award, the Prix Utopiales, in Nantes, France, in 2004.

Related Topics:
The Dancers at the End of Time - Gloriana - World Fantasy Award - British Fantasy Award

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