Moorcock, Moorcock, Moorcock, etc.

I delved into my earliest days as a S&S fan this past week, reading for the first time in nearly thirty-five years, Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion (as usual, reviewed on Black Gate). The book, while a minor part of the Eternal Champion cycle, and only okay, triggered a whole bunch of memories. Most of the review is dedicated to the place Moorock and his seminal S&S series played in my youth, especially among me and my gaming comrades. Like Chun, these books were unavoidable.

I'm surprised the review didn't generate more comments. I thought at least the older readers would have something to say about Moorcock. In the seventies and the eighties, if you were a fantasy fan it almost went without saying you read at least the Elric books. The Whelan cover for Stormbringer is one of the single most iconic S&S covers bar none. Moorcock's books were part of the warp and woof of heroic fiction.

There's a wild, adventurousness to Moorcock's fantasy. He wrote many of the Eternal Champion books (if I recall right, several of the Hawkmoon books were written in only a few day's time) quickly and the prose isn't always the most beautiful, but it is propulsive and the level of mad, inventiveness has been rarely matched by other S&S authors. The evil Hand of Kwll, Stormbringer and Mournblade, the legions of Granbretan, his books teem with the strange and grotesque. His books are a large part of the reason I'm still reading fantasy today.

I don't think the kids today are reading his books either. They're short and they want the big, fat books. Supposedly, the characterization's weak by today's standards. I think today's standards are simply examples of bloated overwriting. A good writer, and Moorcock is that, can limn a great character and get you into his mind without endless pages and chapters of jib-jab.

I've also read complaints about Moorcock's worldbuilding being flimsy. I'd rather have a one that's alive with chaos and wonder than one where the economics and the lineages of the great houses have all been figured out to the last possible point. Would you really rather have some perfectly constructed world where everything makes sense or Jack Vance's Dying Earth? I'm not saying the well-constructed world doesn't have its place or the ability to come to life (Middle-earth anyone?), but I don't want my fantasy to simply mimic the real world, I want it to deliver me to the realm of fairy or dreams (delightful and nightmarish) and Moorcock delivered that in spades for many years.

Other than my latest rereading of The Eternal Champion, the only Moorcock I've read in recent times are the six Corum books and the first few Elric stories. I think I've read over thirty other books by him. I was glad how well they held up. It's always painful when adolescent pleasures prove disappointing when revived. I wonder how his other books, like The Ice Schooner or the Nomads of the Times Streams series will read today? Maybe this summer I'll find out.





For music I've been digging into some basic rock & roll. I've really been enjoying Rockpile and Dramarama a bunch lately.