Friday, May 30, 2014

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.





8 comments:

  1. I think the way to beat the 'big fat book' issue is to combine the shorter Moorcock books. I originally read the first and second Corum trilogies in volumes containing three books each. Worked fine. But I'm with you. These slim books hold up well all these years later.

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    1. Definitely. I think the new Del Rey Elric reprints do exactly that. Don't know if they're doing Hawkmoon or Corum, but they sure should.

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  2. I read the Ice Schooner for the first time a couple months ago. A good example of both solid character study and exotic setting, without obsessive world-building.

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    1. In the forward I recently read to The Ice Schooner, Moorcock wrote, he wanted to see if he could write a simple adventure
      story after having recently finished several more experimental works.

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  3. Moorcock's always been my favorite ever since he churned out the Eternal Champion. I started with Hawkmoon as some guys here. But Dancers at the End of Time takes the take for the best. I bet I have a lot more to catch up on, though. Maybe completing the Elric books next and more.

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    1. I haven't read any of the Dancers stuff in ages. Have you read Elric at the End of Time which mixes the two series? I remember it being quite funny.

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  4. I must confess to having read only a small amount of Moorcock over the years. I got into Fantasy in the early '90s once I started playing D&D, and by that time the "big fat fantasy books" were in full swing, so a lot of his works weren't that available, especially in rural Maine. I did get my hands on the "little white books" of the Elric series, and found the stories surreal and wild in an entertaining way, but my Sword & Sorcery tastes always ran to the Howardian. Still, I enjoyed what Elric I did read, as well as Hawkmoon (the influence those books had on Warhammer 40K seems pretty clear to me).

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    1. I think Moorcock in general had a major influence on the Warhammer world, what with the Lords of Chaos and all. Elric was intentionally created as a sort of anti-Conan.

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