After an early initiation into fantastic fiction as a child by way of Disney films (particularly their adaptation of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”), in my high school years I became enthralled by Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” sequence (recommended by my English teacher). Naturally, this eventually led to less "respectable" fantasy creations such as Robert E. Howard’s pulpy “Conan”, who could be found in the L. Sprague de Camp-edited, Frank Frazetta-adorned Conan “pastiche” paperbacks. Alongside this fantasy thread was, of course, the exploration of juvenile (YA) science-fiction literature written by Robert E. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, etc.
After a few years of obsessive “critical research” into the fantasy and sci-fi field (taking notes from anthologies such as Asimov’s The Hugo Winners and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame series), I was essentially becoming a bit burned out on the stuff, wondering if there were any new stories or characters left to discover in the genre. Admittedly, at that point I was tending towards stories hewing towards Joseph Campbell’s conventional “Hero’s journey” structure (obviously Star Wars was a big hit for me). I did also try to get into the “new wave” stuff spearheaded by Harlan Ellison and his Dangerous Visions series, but frankly that stuff was just too disturbing and depressing for me at that stage in life.
But then I discovered two authors who gave my waning sci-fi/fantasy obsession a huge second wind. One was Roger Zelazny, whose surgically-sharp Nine Princes in Amber presented the smartest and most relatable character I’d ever encountered to that point in fiction. The other author to offer me refreshingly new narrative vistas in fantasy was British writer Michael Moorcock, whose mythopoeic “Chronicles of the Black Sword” featured the doom-laden albino sorcerer Elric of Melniboné. In sharp contrast to Zelazny’s wry, 20th century Corwin, Elric was not actually even human… but I was hooked, and in some ways Moorcock’s Law and Chaos multiverse has even more resonance now than it ever did.
Waxing nostalgic for a moment here, my very first exposure to Elric was through the Marvel Comics graphic novel adaptation of “The Dreaming City”, scripted by Roy Thomas and deliciously illustrated by P. Craig Russell. This comic featured a sickly, cruel, obviously sociopathic antihero who was - like the new wave SF stuff - pretty disturbing compared to Bilbo, Conan and the Dragonriders of Pern. However, his narrative really struck a chord (likely a dissonant one) and subsequent acquisition of the DAW Elric 6-pack was inevitable. Of course, DAW marketing cleverly included a virtual checklist of “Eternal Champion” books on the 2nd page, which prompted this young consumer into searching out every book in the series (and, being especially hard to track down, those Erekosë and Count Brass paperbacks became quite “mythic” for me).
To make a long story short, in the decades since my first visit to the multiverse, my Moorcock collection has been collected, sold off, and then re-collected at least twice, as the “moonbeam roads” seemingly periodically intersect with my life.
Returning to an earlier point, I was really in a perfect position to be hooked by Moorcock’s multiverse when I came across it. My state of fantasy near-apostasy was probably not entirely dissimilar to Moorcock’s own state of mind when he wrote the first Elric stories. Leading up to that point Moorcock had become much more interested in “modern literature”, particularly the work of William Burroughs and the French Existentialists Camus and Sartre. In fact, Moorcock’s fantasy creations were even by that time an “exercise in nostalgia” to some degree. The Elric stories sold to 'Science Fantasy' magazine were popular (and paid the bills), but they were created more as an experiment in reaction to conventional fantasy tropes established back in the Golden Age pulp days of 'Argosy', 'Weird Tales' and 'Planet Stories'. One could imagine that Moorcock was to some extent “taking the piss” out of heroic fantasy – although he clearly enjoyed writing the stuff and was fond of the Elric character himself.
In this series I’ll be attempting to explore as much of the Moorcock bibliography as I can with analyses, synopses and commentaries – and some of it may actually be accurate (I think about half will be based on initial readings, so there you go). My main interest in Moorcock has always been his heroic fantasy work, but this endeavor will be a good excuse for me to read all of his non-fantasy work as well (Jerry Cornelius, Colonel Pyat, the London tales, etc). However, the initial chapter following this introduction will examine Moorcock’s earliest hero still in print, whose exploits at the time of their creation were very much in the mainstream of the “sword and planet” genre.
Next Chapter: Sojan (1955-58)
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| "The Dreaming City", Marvel Graphic Novel 2, (1980) Art: P. Craig Russell |
