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| (Mongrove (from "Pale Roses"), the Fireclown's arrival destroys Argonheart Po's edible dinosaurs) W.H. Allen 1976/77, Art: Rodney Matthews |
In 1972 Moorcock published An Alien Heat, the first of his "Dancers At the End of Time" sequence, which describes technologically-enabled, human demi-gods who spend most of their time competing with one another through extravagant social functions, while at the same time searching for exotic new fashions with which to maintain an interesting existence. Fear, need and the concept of sin have all been banished as barely-remembered artifacts of the past. An Alien Heat and its sequels (The Hollow Lands and The End of All Songs) focus on the young End of Time "antiquarian" Jherek Carnelian and his time-travel romance with Mrs. Amelia Underwood, a "proper" Englishwoman from the year 1896.
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| "Una at the End of Time", Rodney Matthews 1981 (Link) |
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| ("Catherine Gratitude", "The Fireclown") Ace 1988/89, Art: Robert Gould |
The fascinating natures of these alien (but comic) human archetypes are revealed mostly through their interactions with time-traveling visitors to the End of Time. These include a lost woman-child waif, a squad of interstellar Terran soldiers, and a woman from a period of Earth's "past" (future for us) even more austere and repressed than Mrs. Underwood's England of 1896. Even more interesting are visitors from two of Moorcock's earlier science-fantasy works, specifically Manny Bloom (the "fireclown" from The Winds of Limbo) and Elric of Melniboné (snatched from in between chapters of 1961's "The Dreaming City"). These last two episodes in particular are an interesting "mash up" (or pastiche?) of some of the different genres Moorcock had been exploring up until this time. Even an element of Breakfast In the Ruins appears in the initial version of Mavis Ming's final tale.
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| Star 1979/80 |
Four of these "legends" first appeared in New Worlds anthologies (7-10, edited at that time primarily by Hilary Bailey and sometimes with Charles Platt). The first three, "Pale Roses", "White Stars" and "Ancient Shadows" (all titles taken from introductory lines of verse) were soon collected in the aptly-named book Legends From the End of Time (1976). The fourth tale, "Constant Fire" was expanded and published as a full-length novel under the title The Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming (1977, sometimes also published as A Messiah At the End of Time). A fifth tale (featuring Elric) was completed in 1977 (after the conclusion of the Dancers main trilogy) but did not see publication until 1981. Ultimately all five of these episodes were published in omnibus editions under the title Legends From the End of Time under the Orion and White Wolf imprints (1993, 1999). More recently, they appear in Gollancz' Michael Moorcock Collection as Tales From the End of Time (2014).
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| New Worlds 7-10: The Science Fiction Quarterly (Artists include Eddie Jones and Patrick Woodroffe) |
(New Worlds Quarterly 7, Dec 1974, ed. Hilary Bailey, Charles Platt, then Legends from the End of Time 1976, Tales from the End of Time 1989)
This story (taking place at the End of Time while Jherek Carnelian is journeying in 1896 in pursuit of Mrs. Underwood during An Alien Heat) describes Werther de Goethe's "forbidden" love affair with an adopted sea nymph, which ultimately results in one of the actors of this drama plunging off of a windy cliff in a classic Romantic gesture. Since Werther de Goethe's presence is a bit under-served in the main Dancers trilogy (probably due to his similarity in affectation to his protege Mongrove), readers are rewarded here with Werther's own episode.
It's worth noting that Werther de Goethe's name obviously
references the famous proto-Romantic novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther, written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at
age 24. In that book, Goethe's Werther suffers from unrequited love and
humiliation from society. In a dramatic act of passion (or self-pity), he
kills himself in order to prevent further inconvenience to himself or his lost
love's romance with another man. Moorcock's Werther de Goethe has taken on
Young Werther's burden of heartache as his own identity at the End of Time,
although until this episode this affectation has never been so particularly associated with a
single lover.
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| (The Duke of Queens duels Lord Shark the Unknown) interior art from New Worlds 8 (1975): Mal Dean |
(New Worlds Quarterly 8, Mar 1975, ed. Hilary Bailey, then Legends from the End of Time 1976, Tales from the End of Time 1989)
This story takes place after Lord Jagged, the Iron Orchid, the Duke of Queens, etc. have returned from 1896 (after The Hollow Lands, while Jherek and Amelia are probably still stuck in the Devonian Period). In any case, here the ever-affable Duke of Queens takes centerstage, as he
tries to conjure up an entertaining new fashion to impress his friends with by instigating
a sword duel with the anti-social self-exile Lord Shark the Unknown (who also happens to
be a weapons expert). This plan becomes a bit more complicated when a squad of
star-soldiers appear at the End of Time, apparently snatched away from a military operation against alien "vultures". Although the Duke of
Queens appears many times in the main Dancers trilogy, it is here that readers
get a greater sense of his essential good nature (as his direct competitor, Jherek
tends to paint the Duke somewhat as a "second-rater" in An Alien Heat). This
and the previous story set up the Duke of Queens and Werther de Goethe for
their "team up" with Elric later on. This story also notably makes one of the
soldiers stranded at the End of Time a smart, sympathetic character. This
balances out the more satirical portrayal of law enforcement (Inspector
Springer, etc.) in the main trilogy.
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| GuildAmerica Books / SFBC 1989, Art: Robert Eastman |
(New Worlds Quarterly 9, Nov 1975, ed. Hilary Bailey, then Legends from the End of Time 1976, Tales from the End of Time 1989)
Taking place shortly after “White Stars”, this story features Dafnish Armatuce, another time traveler from the past.
Like Amelia Underwood, she finds the sensibilities of the Dancers at the End
of Time inappropriate, but her distaste comes from her time period's embrace
of extreme austerity as a reaction to a just-finished world cataclysm
(presumably caused by self-indulgence and over-population). Perhaps more
importantly, this story also introduces Miss Mavis Ming, a boorish woman from
the 21st-century (Iowa), who latches onto Dafnish like a sex-starved parasite. This
episode therefore features a conflict between two time-travelers from the
past, with Lord Jagged caught in the middle. It's nice to see Jagged faced
with a problem he can't simply deflect away with an enigmnatic bit of verse.
Although primarily another character melodrama, its resolution is based on a
science-fiction device involving artificially-generated symbiotic
relationships and hereditary rights. It also vividly describes what happens when
a time-traveler tries to defy the megaflow...
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| Harper & Row 1976, Art: Irving Freeman |
(New Worlds Quarterly 10, 1976, ed. Hilary Bailey, as “Constant Fire”, expanded to A Messiah at the End of Time, Feb 1977, Tales from the End of Time 1989)
In this novel (expanded from a short story) Miss Mavis Ming is again a main character, but this time she is the pursued instead of the pursuer. A powerful and messianic character named Emmanuel Bloom (the "Fireclown" first introduced in The Winds of Limbo) arrives at the End of Time (this time from space, rather than through a time machine) and tries to save the planet as its new ruler, while at the same time capture Miss Mavis Ming to be his mate. In the ensuing weeks the Fireclown's destructive efforts clash with the aesthetics of the Dancers at the End of Time, until finally a confrontation between the Fireclown and Doctor Volospion (Mavis' forbidding patron) decides the issue. This story helps to distinguish Doctor Volospion as more than a mere "imitation" of Lord Jagged (similar to how "Pale Roses" helped distinguish Werther de Goethe from Mongrove). Where Mavis came across as the clear antagonist in "Ancient Shadows", here the reader is allowed to feel a bit more sympathy for her (at least when juxtaposed with Bloom and Volospion).
The original version of this story featured a short but pivotal scene in which Mavis is whipped into a bloody state, but later editions replace this BDSM-tinged tableau with one involving a corrosive body oil of some sort. Although Moorcock had earlier explored BDSM play in the grim and brutal Breakfast In the Ruins, the revised ending ultimately fits better with the general tone of the story.
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| Paper Tiger 1987, Art: Rodney Matthews |
(completed 1977, 1st publ. Elsewhere, Sept 1981, ed. Mark Alan Arnold, Terri Windling, later Elric at the End of Time (1984))
Written in 1977, this story was originally supposed to be published in a
large format book illustrated with full-page color plates painted by
Rodney Matthews. That version eventually materialized in 1987, but in
the meantime the text of the story was published in an anthology titled
Elsewhere (Sept 1981, ed. Mark Alan Arnold, Terri Windling) and then included in the 1984 Elric-themed Moorcock anthology Elric at the End of Time.
Taking place before Mrs. Persson rescues Jherek and Amelia from the Paleozoic in The End of All Songs, it describes a disturbance in the megaflow after Elric is accidentally flung into the plane of the End of Time after a sorcerous conflict. Mrs. Una Persson (of the Guild of Temporal Adventurers) is alerted to the crisis and tries to intercept Elric at the End of Time before the megaflow timestream is further damaged, but her efforts are stymied when Werther de Goethe and the Duke of Queens draft Elric into a self-made adventure for Elric's "benefit". While Elric and his new friends conduct a rescue operation (its dangers conjured up by Werther de Goethe in hastily-fabricated improvisations), Una searches the megaflow for Lord Jagged in order to gain his assistance.
One of the inspirations for this tale came from M. John Harrison, who once suggested to Moorcock that the Dancers at the End of Time might appear to be "Chaos Lords" from Elric's perspective. Although probably confusing as hell to "completist" Elric fans unfamiliar with the Dancers At the End of Time sequence (such as myself upon first reading this story), for those fans of both series it works as a tour-de-force mash up of comic dialogue and exciting sword and sorcery action.
"Some readers weren’t too happy about my writing what was, after all, primarily a humorous story, but it seemed to me that there was a chance to offer an aspect of Elric which was not one of unrelieved gloom! There’s always a danger, as one’s work grows in popularity, of taking oneself too seriously." (To Rescue Tanelorn, "Introduction", 2007)
Additional Notes from Rodney Matthews
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| DAW 1985, Art: Michael Whelan |
(Moorcock also wrote a Dancers at the End of Time-related story in 2008 for Postcripts (Sept 2008) titled "Sumptuous Dress: A Question Of Size At The End Of Time" in which the Iron Orchid and Werther de Goethe meet some characters from the Second Ether sequence. I'll cover that one when I get to the Second Ether books.)
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| DAW 1977/78, Art: Bob Pepper |
In his introduction to the 1998 White Wolf omnibus Legends From the End of Time, Moorcock notes that the Dancers at the End of Time stories are his "light-hearted homage to George Meredith, in particular, but also to Dowson, Beardsley, Simons, Swinburne and the Irish wits, to all those contributors to The Savoy and The Yellow Book who impressed me with their glorious insouciance and cleverness when I was a boy and wanting to have done nothing more than spend an evening at the Café Royal in their company."
Dancers at the End of Time Wiki Entry
Next Chapter: The Chronicles of Corum
Previous Chapter: The Dancers At the End of Time (1972-76)
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| Denoël 1980, Art: Stéphane Dumont |
