NationStates Jolt Archive

Are you enthralled by the tales of Elric WomanSlayer? Does your heart leap to the victories of Dorian Hawkmoon? Is your life that of John Daker, pointless and unfulfilled? Well then Jerry Cornelius, WOULD YOU WEAR THE SCARLET ROBE?

Or do you think it is all adolescent crap?

Poll coming up soon,

Yes, it is adolescent crap, but it very entertaining adolescent crap :D .

Is no-one going to say anything about him? He hated lord of the rings you know.

Or do you think it is all adolescent crap?


Them what think it is adolescent crap would be well served by taking a read at stuff like Behold The Man or his later Iain Sinclair influenced stuff like King Of The City.

michael moor cock. isnt he a porn star?

Them what think it is adolescent crap would be well served by taking a read at stuff like Behold The Man or his later Iain Sinclair influenced stuff like King Of The City.


Behold the man suffers from a poor knowledge of christian theology. I haven't read King of the City, but I am au courant with most of his work. Frankly I think it shows a lack of orginality. (Though some of it is 'ripping tales').

Oh come on people. His whole weltanschaung revolved around a 'magic' sword.

Am I the only one to notice this?

*yawns*

Isn't he dead yet?

michael moor cock. isnt he a porn star?

i think you have him confuse with skeeter strong.


...give it some time. not funny? oh well.

Oh come on people. His whole weltanschaung revolved around a 'magic' sword.

Am I the only one to notice this?

But it was a sword(even in its other incarnations) that exacted a heavy price from the user.

I own two compilations of Moorcock, Ive read one of them (about Elric). It was decent. It wasnt literature or anything, just a good adventure story/page turner. I wouldnt put it on the par with any of the more serious authors I read, but it is entertaining in a Vinn Diesel/Arnold Schwartzenegger sort of way.

Behold the man suffers from a poor knowledge of christian theology.


In what particular way?


I haven't read King of the City, but I am au courant with most of his work. Frankly I think it shows a lack of orginality. (Though some of it is 'ripping tales').

Even at his most hack-like*, Moorcock does manage to inject some originality into his work. Take Elric for example: the very idea of a central fantasy hero who wasn't a muscle threwed barbarian who went on to usurpthe throne and save the world, but instead an effete weakling who abdicated and eventually destroyed the world was a new idea to fantasy literature when Moorcock introduced it. Similarly I would argue that his Jerry Cornelius novels work in a similar way: initially JC is portrayed as a Bondlike secret agent, then a mystic Blakean character and then a time travelling crusader, until it is finally revealed that he is an uneducated junkie with the hots for his sister and a crap rock band. That sequence can be read as an examination of the adolescent power fantasies that Moorcock sees too much pandering too in other writers.

* although, he has certainly produced a lot of really terrible novels, knocked out over a weekend during whiskey soaked binges - take the Mars series or the Corum novels for example - in order to pay off debts or keep the creditors from the door of New Worlds magazine, but even here in these throwaway works we see the ocassional high quality piece - the Oswald Bastable novels for example and their alternative histories of teh British empire.