Fantastic Metropolis

Fantasy writer Angela Carter called Michael Moorcock ‘the master story-teller of our time’—a well-deserved title for an author who has influenced the literary world for over forty years. Carter, herself an avid reader of Moorcock, was keen to celebrate the importance of Moorcock’s work. In her enthusiastic review of Mother London in The Guardian, she concludes that: ‘Posterity will certainly give him that due place in the English Literature of the late twentieth century which his more anaemic contemporaries grudge; indeed, he is so prolific it will probably look as though he has written most of it anyway’.

Michael Moorcock is one of Britain’s greatest writers and he is possibly the most consistently experimental author in the world of fantasy literature. Not only did he practically invent modern British fantasy and reshape science fiction as an editor, but he is also an exponent of mainstream literature. Whilst he rejects the notion of being a genre writer, much of his later fiction could be described as fantastic realism, although he is probably most famous for his fantasy hero Elric the albino and for that icon of 1960s psychedelia, Jerry Cornelius. In The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, the “bible” for all fantasy fans, John Clute calls Moorcock, ‘the most important UK fantasy author of the 1960s and 1970s’. This is misleading, as he continues to write prolifically into the 21st century and it could be argued that his later novels are amongst his best work. Clute does, however, suggest that Moorcock is ‘altogether the most significant UK author of sword and sorcery’ and it is probably for his Eternal Champion novels that he will be most widely remembered. The extent of Moorcock’s popularity is demonstrated by his world-wide following, led by an active international appreciation society, The Nomads of the Time Streams, and by the fact that his work is translated into many languages. Type his name into any search engine on the internet and you will encounter innumerable web sites that pay homage to him. What is most impressive about Michael Moorcock is that he continues to produce novels, stories and non-fiction to such a high standard.

Michael Moorcock has won two World Fantasy Awards, including one in 2000 for Lifetime Achievement; a Nebula award; The Guardian Fiction Prize; a John W. Campbell Memorial Award and even a nomination for the Whitbread Prize. He also has a collection of six British Fantasy Awards: four August Derleth Awards, one for the short story category and, of course, the 1992 Special Award for his lifetime achievement. Moorcock has about a hundred books to his name, some of which are republished and retitled editions of earlier works, and this can prove bewildering to the uninitiated. My own Moorcock bibliography can be found in the Appendix at the back of this book.

Moorcock has written about fantasy forms in literature in his book, Wizardry and Wild Romance, one of the best books about fantasy by a fantasist, and he both acknowledges and proves through his own writing that fantasy is an important and often under-valued art form. Fantasy creates a tension between what is real and unreal, and this echoes Moorcock’s balance between order and chaos. Whilst Moorcock acknowledges the part that fantasy has played in his own success he does admit: I have difficulty defining ‘Fantasy’ as a readily definable genre—or frequently even as an element. I don’t believe that any technique or method is more or less useful than another—everything depends upon individual human talent in the end.