Fantastic Metropolis

To be honest I can’t remember whether I read all these books this year or last year, but it must have been fairly recently since I’ve been able to lay hands on most of them. Here’s my recommendations from recently published work:

Beowulf, tr. by Seamus Heaney: I was suspicious of this, a bit. But it’s brilliant and sounds good on CD, too.

Le Morte D’Arthur, ed. John Matthews. Nicely illustrated with updated revisions to text, though nothing dramatic. If you don’t have a copy, I’d recommend this one.

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, which I’ve already reviewed on this site as I have Landor’s Tower (on the New Worlds’ site) which I also recommend, though if you haven’t read Sinclair try Downriver and Lights Out first. Harrison’s Travel Arrangements. Peter Ackroyd’s London is a wonderful piece of visionary semi-fiction. He is to history what Jung is to psychology. Great stuff. I read Elizabeth Taylor and John Cowper Powys on my holidays. Upset Eudora Welty died. I had the privilege to know her and she was as sound as a bell. Great, gracious woman. If you don’t know her work check out her short stories.

Poetry—Alice Notley’s new poetry collection must be out soon from Penguin. I read it in proof and it’s wonderful. One of her best. My friend Bill Butler died tragically of a drug overdose having completed his book The Myth of the Hero. His poems Static of the Star-Filled Wind, Selected Poems 1959-1977, edited by Mike Hughes (Limited 500 copies—ISBN 0-9541070-0-4) came out recently. While I had some arguments with Andrea Dworkin’s Scapegoat, she remains one of the most original and eloquent of feminist writers. Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay deserves its Pulitzer and is of interest to anyone interested in recent American history and popular fiction. Irresistible as far as I’m concerned.

I saw a great Iranian film whose name I forget, an imaginative film more or less featuring a nomad family. Another film I saw about Iran made me realise it might actually be possible to have a liberal Moslem democracy, which takes its own path to popular democracy within its own value systems.

Outstanding books include at least three by members of this editorial board and since we have agonised over the rights and wrongs of this for far too long I said whathehell I would normally be recommending Witcover, VanderMeer and Živković in these circumstances, so here I am doing it. I suggest you sashay over to the articles on these writers if I haven’t convinced you I can still pick ‘em.

Which reminds me that John Sladek is being reprinted decently at last by Orion/Gollancz and since I am always moaning about publishers I would like to recommend the work of Malcolm Edwards and Jo Fletcher at Orion. They have produced the VG yellowback reprints and the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series which have done so much to remind the world of an adult tradition.

If you like what you’ve read of Rhys Hughes you might want to take a look at one of his Tarturus titles, such as The Smell of Telescopes and while you were with them you might also be interested in the series of Sarban reprints that excellent press is putting out. Please remember to watch out for the new John Sladek collection Maps, edited by Dave Langford (also mentioned elsewhere on this site). I’ll again recommend Steve Aylett and his new Shamanspace, which Codex recently published.

I listened to a brilliant modern rendering of The Faerie Queene on BBC Radio 4 but was too lazy to find out who did it. Anyone interested will find a long list of other recommendations at multiverse.org.

Hitler and Geli is a very good account, though not as well researched as it claims, of what I believe to be a focal point in the rise of Hitler. And, sadly, most of my other reading has been on similar subjects, with a bit of a break to read The Song of Hiawatha again and to read a bunch of books on native Americans and Vikings. Great little fantasy epic, Hiawatha. I bet someone has done it into prose. If not, there’s an easy bit of plagiarism just waiting for a writer not too fussy where the stuff comes from.

Happy reading, pards,
Michael Moorcock.