What I love about about Michael Moorcock’s fiction is that it’s crammed full of ideas, most of which never get fleshed out in the work in which they’re introduced. He throws in things that should be absolutely zany, and he often does so seemingly at random, but he imbues them with complete gravitas. It’s the presentation of gonzo weirdness with a straight face and complete seriousness that makes his novels feel like surreal acid trips. I think the Elric of Melnibone stories are the best examples of this.
I just finished re-reading The Vanishing Tower, because my brain needed a break. I’ve spent the past few months reading books on ethics, sociology, the psychology of creativity, plus a of dry economics for school. Weird fantasy is sort of a mental palate cleanser. Then I start thinking about how I’m going to explain this book to my wife, when she inevitably sees me reading and asks “What’s that about?”.
Well, Elric is a sort of anti-Conan, in that unlike Conan he’s high-born, a sickly albino, and embraces sorcery. He’s got a soul-eating sword, which killed the love of his life. He destroyed his own kingdom, where he was emperor, because stopping a usurper to the throne was more important than preserving their civilization. In this book he meets other versions of himself from other times and other realities, although none of them look or act anything like him. Oh, and he meets alternate versions of his sidekick, too. There’s a city that exists in all realities, and his current arch-enemy is trying to sack it. The enemy has an army alien lizard men riding giant lizards, who possess a sorcery that’s alien to Elric’s world. To stop them, Elric and his alters have to find a tower that appears and disappears and use it to get to yet another reality to acquire sorcery that’s even more alien. There’s a giant talking mechanical bird that people can ride. The ultimate weapon turn out to be bronze banners that fire golden light.
Yeah. What makes it work is that behind all of the strange are genuine emotional motivations. The bad guy sorcerer is holding Elric’s current girlfriend hostage, but Elric is torn between saving her and helping his friends. The bad guy hates Elric because the bad guy’s current girlfriend is Elric’s ex-girlfriend, and she’s still in love with Elric even though Elric basically slept with her then never called her. She wants revenge on Elric, and if she can’t have him no one can. The bad guy knows he’s being used, but figures maybe if he does kill Elric his girlfriend might be able to love him for real.
It’s a soap opera, albeit one with an albino sorcerer with a vampiric sword and demon-summoning bad guys with self-esteem issues. They’re all like this, folks, all of Moorcock’s novels. He doesn’t write heroes, he writes characters with serious issues who wander around doing the right thing not necessarily because it’s right, but because their emotional state drives them to it. It’s a sort of human truth that you don’t normally see in fantasy heroes.
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I was introduced to Elric when I picked up one of the early Stormbringer role-playing manuals in a used bookstore six or seven years ago. I don’t remember which edition it is but regardless, after combing through it for ideas I knew I had to read the novels. It was 5 years later before I got the chance, a (then) new friend in Houston gave me his copies after I talked about wanting to read them. I didn’t even know he had them at the time.
They are a quick read and, as you said, just crammed with one off the wall idea after another. You really get a feeling for the Chaos of the world(s) in which Elric lives. But, regardless of how seemingly ridiculous the situation, Moorcock delivers his prose with utmost seriousness (it seems) and in doing so makes it completely acceptable.
Years ago I had an Elric omnibus. A few of Moorcock’s images stuck with me but, it and I, we never really clicked. Maybe I’d already seen so many Elric ripoffs that when I found the original it just felt clichéd.
But! I think the important thing to take away from all this is that, if lizards are to lizard men as primates are to men, then, “The enemy has an army of alien lizard men riding giant lizards,” is equivalent to, “The enemy has an army of men riding giant gorillas.” Gorilla cavalry. I’ll be imagining and writing heavy metal songs about that for the next few years if anyone needs me.
I will also be the first to admit that Moorcock is not to everyone’s tastes. And not all of Moorcock is to mine. I cannot force myself to read the Jerry Cornelius novels. Part of it is that they’ve aged poorly, some if it is that I don’t know that they make any sense unless you’re on drugs.
Gorilla Cavalry would make an excellent band name.
My first exposure to Elric was actually in a Champions RPG campaign. One of the players had talked the gamemaster into playing him. It was a “Crisis on Infinite Earths”-type scenario to allow players to bring in either new or established characters. He played the character surprisingly accurately.
I was a big SF reader as a kid and teenager. BUT.. at one point I read a Hawkmoon book in the school library and it planted a seed. So, after reading Lord of the Rings in 48 hours flat, I picked up the first Elric book. Now that is fantasy. Despite a bad falling out with the fanboys around him, I still just judge all fantasy against Moorcock, and thanks to him Lieber and Anderson and Peake. Awesome, time to read it all again.
Moorcock was my introduction to fantasy, and thus I’ve never been a fan of Tolkein. That said, if you like Elric and the soap opera of his life, but want more modern writing, check out “The Steel Remains” and “The Cold Commands” by Richard K Morgan. His post-cyberpunk Takeshi Kovacs novels are still his best, but these are both pretty damned good (especially the first)