The French and so far only edition of Michael Moorcock’s Kaboul found it’s way, direct from Paris, into my happy hands.
This gorgeous volume with magnificent illustrations by Miles Hyman collects six stories from the My Experiences in the Third World War sequence, three previously published stories plus three new tales. The brilliant series tells the story of World War III through the eyes of the Russian KGB spy, Tom Dubrowski, who poses as antiquarian cover, a discreet Jew in a world not devoid of anti-Semitism.
The first of these stories appeared in 1979 with the latter two in 1980 and offered a Moorcock at perhaps his most prescient. Years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, he predicted the world of post-Soviet Russia with it’s oligarchies, territorial rivalries, and attempts to remain relevant on the world stage. On a more individual level, Dubrowski struggles with what it means to be a citizen of the world, one who understands much of the reality that swirls around him, but feels powerless to do anything about it. In other words, for most of us, a lot like living in the 21st century.
The previously published novellas (“Going to Canada”, “Leaving Pasadena”, “Crossing into Cambodia”) are all currently available in The Best of Michael Moorcock. The new stories (“Kabul”, “Odysseus Came Home”, “Dancing in Rome”) appear here for the first time. Yes, in French. I believe this is the first major work of Moorcock’s to appear initially in French.
I’ve been lucky enough to have read the new stories in English, natch. All three of them were written within the last decade and when combined with the previous, make up some of the best work of Moorcock’s illustrious career. He maybe writing about the end times, but after nearly seven decades, these stories showcase a creator at the peak of his skills, who does not appear near his creative end. I only hope the final three stories will find their way into an English-language edition so everyone else can share in the experience.
The occasion of Michael Moorcock’s birthday got me thinking about a little known aspect of the extraordinary polymath ‘s award-winning career: The Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup Award.
Michael Moorcock presenting the The Jack Trevor Story Memorial Award Cup to Howard Waldrop (photo: Elze Hamilton)
Maintained and awarded by Moorcock, The Jack Trevor was originally presented to the writer of the story in the Time Out series of London stories that he best liked. In more recent times, a special committee, organized by Moorcock, determines the winner, typically for excellence in humorous writing. The five hundred guinea prize is given with the following conditions: The entire award must be spent “in a week to a fortnight” and the recipient must have nothing to show for it. Most winners use the money for a big night or a foreign vacation. One winner, a trawlerman from Hull who spent the money with the expertise of a drunken sailor before he got home, had to spend the money all over again just to prove to his shipmates that he’d won it.
The Cup awarded to Steve Aylett (photo: John Coulthart)
The unique terms of the award are based on Jack Trevor Story‘s famous words when asked at his second bankruptcy what happened to money from his films The Trouble with Harry and Live Now, Pay Later. The judge wondered how he managed to go through so much without having a thing to show for it.
You know how it is, your honour ‑‑ two hundred or two thousand ‑‑ it always lasts a week to a fortnight. You can spend a couple of hundred easy just going around the supermarket.
Past winners have included Fred Normandale, Steve Aylett, Nicholas Lezard, and Howard Waldrop (the only American so honored). The memorial cup is just that. A cup with the words Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup written on the side in magic marker.
Collecting the first volume of the classic adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s bestselling fantasy saga, Elric of Melniboné marks the perfect introduction to the series’ iconic antihero, his fabled blade, Stormbringer, and his harrowing adventures across the Dragon Isle. Adapted by former Marvel Comics editor, Roy Thomas, and beautifully rendered by longtime comics illustrator, Michael T. Gilbert, and the multiple Harvey and Eisner award-winning P. Craig Russell, this definitive collection marks an essential read for all fans of sword and sorcery and brings the Moorcock’s epic tales to life with luxuriant imagination.
On the book’s title page they get the artist credits wrong. It’s attributed to Michael T. DAVIS rather than GILBERT.
“In spite of the title, which implies freewheeling space opera, there’s only one raygun to be found in Rayguns Over Texas, an original anthology edited by Richard Klaw; most stories here don’t take us off Earth, and most don’t have anything to do with aliens (attacking or otherwise) or armadas of battling spaceships. That doesn’t mean that the anthology isn’t fun, though.” – Gardner Dozois, Locus Mag
“I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.” – Bruce Sterling, from his introduction
“I love the cover by Rocky Kelley (no relation)! Bruce Sterling provides a wonderful Introduction. Scott Cupp’s essay on his SF reading is masterful. Neal Barrett, Jr., Joe R. Lansdale, and Michael Moorcock wrote my favorite stories in this collection, but there are plenty of other enjoyable stories here. Pick up a copy soon before they’re all gone!” – George Kelly,GeorgeKelly.org
Since the end of the Civil War, Texans have played an essential role in the history of science fiction. Acclaimed and influential writers such as Bruce Sterling, Michael Moorcock, Howard Waldrop, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Marion Zimmer Bradley, Gene Wolfe, Neal Barrett, Jr., L. Sprague DeCamp, Chad Oliver, John Steakley, and Elizabeth Moon all called The Lone Star State home.
Continuing this proud tradition, Rayguns Over Texas features 17 original and two classic tales that reflect the current creative state of Texas sci-fi, alongside historical essays and an introduction by Hugo award-winning, Texas ex-pat Bruce Sterling.
Whatcha waiting for? Hustle you way over and pick up your copy today at Amazon.
This coming Saturday, April 18 at Austin Books, I’m interviewing Michael Moorcock about his lengthy comics career. Rather than re-iterate his accomplishments (which I did at length in a Nexus Graphica column), I decided to relate this personal and previously untold tale about Michael Moorcock and comics.
I’d know Mike for about 5 years when the idea for a Captain Marvel (or Shazam! as the folks at DC refer to The Big Cheese) comic happened. My buddy John Lucas and I talked with Mike in his home office shooting the shit. This hazy wonderland of geek ephemera delivers a memorable experience with abundance of British pulps, comics (the modern graphic novel variety and the classic Golden Age variety), novels by the famous, talented, and those inbetween, and glass cases of toy soldiers. A cloth-covered table crafted from boxes of books, a comfortable old couch, miscellaneous art, a Gold Record commemorating Hawkwind’s Chronicle of the Black Sword, and the prerequisite overflowing bookcases complete the picture.
A commission by John Lucas
The three of us were/are big fan’s of C. C. Beck’s goofy creation and his extended family. I don’t remember the exact story we concocted except it dealt with Sivana sending the Marvels to different periods of history. The proposed four issue series would pick up immediately after the heroes final Golden Age adventure, ignoring all of the ensuing DC continuity for the character. Mike suggested tapping the legendary Walter Simonson as the penciller with Lucas inks.
Though now widely respected for his work on several Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse titles, at the time Lucas was practically a neophyte with his best know output in my Weird Business anthology and some work for Caliber. To say John and I were shocked would be an understatement, but Mike wasn’t done.
He picked up the phone and called Simonson. They became good friends while working together on Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse and held each other in high esteem.
After a brief pitch, Walt was on board.
Walter Simonson’s Elric
John and I exchanged amazed glances. Sure, I could call some relatively famous people and get them to work with me (Mike was a good example), but this speed and audacity was a whole new level for us.
He then upped the ante.
He called editor Mike Carlin, who was in charge of a good chunk of the DC mythos. Carlin took Mike’s call and listened to the pitch but politely declined. Apparently DC already had a high profile Captain Marvel project on the horizon, Jeff Smith’s Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil.
Sadly, the project never got beyond that stage. Lucas still has never inked Walt Simonson but that’s okay, he did eventually get to draw Mary Marvel for DC in Starman: The Mist and now routinely gets work (including a Mark Finn-scripted story in the recent Strange Sports Stories #2). Mike and Simonson worked together on several more projects together including Elric: Making of a Sorcerer. As for me, I’m still close with Mike and John and have worked with both of them numerous times over the years (never all three of us together), but my dreams of writing Captain Marvel are long gone.
A thrilling collection of twenty-one original stories by an all-star list of contributors—including a new A Game of Thrones story by George R. R. Martin!
If you’re a fan of fiction that is more than just black and white, this latest story collection from #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R. R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.
Follow along with the likes of Gillian Flynn, Joe Abercrombie, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Cherie Priest, Garth Nix, and Connie Willis, as well as other masters of literary sleight-of-hand, in this rogues gallery of stories that will plunder your heart—and yet leave you all the richer for it.
Featuring all-new stories by
Joe Abercrombie • Daniel Abraham • David W. Ball • Paul Cornell • Bradley Denton • Phyllis Eisenstein • Gillian Flynn • Neil Gaiman • Matthew Hughes • Joe R. Lansdale • Scott Lynch • Garth Nix • Cherie Priest • Patrick Rothfuss • Steven Saylor • Michael Swanwick • Lisa Tuttle • Carrie Vaughn • Walter Jon Williams • Connie Willis
And an Introduction by George R. R. Martin!
The one thing they don’t mention is that the new Lansdale is a Hap & Leonard short story! That tale features the usual unusual shenanigans plus a song and dance number by the boys. Yes, you read that right…
Piece of Paper Press is delighted to present the first publication – in a limited, numbered edition of 150 copies – of ‘A Twist in the Lines’, a new Jerry Cornelius story by Michael Moorcock that is in part also a tribute to Moorcock’s late friend and former New Worlds collaborator Eduardo Paolozzi. When commuters board the tube at Tottenham Court Road but alight at Chatelet – Les Halles or Pelham Bay Park it is obvious that something in the multiverse is going very wrong. In Paris, Jerry’s old friend Professor Hira points out that ‘Art is science. Science is art’, and furthermore reveals that since 1984 ‘the whole of radiant time, version upon version of constructed reality, has depended for its survival on a certain artistic pattern, an essential mechanism for order.’ There is nothing else for it, Jerry must get to the Time Centre on Eel Pie Island pronto, and – armed only with a tube map and Paolozzi’s original designs – find a way back to Soho in 1982, for the central artistic pattern upon which the multiverse depends is of course Paolozzi’s iconic mosaic at Tottenham Court Road London Underground station.
In an unexpected, real-world twist, since the story was written some substantial portions of Eduardo Paolozzi’s stunning artwork for Tottenham Court Road have been destroyed or removed as part of the Cross Rail building programme.
“I’m sort of cautious about using ‘alternate history’ as a description of the Cornelius stories since they were not conceived as that. Jerry is meant to inhabit the world we know. I describe him as an urban adventurer, using the description Edmond Hamilton created for ‘noir’ thrillers — urban adventure stories. The stories are parables but nothing else, I think.
“I’ve recently come up with the fun notion of ‘Radiant Time’ as an image to suggest a universe of limitless possibilities — the human brain, in fact — situationalist strategies for the 21st century — a means of understanding the modern psyche and society. It’s balanced by the notion of Linear Time and its proponents. Pretty evident where my sympathies lie, of course! Space is a dimension of Time!”
–Michael Moorcock interviewed by Jerome Winter in the L.A. Review of Books, 20 January 2013
The edition is limited to 150 copies, which are usually distributed free by post.
Course most of the free copies don’t include a signature and inscription from both Mike and Linda.
As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of Rayguns Over Texas at LoneStarCon 3 (aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day.
It’s time to play the music It’s time to light the lights
It’s time to reveal the story list for
After an exhaustive search, here is the final list of the 19 short stories that will be included in Rayguns Over Texas. All but two of them are originals. The completed book will also include a history of Texas science fiction and a guide to Texas sf writers.
“Pet Rock” by Sanford Allen
“Defenders of Beeman County” by Aaron Allston
“TimeOut” by Neal Barret, Jr.
“Babylon Moon” by Matthew Bey
“Sovereign Wealth” by Chris N. Brown
“La Bamba Boulevard” by Bradley Denton
“The Atmosphere Man” by Nicky Drayden
“Operators Are Standing By” by Rhonda Eudaly
“Take a Left at the Cretaceous” by Mark Finn
“Grey Goo and You” by Derek Austin Johnson
“Rex” by Joe R. Lansdale
“Texas Died for Somebody’s Sins But Not Mine” by Stina Leicht
“Jump the Black” by Marshall Ryan Maresca
“An Afternoon’s Nap, or; Five Hundred Years Ahead” by Aurelia Hadley Mohl
“The Nostalgia Differential” by Michael Moorcock
“Novel Properties of Certain Complex Alkaloids” by Lawrence Person
“The Chambered Eye” by Jessica Reisman
“Avoiding the Cold War” by Josh Rountree
“The Art of Absence” by Don Webb
Rayguns Over Texas, an anthology of original science fiction by TX authors, is scheduled for release at LoneStarCon 3 (aka the 2013 Science Fiction Worldcon in San Antonio, TX).
Today, December 18, is Michael Moorcock‘s birthday. In celebration of this event, I present my essay “The Winds of Limbo Roar: The Musical Career of Michael Moorcock.” This piece originally appeared in Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse #7 and then was reprinted in Geek Confidential.
The Winds of Limbo Roar:
The Musical Career of Michael Moorcock
THERE SEEMS TO be quite literally nothing that Michael Moorcock cannot write. He has produced novels, non-fiction, comics, screenplays and music. Yes even music. Go back and watch Heavy Metal. The Blue Oyster Cult song that’s blaring while the steam shovel removes the orb from the ground is a Moorcock-penned song. “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” is perhaps my favorite Blue Oyster Cult song. Maybe the lyrics struck a chord in this pubescent mind.
You see me now, a veteran
Of a thousand psychic wars
I’ve been living on the edge so long
Where the winds of limbo roar
And I’m young enough to look at
And far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
And I’m not sure if there is anything
left of me…
The road to rock ‘n roll started for Michael Moorcock at the tender age of fourteen when he bought his first drum kit. The drums gave way to the banjo and then guitar. Moorcock got his first guitar at fifteen. He traded a huge collection of nearly priceless lead soldiers for them. Although the swap is one that Moorcock still regrets, that guitar lead him on the path to music.
In the mid-1950s the music scene divided between two major UK cities. Liverpool preferred Elvis-type rock and roll while London favored black R&B and blues. Out of Liverpool would come the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and a host of others. From London would come the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and later Hendrix and The Who. At Soho’s Gyre and Gimble in the fifties Moorcock could play beside Charlie Watts who in turn might be drumming for early cockney-rocker Tommy Steele, while Mick Jagger might dream one day to be as successful as Long John Baldry whose boogy-woogy piano player was Reg Dwight (now Sir Elton John). MM claims that Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch-hunting Committee were responsible for the rise of Britrock. In the fifties Joe drove so many good US musicians to England that the British folk and rock explosions were inevitable – “it was a magic creative mix,” says Moorcock. Black musicians got an admiring welcome in England. Moorcock corresponded regularly with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He knew Alan Lomax, whose father had recorded Leadbelly. He learned licks direct from “Rambling” Jack Elliott who in turn had learned them from Guthrie, watched Muddy Waters and Memphis Slim and a dozen other blues masters and sometimes was allowed to play along. He knew Alexis Korner, Graham Bond and many of the other famous seminal figures on the UK rock scene. Moorcock sat in with the Vipers, who would become Jet Harris and the Shadows, and rubbed shoulders with early legendary rockers like Wee Willie Harris. He hung out with Peter Green, later of Fleetwood Mac and knew people who’d played with Big Mamma Thornton. As Moorcock says, in those days unless you showed some minor proficiency on an instrument and could sing a few verses of a twelve-bar blues you felt under-educated.
In 1956 the sixteen-year-old Moorcock played his first gig in Bromley, Kent, as part of a band called The Greenhorns. Though presenting themselves as a country band complete with jackets, grey stetsons and string ties, they played an assortment of blues and Woody Guthrie “protest” songs. This didn’t go over well with audiences expecting country music. During this time Moorcock first performed one of his own compositions. “Ache in My Toe Rock,” is, Moorcock admits, an awful song, recorded as a demo in 1957 at EMI. It never made it past the acetate stage.
For the next few years Moorcock performed mostly as a solo blues act in clubs and coffee bars. He also began to write about the music he liked, producing fanzines like The Rambler. By the late fifties, when US paperbacks could not be imported into England, he’d go to Paris to find the American fiction he liked. Here, too, he met writers like Ginsberg and Kerouac and others associated with the infamous Olympia Press. The little cabarets of Montmartre were happy to employ him, giving him the money he needed to buy his books and return to London.
In the early sixties Moorcock traveled through Scandinavia and Northern Europe earning money from his music. In Liverpool, on a visit to his good friend Bill Harry, another keen fanzine producer, Moorcock vigorously resisted Harry’s entreaties that they go around the corner to the Cavern to hear some of his friends play. Moorcock hadn’t thought much of Bill’s earlier enthusiasms and refused to budge from the pub. The band, of course, was The Beatles.
The Flamingo in London was then the core of organ-based R&B, with regulars including Georgie Fame, Alan Price, the Brian Auger Trinity and other influential bands whose members would make up the supergroups of the seventies. Moorcock was a regular attendee. The musician he most admired was the legendary Zoot Money who’d “appear” in Moorcock’s 1967 Jerry Cornelius novel The Final Programme.
By now Moorcock’s literary reputation was growing and he had a young family to support. After rehearsing a new band for a couple of months, he decided to give up music for the more certain income now deriving from his fiction. For the 1965 World SF Convention in London, he made a novelty album with some of the New Worlds editorial team — Suddenly It’s The Bellyflops! — but Moorcock wasn’t satisfied with it and it was never released.
Moorcock’s music career took the back burner until 1970 when he’d encounter Hawkwind and begin a relationship which would span twenty years.
Hawkwind for lack of a better term is a space rock band. They’re an interesting mix of heavy metal, acid rock, poetry, urban angst, experiment and just general strangeness.
By the early sixties Moorcock had settled in London’s Ladbroke Grove, epicenter of the sixties international cultural earthquake. He and the radically vital New Worlds crew fit right in. Moorcock bought his groceries from Annie Lennox, was chased down Portobello Road by Marc (T.Rex) Bolan and was a near neighbor of Jimi Hendrix. Out of this world came his own skeptical gun-toting, guitar-wielding anti-hero, Jerry Cornelius.
It was inevitable that Moorcock should meet Hawkwind, still considered by many to be the quintessential ‘underground’ band. He got together with them at the insistence of Jon Trux and Robert Calvert, then writing for Frendz, a UK Rolling Stone spinoff. Moorcock would eventually write a Hawkwind comic for one issue of the magazine. The band had named themselves, they said, after Moorcock’s character Hawkmoon. Good feelings were mutual. Soon Moorcock was producing lyrics for the band.
The first Moorcock song Hawkwind performed was “Sonic Attack.” Robert Calvert had become the band’s resident poet. In Summer 197l he committed himself for psychiatric care. The band needed material and someone to perform it. Dave Brock, Hawkwind’s main man, approached Moorcock. So at a free concert, where Moorcock had already appeared with the likes of Arthur Brown and Paul Kossoff, he gave the first performance of his most famous number.
http://youtu.be/LwRvWpsiM2w
The 1972 Hawkwind album Doremi Fasol Latido clearly owed a lot to Moorcock’s Black Corridor as did the subsequent tour, when Calvert read a long extract from the book. It was released as a live double album in 1973 as Space Ritual.
Soon Moorcock was a frequent performer at Hawkwind concerts. Inevitably he returned to the recording studio for the second associated album. Based on his Eternal Champion book Warrior on the Edge of Time (1975) contained three Moorcock spoken pieces, two of which he performed himself.
1975 was a busy musical year for Moorcock. He provided banjo and backing vocals for the Calvert/Brian Eno Lucky Leif and the Longships, appeared with Hawkwind and released his own near classic album The New Worlds Fair.
New Worlds Fair featured Moorcock’s band Deep Fix, including musicians Snowy White, Kumo, Pete Pavli and Simon House, who had appeared with the likes of Pink Floyd and David Bowie. Ambitious in scope, it centers on a huge fairground operating as though everything’s normal while outside the entire world falls apart. A fascinating, well-executed concept. Until its re-release on Griffin (US) and Castle (UK) it was hard to find in good condition. The new version includes recently discovered demos and deletions. Fresh from the artistic success of NWF, Moorcock jumped into a new musical project, The Entropy Tango. Originally planned for release in 1977, it was supposed to tie in with a new Jerry Cornelius novel to be lavishly illustrated by French artist Romain Slocombe. Production problems followed and eventually Moorcock abandoned the idea, publishing the black and white illustrated book on its own in 1981. A bootleg with some of the demos was given away with Moorcock’s permission at a Dragoncon, Atlanta, 1990 where Moorcock also performed with Eric Bloom, who had originally approached him in 1977 to write for Blue Oyster Cult, subsequently recording “The Great Sun Jester”, “Veteran” and “Black Blade”, an Elric song.
In the late seventies Moorcock began work on Gloriana, based on his novel of the same name. The BBC was interested but the music project became too time-consuming and Moorcock abandoned it. He thinks that music remains some of his and Pete Pavli’s best.
Moorcock had friends amongst the pre-punk bands and was a welcome guest at early punk gigs at the Marquis. He also made friends with Goth bands like The Damned. In 1980 Virgin asked him to write the tie-in for the Sex Pistols movie Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, which was given away as a newspaper at gigs. Moorcock subsequently made a documentary on “new” punk for UK TV, featuring Siouxsie Sue and others. A music project, based on his novel The Brothel in Rosenstrasse, was abandoned in 1981. Parts of the album were later released in 1982 and 1992 and appear on various Hawkwind associated releases. Somewhere in 1981, at Dave Edmunds’ Rockfield studio, Moorcock also found time to record the songs Coded Messages and Running Through The Back Brain which appeared on their 1983 album Zones. He also played 12-string Rickenbacker on Robert Calvert’s1981 album Hype and worked on the Hawkwind album Sonic Attack.
Through the early eighties Moorcock was a frequent performer at Hawkwind gigs. The culmination of their alliance came in 1985 with the release of The Chronicle of the Black Sword. The entire album was the Elric story and included lights, graphics, mime and dance, as well as the songs. Moorcock appeared on the tour as often as he could. This album, together with the double album Live Chronicles and the video which features Moorcock, are probably the most interesting to Elric fans.
http://youtu.be/LO4iKnwA6hw
To date that’s the last Moorcock musical work. There are several Hawkwind albums with Moorcock contributions, but after his relocation to the States in the mid-nineties he has played only one live show. That was with Nik Turner in Austin, TX in 1995. His performance can be found on the live album Past or Future.
I’m sure that like all Moorcock’s endeavors and interests this is not the final chapter of his musical career. Already he’s talking of entirely re-recording New Worlds Fair. He’ll wake up one day soon and feel the bug. He’ll write a lyric, perform a gig, sing a song. Music is in his blood and soul. Maybe Moorcock’s musical career is like the Veteran of the Psychic Wars? He’s waiting for the winds of limbo to roar again!
(For more information on Michael Moorcock’s music check out Dude’s Dream by Brian Tawn, Hawkfan Publication, 1997. Without Tawn’s informative book this article would have been impossible.)
