{"id":256,"date":"2010-12-19T02:52:26","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T02:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/geekcurmudgeon\/2010\/12\/19\/in-celebration-of-michael-moorcocks-birthday-part-1\/"},"modified":"2012-08-17T05:18:34","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T05:18:34","slug":"in-celebration-of-michael-moorcocks-birthday-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/geekcurmudgeon\/2010\/12\/19\/in-celebration-of-michael-moorcocks-birthday-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"In celebration of Michael Moorcock’s birthday Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, December 18, is Michael Moorcock<\/a>‘s birthday. In celebration of this event, I am re-publishing (in two parts) my lengthy interview with Mooorcock. The piece originally appeared as part of the defunct Scifi.com webzine Science Fiction Weekly<\/span> and was reprinted in my 2003 book Geek Confidential<\/span><\/a>. I’m presenting the interview as it originally appeared back in 2001.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n"Dreamthief’s Daughter" by Robert Gould<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nMichael Moorcock is one of the most prominent, prolific and popular writers in the Western world. His prodigious output includes rock songs, comics, screenplays, essays, and over seventy novels. Best known for his multiverse of interlocking heroic fantasy characters, Moorcock was recently awarded the World Fantasy Grandmaster Award For Life Achievement and is the recipient of many literary awards. Several years ago Moorcock moved from London to Lost Pines, TX, Science Fiction Weekly<\/span> recently caught up with him at his home to discuss the latest Elric novel The Dreamthief\u2019s Daughter<\/span>. What we got was oh so much more.<\/p>\n

\nHow has the response been to The Dreamthief\u2019s Daughter<\/span>?<\/span><\/p>\n

MOORCOCK:<\/span> Oh, it\u2019s been brilliant. So far everybody who\u2019s read it has loved it. The weird thing about it is that every woman who\u2019s read it, and this is really strange, has had vivid dreams as a result of reading it. Not bad dreams, just very vivid dreams.<\/p>\n

\nWhy do you think that is?<\/span><\/p>\n

I have no idea. A writer never knows when he\u2019s hit the chord. I mean, they know when they\u2019ve done a good job, but they don\u2019t know when they\u2019ve hit the chord with the public. You never know that. I mean, you can think you\u2019ve done it, and you publish it and wait for applause and the public says, \u201cBugger off, you sad old fool.\u201d I mean, I thought I did that with The Final Programme<\/span>, and it took about 20 years for it to get through. I thought, \u201cWow! They\u2019ll love this,\u201d and they thought, \u201cWhat the hell is this?\u201d So you never know. All I can really say is that the people who really like furry animal stories are still not going to like this any better. It\u2019s not going to be a happy, sentimental tale of how a lot of really nice people get together to solve a problem against a lot of really, really nasty people. All the villains are nicer than the heroes.<\/p>\n

\nIt\u2019s been nearly a decade since the last Elric novel, Revenge of the Rose<\/span>. What made you decide to come back to Elric?<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit like a homing instinct. About once every ten years, I write a couple of Elric novels. This time I\u2019m doing three. I seem to get fresh ideas for Elric novels about once every decade. It\u2019s as simple as that. To some extent, the ideas for these novels came out of working on the comic [Michael Moorcock\u2019s Multiverse<\/span>]. You know, doing an Elric story for the multiverse comic and thinking about that and sort of locking that in to real historical periods, I realized that I could develop that a bit. And so, in a sense, a lot of my recent stuff, you can find a sort of template for it in that multiverse comic. It\u2019s where I tried out a lot of ideas. <\/p>\n

\nSo you would suggest the Multiverse comic for your fans, then?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, not really, no. They\u2019re completely baffled by it. But from my point of view, it\u2019s a kind of seedbed where a lot of the other stuff has been coming out of. And certainly you can look back to the Elric story in the Multiverse<\/span> comic and see some of the ideas that are beginning to\u2026Also, in Tales From the Texas Woods<\/span> there\u2019s a kind of an Elric story which refers to the same underground world and so I developed some of those ideas further. In a way, it\u2019s bringing together a number of ideas I\u2019ve been working on, knocking around for some years<\/p>\n

\n
\nArt by Walter Simonson<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhy do you think it\u2019s Elric that you keep coming back to, as opposed to your other fantasy characters?<\/span><\/p>\n

Elric simply does work on more levels than any of the other characters. When you think about it, there\u2019s more Elric figurines, more Elric comics, more Elric product. And when you look at Amazon, it\u2019s all Elric. The best-selling books of mine are all Elric books. So clearly there\u2019s a lot, you know. He\u2019s certainly a character I identify with much more closely that any of the others, personally. I really do. And no matter how many people say, \u201cI prefer Corum,\u201d or, \u201cI really prefer Hawkwind,\u201d I always think, \u201cWell, they\u2019re all right, but here\u2019s my best lad. Here\u2019s Elric.\u201d And Jerry Cornelius is really a version of Elric more than he is a version of Corum or anyone else. So again, Elric is really one of the dominant figures in the whole thing. Someone asked me about Elric, and I said, you know, in a way he\u2019s Pierrot. A romantic, tragic but, from another viewpoint, a comic figure. In Commedia D\u2019ell Arte<\/span>, Pierrot is essentially someone who\u2019s constantly striving for something and constantly failing, so that\u2019s why your sympathies are with him. A failed trickster. On one level that\u2019s what Jerry Cornelius is, and that\u2019s what Elric is, i.e., their failures are magnificent. What that says, what that\u2019s constantly saying to the reader is that it is worth striving to do things, but there\u2019s a price you pay for things. There\u2019s always a price, and my characters always have to pay a price. They don\u2019t come home in the end and everybody gets a piece of cake, a nice cup of tea and they all say, \u201cHooray, hooray, we\u2019ve saved the day. The rings are all back in the box or whatever and we\u2019re a finer, wiser, and happier people since saving the world from this terrible evil of people who speak with funny, bellowing voices and thus immediately identify themselves as baddies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nWhy do you think Elric has remained popular for almost 40 years?<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that he is probably, of all of my fantasy heroes, all of my epic heroes, he\u2019s the one who most embodies my own ideas, my own struggles, my own sort of psyche\u2026my own moral questions and that sort of thing. And he remains a very modern, existential sort of hero. He can quite easily develop as I develop. There\u2019s still plenty of development in Elric\u2019s character, because he\u2019s set up right. He\u2019s already asking the questions, he\u2019s already dealing with the problems. It\u2019s odd, really. I don\u2019t know of very much work of this particular kind that does that, except for science fiction. Science fiction, oddly enough, does a lot more of what I tend to do in fantasy. I\u2019ve noticed I don\u2019t read a lot of fantasy\u2014I never did. I just started writing it. I just happened to have the facility. Pretty much all the other stuff in that form has been published since I started writing it. So I\u2019m not particularly interested in it as a genre. I didn\u2019t start writing it because there was a big genre out there to write into. There was me and Tolkien. Basically, at the beginning, me and Tolkien were selling about the same, which was very very few. Tolkien was regarded as just another writer like [Mervyn] Peake who had an enthusiastic following, but wasn\u2019t in any way mainstream or likely to take off. In a sense, I started writing Elric as much in contrast to Tolkien as I was writing it in contrast to Conan. I didn\u2019t like Tolkien because it had a fairy story quality. It didn\u2019t have what I would regard as a properly tragic quality. It was too sentimental for my taste. I\u2019m attracted to lyrical, romantic, tragic kind of stuff, rather than the 5 people solve a problem together, which is essentially the Tolkien formula. It\u2019s the formula which most people prefer. It\u2019s the one that goes into RPG games and stuff like that. I\u2019m writing about alienated individuals who are fundamentally solitary, who don\u2019t really want do an awful lot with other people. And again, it\u2019s my own experience. I pretty much brought myself up, and I pretty much looked after myself in my own feet from a very early age. I was earning my own living from the age of 15. I don\u2019t think in terms of five friends getting together to solve a problem.<\/p>\n

\nHow is producing an Elric novel now different than it was back in the 60\u2019s?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s no different in one sense, and that is it\u2019s just as hard. And the reason is because I deliberately make it harder for myself. I don\u2019t make it harder for the audience\u2014that\u2019s not the idea. The idea is to write a book that the audience is going to buy. I mean, these books are also written for money. I\u2019m not trying to put off people, but at the same time, obviously I can\u2019t make compromises. I just have to write what I write. But at the same time, my idea is not to put obstacles in the way of somebody buying it. I\u2019m not going to make it a difficult read. What I\u2019m going to do is make it a difficult write. I\u2019m going to give myself new tasks that I haven\u2019t solved before. I\u2019ve said this about rock and roll before, the thing that gives great rock and roll its quality is that it\u2019s always not quite sure where it\u2019s going. It\u2019s never quite sure it\u2019s going to get there, you know? And everything: voice, instrument, everything, the great rock and roll is just on the edge of\u2026 it\u2019s always just expanding itself. Essentially, I was winging it with Stormbringer<\/span>. I was sort of riding a very fast motorbike but didn\u2019t know quite where it was going. I just hoped to God I could hold on and keep steering over the bumpy bits. So you need to set another standard, a higher standard, that doesn\u2019t interfere with the reader\u2019s enjoyment of the narrative or stop them from getting any pleasure from the book they would normally get. They don\u2019t need to know what you\u2019re doing, but you have to do it for yourself. And the other analogy is essentially how you get a good rock and roll voice on stage. If you raise the mike up above the level of your head, you\u2019re straining to reach the mike and in that act of straining to reach it, you introduce tensions, which are, again, essentially the tensions that are in rock and roll. That\u2019s why operatic voices can\u2019t sing rock and roll\u2014trained voices can\u2019t sing certain songs that untrained voices sing better, i.e., Pavarotti singing a Willie Nelson song is crazy, and yet Willie Nelson could probably just about sing any Pavarotti song and it wouldn\u2019t sound crazy, because he would modify his mouth rather than his diaphragm to change notes and things like that. He would just sing it. He would have found a way of singing it, and that\u2019s one of the things that\u2019s interesting. That what attracts you to science fiction and rock and roll initially, what attracted me, was the fact that they were raw, they were new, and that they hadn\u2019t been taken over by anybody. There weren\u2019t any magazines, websites, and so forth to make me feel self-conscious. That was the ambience in which you wrote and produced. You\u2019ve got to reproduce that in some way. And what I\u2019ve done is I\u2019ve made the narrative harder for me to write, but I know it isn\u2019t harder for anybody to read, because everybody that\u2019s read it has said, \u201dGreat,\u201d you know\u2014zipped through it. So I know that that works. But what I did, what I had to do in order to achieve that was something more difficult than I\u2019ve done previously. What a long answer.<\/p>\n

\n
\nPhoto by Charles N. Brown<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt seems like in the last 10 years or so you\u2019ve made a conscious effort to make the multiverse a smaller place\u2014to have the characters inter-relate more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, yeah, to some extent that\u2019s true. But what I\u2019ve also been doing is expanding. It goes both ways. And really, partly, it\u2019s chaos theory. The more I\u2019ve understood chaos theory as such, and I don\u2019t mean this kind of fashionable stuff they call chaos theory, but the actual mathematics involved in Mandelbrot, the more I\u2019ve understood that, the more rational the irrational world becomes. I\u2019ve been able to produce a much more coherent, as it were, version of the multiverse. And it\u2019s almost like there are zones in it now, whereas there weren\u2019t before. Again, it goes back to the comic and War Amongst the Angels<\/span>, which has Elric in it as well. But the other thing I discovered I could do through writing those books, and this is very deliberate, how to write a story about the same character, one story could be just straight realistic, set in Austin, say, and absolutely no element of fantasy in it at all, and the next story be about the same characters but completely fantastic. Because for me, both things are true, i.e., my imaginative life and my real life are as vivid as each other. I want to describe that experience in a story without having to rationalize it or explain it in any kind of generic way except by my own logic, my own rationale. What you\u2019re looking at in my fiction, is not so much generic work as such, but individual work that is in a sense its own genre, attempting to solve its own generic problems. The genre developed after I had started.<\/p>\n

\nWhen you say, \u201cits own genre,\u201d just like fantasy and science fiction have their own set of rules within the genre, does it have its own set of rules?<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s right. That you have to follow to fulfill reader\u2019s expectations. To give the customer what they want. My readers have certain expectations of me. Any new reader can come into my multiverse with any new book and not feel they\u2019ve got to read all the other books. But that is exactly the same as you read your first novel about real life, you don\u2019t feel you\u2019ve got to know everything about the real world. You only need to know about the real world of that book. In To Kill A Mockingbird<\/span>, you need to know what\u2019s going on in that town with those people and so forth. You don\u2019t think, \u201cOh my God! I can\u2019t read To Kill A Mockingbird<\/span> until I have read the entire history of the south,\u201d and etc., etc.,–you just don\u2019t do that. So I don\u2019t want readers to be put off by seeing that kind of coherent body of work and thinking, \u201cGod, where do I start out, and where do I finish?\u201d What I offer is the same as what maybe a movie director offers: if you fancy this aspect of my work, this aspect of my life, then go for that. I don\u2019t expect you to like Elric and Pyat. I\u2019m very glad when you do, but I don\u2019t expect you to. One of the things I said to Betsy Mitchell [editor of The Dreamthief\u2019s Daughter<\/span>] before I even began these was, \u201cI want you to know if you have never read an Elric book and your reps have never read an Elric book and your editorial people and your advertising people have never read an Elric book, it doesn\u2019t matter. This is going to be a book that you will never have to read another Moorcock title to enjoy.\u201d I\u2019m offering a broad range of entertainment here. I\u2019m like a TV channel.<\/p>\n

\nAre you waiting for the Moorcock section at the bookstores?<\/span><\/p>\n

I used to be the Moorcock section, and this is unfortunate. The bookstores used to have a Moorcock section. That was in my heyday, before all these other f—–s came along. But at one point, it was just Tolkien, and he didn\u2019t really have a section as such, and then there was me. And it\u2019s absolutely true, everybody said this at the time, I was a category. I was sold as a category. I was sold, essentially, to the distributors as a category: \u201cHow many Moorcock\u2019s do you want this month?\u201d Since then there have been some fine new books and an awful lot of bad xeroxes, but I\u2019ve never been out of print anywhere in the world, really. I mean, 40 years and I\u2019ve stayed in print\u2014that\u2019s not bad. And most of them are readable. The other thing I\u2019m proud of, and again, people say this and I feel it\u2019s true, but obviously I can\u2019t propose it myself — my books don\u2019t actually go off in quality. Again, it\u2019s a question of personal pride. I couldn\u2019t do anything but my best. Just because you produce a nice line of furniture that\u2019s very good and lasts and everybody says, \u201cOh, I\u2019ll buy Moorcock furniture,\u201d you don\u2019t immediately cut the quality down so that people fall down and their tables fall apart. I feel that special relationship that I have with the reader. My deal with the reader is that I deliver the best quality I possibly can. Furniture you can use. That does the job it\u2019s supposed to do. I mean, there\u2019s a chance I\u2019ll get senile and lose this ability, but while I\u2019m not, that\u2019s what I do. It\u2019s an old-fashioned family business which takes pride in what it produces!<\/p>\n

\nMore in Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, December 18, is Michael Moorcock‘s birthday. In celebration of this event, I am re-publishing (in two parts) my lengthy interview with Mooorcock. The piece originally appeared as part of the defunct Scifi.com webzine Science Fiction Weekly and was reprinted … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n