When I was a kid, all my friends read Michael Moorcock’s sprawling Eternal Champion series. Endlessly resurrected and reincarnated, the Eternal Champion exists to right the balance between Law and Chaos. According to Moorcock in the introduction to the 1994 edition of the novel, The Eternal Champion: I use the ideas of Law and Chaos precisely because I am suspicious of simplistic notions of good and evil. In my multiverse, Law and Chaos are both legitimate ways of interpreting and…
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And so we come to two of the most influential and prolific fantasy writers of the 20th Century, Andre Norton and Michael Moorcock, as we follow intrepid literary explorers Mordicai and Tim Callahan on their voyage of discovery through Appendix N at Tor.com. Tim and Mordicai have been none too gentle to some of the writers in Appendix N, including L. Sprague de Camp, Gardner Fox, and even Roger Zelazny. But in Norton and Moorcock, they find authors they can…
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We covered several high quality reprints from Titan Books last year, including Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron; Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu; and books by James P. Blaylock, Guy Adams, and others. But their accomplishments don’t end there. Starting in January of this year, Titan began reprinting Michael Moorcock’s early steampunk trilogy Nomad of the Time Streams, beginning with The Warlord of the Air, originally published way back in 1971: It is 1973, and the…
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No matter what your opinion of Michael Moorcock, you can’t deny that he’s a versatile writer; from the pulpy adventures of Dorian Hawkmoon to the sophisticated high literature of Mother London, this man seems capable of writing anything, and Von Bek, a collection of three stories that focus around the family of the same name and their quest for the Grail, is proof. This is especially true of the first book: The Warhound and the World’s Pain, which focuses on…
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Last week Tor.com ran a terrific article by Michael Moorcock about the origins of his (recently reprinted) Hawkmoon stories. In ‘The Genesis of Hawkmoon‘ Moorcock talks about method, motive, and how the big cultural changes of the sixties heavily influenced his work. Firstly, the man’s writing MO is legendary, and he wrote fantasy fiction with a journalistic mindset: fast with no revisions. The political elements of Hawkmoon, in which a far-future Britain is the ‘Dark Empire’ opposed by a German…
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Joe Mallozzi’s online book club is reading Moorcock’s The Stealer of Souls this month (there’s already been some discussion here; Moorcock himself will appear as guest today, Wed. 6/10/09). So I thought I’d say a few words about the book… but which book is it, anyway? That’s not a rhetorical question. Geeky details beyond the jump, cobbled together from various copyright pages, the wise words of Mr. Wikipedia, and other stuff I read somewhere once or heard someone say.
Michael Moorcock turned sixty-nine yesterday, and it’s hard to believe that this prolific, vocal, daring, and sometimes vociferous (see Wizardry & Wild Romance for an idea of what I’m talking about) Grand Master of SF is a senior citizen. Best known, of course, for the brooding albino prince Elric and his soul-hungry sword Stormbringer, Moorcock’s restless energy hasn’t confined itself to one hero, genre, or way of telling a story. So whether it’s the other aspects of the Eternal Champion…
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A Review by Ryan Harvey Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. City of the Beast by Michael Moorcock Planet Stories (160 pages, September 2007, $12.99) “I enjoyed it enormously. It was kind of a holiday for me,” Michael Moorcock once remarked about writing the “Kane of Old Mars” series. Reading the first of these novels, City of the Beast, is exactly like taking that holiday with Mr. Moorcock. Imagine chucking all your possession so you can buy…
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It’s a new shelfie and we’re up to number eleven. And this one is my Dashiell Hammett collection. His face is the first one on my Hardboiled Mt. Rushmore. So, he’s got a solid shelf in my Hardboiled collection. William T. Nolan’s bio on the far left has some good info, but he’s a bit of a hack. He doesn’t miss an opportunity to run down Carroll John Daly to make Hammett look better. It’s juvenile, and Hammett doesn’t need…
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Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (author, screenwriter, podcaster, and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS first two magazine releases (also Mele’s review of #1), and NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes (July of 2024). Now, as of Sept 19th, NESS continues this epic trend of presenting contemporary adventure fiction in fun ways with their second crowdfunded book DOUBLE-EDGED…
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