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Michael Moorcock

I'm slightly closer, so I might go, anyway. Better than a night at the opera.
 
Moorcock says: I became interested in anarchism, which is more of a moral rather than an active platform. I’m not a Bukharinist. I’m a Kropotkinist; I think he meant Bakuninist, perhaps the interviewer mis heard him.

Michael Moorcock: “I think Tolkien was a crypto-fascist”

Michael Moorcock revolutionised science fiction with symbolism, sex and psychoactive drugs. Now, at 75, he has invented another genre.

You can’t go home again. The last time Michael Moorcock visited Notting Hill – once the countercultural cradle of his dimension-spanning science fantasies and home to the author, his young family and one of his best-loved creations, the polymorphous secret agent and flâneur Jerry Cornelius – he “pitched an absolute fit”, according to his Texan wife, Linda. The old, febrile Notting Hill of squats and squalor had long given way to iceberg houses, billionaires’ basements and the well-tended tedium of extreme wealth. The last straw came when Moorcock witnessed a woman getting out of her four-by-four wearing jodhpurs. “He was raving about this,” Linda recalls with amusement.

“The place made me feel ill,” Moorcock admits wearily. The writer and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, a friend of his, had brought Moorcock back in order to film reminiscences of his old stomping ground. “But it had become unbelievably horrible on every level,” he says. “I mean, Notting Hill had been a place of horror and violence in the 1960s and 1970s. My mother daren’t visit us. Next door was always knife fights and the police. But it was cheap and that’s what you need as a writer with a young family. Now look at it. It’s people in jodhpurs.”

This is an apocalypse that even Moorcock never expected. A money bomb went off and took away all the ordinary people.

The Moorcocks now divide their time between Paris and Austin, Texas. We meet in their apartment in the multicultural warren of the tenth arrondissement, a cosy, first-floor place with shelves crammed with Moorcock ephemera: the pulp paperbacks that first lured him into writing fiction, a promo photo from the 1973 adaptation of his novel The Final Programme – the only Moorcock book committed to film so far – and a tiny model of a vintage London tram. Before travelling to Paris, I’d asked if there was anything that Moorcock misses from home that I could smuggle in for him. It transpires that the French capital is well stocked with tea bags and Branston pickle. You have not lived until you have presented one of your literary heroes with the contraband he truly desires: four luxury pork pies. ...

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/07/michael-moorcock-i-think-tolkien-was-crypto-fascist
 
ramonmercado said:
Moorcock says: I became interested in anarchism, which is more of a moral rather than an active platform. I’m not a Bukharinist. I’m a Kropotkinist; I think he meant Bakuninist, perhaps the interviewer mis heard him.

Michael Moorcock: “I think Tolkien was a crypto-fascist”

Michael Moorcock revolutionised science fiction with symbolism, sex and psychoactive drugs. Now, at 75, he has invented another genre.

You can’t go home again. The last time Michael Moorcock visited Notting Hill – once the countercultural cradle of his dimension-spanning science fantasies and home to the author, his young family and one of his best-loved creations, the polymorphous secret agent and flâneur Jerry Cornelius – he “pitched an absolute fit”, according to his Texan wife, Linda. The old, febrile Notting Hill of squats and squalor had long given way to iceberg houses, billionaires’ basements and the well-tended tedium of extreme wealth. The last straw came when Moorcock witnessed a woman getting out of her four-by-four wearing jodhpurs. “He was raving about this,” Linda recalls with amusement.

“The place made me feel ill,” Moorcock admits wearily. The writer and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, a friend of his, had brought Moorcock back in order to film reminiscences of his old stomping ground. “But it had become unbelievably horrible on every level,” he says. “I mean, Notting Hill had been a place of horror and violence in the 1960s and 1970s. My mother daren’t visit us. Next door was always knife fights and the police. But it was cheap and that’s what you need as a writer with a young family. Now look at it. It’s people in jodhpurs.”

This is an apocalypse that even Moorcock never expected. A money bomb went off and took away all the ordinary people.

The Moorcocks now divide their time between Paris and Austin, Texas. We meet in their apartment in the multicultural warren of the tenth arrondissement, a cosy, first-floor place with shelves crammed with Moorcock ephemera: the pulp paperbacks that first lured him into writing fiction, a promo photo from the 1973 adaptation of his novel The Final Programme – the only Moorcock book committed to film so far – and a tiny model of a vintage London tram. Before travelling to Paris, I’d asked if there was anything that Moorcock misses from home that I could smuggle in for him. It transpires that the French capital is well stocked with tea bags and Branston pickle. You have not lived until you have presented one of your literary heroes with the contraband he truly desires: four luxury pork pies. ...

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/07/michael-moorcock-i-think-tolkien-was-crypto-fascist
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Very good find Ramon - always very fond of Moorcock
 
Yeah I like Mother London, but still love Corum, Elric, etc, will check this out. I think Jerry would feel very at home in London these days.
 
i have never read him, but i doubt i am missing much, the work of tolkien is full of beauty, light, darkness, huge whirling tones of creation and tiny little details, it has huge, powerful, brutes with minds of metal, scheming for more and more power and tiny, seemingly insignificant creatures, scheming for more beer and cake, with the power of the insignificant creatures winning through. The fascist gets smashed.


Tolkien was a conservative, maybe moorcock is stupid enough to think they are one and the same.

To end my rant i will give you a few lines penned by a writer infinitely superior to moorcock. "the lord of the rings is one of those things, if you do you do, if you dont you boo"
 
titchagain said:
i have never read him, but i doubt i am missing much, the work of tolkien is full of beauty, light, darkness, huge whirling tones of creation and tiny little details, it has huge, powerful, brutes with minds of metal, scheming for more and more power and tiny, seemingly insignificant creatures, scheming for more beer and cake, with the power of the insignificant creatures winning through. The fascist gets smashed.


Tolkien was a conservative, maybe moorcock is stupid enough to think they are one and the same.

To end my rant i will give you a few lines penned by a writer infinitely superior to moorcock. "the lord of the rings is one of those things, if you do you do, if you dont you boo"
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I can love Tolkien and I can love Moorcock at the same time. Moorcock has a point but I agree I don't think Lord of the Rings is Crypto-fascist, but certainly has some dubious themes. In fact in his essay Epic Pooh he actually states that Tolkien and his Oxford contemporaries were basically Tories, (no shit Sherlock), not Fascists. He's a lot more critical of CS Lewis, which I agree with.

Back to Tolkien though I mean just take a look:

The Good Guys

White, beautiful, few in number, live in beautiful places, upper class apart from Hobbits who are lovable country-folk.

The Bad Guys

Dark skinned, slant-eyed, vast in number, driven by technology at the expense of the countryside and very much working class. Orc speech anyone? The Hoi polloi.

Also cities are bad, the countryside is good. Even Minas Tirith is a place to be suspicious of.

I love both. Tolkien put fantasy on the map. Moorcock though cannot be underestimated. His worlds are very interesting places and without him and his support of fantasy and SF we wouldn't have your David Gemmels, Joe Abercrombies of today or your Stephen Donaldson of a few years back.

Robert E Howard and Lovecraft were pretty racist and misogynist at the end of the day and unacceptable, but both offer amazing fantasy. I still read both, Howard more than Lovecraft.

http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953

That's the link to Epic Pooh - its been amended, (toned down from what I remember of the original)

It's actually not a bad read.

This debunks some of the more extreme views as Tolkien as a racist. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Robert E Howard and Lovecraft were pretty racist and misogynist at the end of the day and unacceptable, but both offer amazing fantasy. I still read both, Howard more than Lovecraft.
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They weren't anywhere near as unacceptably sexist or racist as John Norman's 'Gor' series.
 
I loved both Tolkein and Moorcock as a teenager.

But I still re-read Tolkien and I haven't touched the foot-high pile of Moorcock novels in 30 years. His later work may be more durable - the last one I read was Gloriana.

The trouble is that the Moorcock books seem to be so much of a period - both of the world and of my life - that I almost can't bear to go back.
 
This latest discussion reminds me of "Dickie Davies Eyes", by Half Man Half Biscuit, though I'm not sure it settles the argument one way or the other:

Mention the Lord of the Rings just once more,
And I'll more than likely kill you.
"Moorcock, Moorcock, Michael Moorcock"
you fervently moan.
Is this a wok that you've shoved down my throat,
Or are you just pleased to see me?
Brian Moore's head looks uncannily like London Planetarium.
 
Peripart said:
This latest discussion reminds me of "Dickie Davies Eyes", by Half Man Half Biscuit, though I'm not sure it settles the argument one way or the other:

Mention the Lord of the Rings just once more,
And I'll more than likely kill you.
"Moorcock, Moorcock, Michael Moorcock"
you fervently moan.
Is this a wok that you've shoved down my throat,
Or are you just pleased to see me?
Brian Moore's head looks uncannily like London Planetarium.
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You can be a fan oF Tolkein, Moorcock and HMHB you know! :D
 
I did play The New Worlds Fair over the weekend - ahh nostalgia.

I wonder what Tolkein would have thought (and Moorcock thinks) of Game of Thrones? I'm about half way through the saga and it seems like a fantasy soap opera with added sex and gore.
 
Cochise said:
I did play The New Worlds Fair over the weekend - ahh nostalgia.

I wonder what Tolkein would have thought (and Moorcock thinks) of Game of Thrones? I'm about half way through the saga and it seems like a fantasy soap opera with added sex and gore.
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Moorcock is a friend of Martin and says that Martin went out and wrote a blockbuster fantasy novel which isn't his cup of tea.
 
Anyone read his latest The Whispering Swarm?

Completely bonkers, Semi-autobiographical, transrealist, talks about threesomes, his cock and he fights side by side with the three muskateers.

I don't know whether its genius or the ravings of a mad man.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Anyone read his latest The Whispering Swarm?

Completely bonkers, Semi-autobiographical, transrealist, talks about threesomes, his cock and he fights side by side with the three muskateers.

I don't know whether its genius or the ravings of a mad man.
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It's probably a test to see if people still read his books.
 
He was going through a bit of a revival prior to this book though as the broadsheets were actually starting to realize that he had produced some good fiction. (Yes I know he won the Guardian Fiction prize in the 70's for The Condition of Muzak).

Moorcock can be very funny. The Chinese Agent is great and I wonder if he's got his tongue stuck in his cheek with this.
 
As of October 2022, future web surfers:
https://goodman-games.com/blog/2022/10/04/live-interview-with-michael-moorcock-is-this-weekend/
This Saturday, October 8th at 4:00 p.m. EST, something very special is happening on The Official Goodman Games Twitch Channel.

Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga is a fundamental part of Appendix N literature. His work has influenced not just every fantasy role-playing game ever published, but much of fantasy film and literature as we know it. Moorcook is a master of his craft and a luminary of the fantasy genre.

The Sanctum Secorum is pleased to announce a special episode of Sanctum Secorum Live with guest Michael Moorcock. In honor of the forthcoming release of the newest book in the Elric saga, The Citadel of Forgotten Myths, Mr. Moorcock will be talking live about Elric, his new book, and more. Perhaps more importantly, he will also be taking questions from you, our viewers!

The show will be broadcast live on The Official Goodman Games twitch channel, and will also be rebroadcast via the Sanctum Secorum podcast feed as well as the Goodman Games Youtube channel. The show is being broadcast at 4:00 pm EST, allowing the entirety of the global Goodman Games fan base to take part and have your voices heard (figuratively at least).

So, join David, Bob, Jen, and Marc this weekend, on Saturday, October 8th on The Official Goodman Games Twitch Channel for a truly extraordinary experience!
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