Michael Moorcock's favourite science fiction novels

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Moorcock says:

would guess that, Wells, Ballard and Aldiss aside, I only have about 10 SF novels I really like. Most SF is fundamentally retrospective, like modern politics. Big spaceships have an immediate soporific effect (the first time I fell asleep in 2001 I was with an amiable Arthur Clarke!) So, if you haven't read any SF, this list might suit you. Few of these books make any mention of spaceships, but they're all by substantial writers and most have a characteristic elegaic note inherited from the likes of Shelley and Wells.

Interested? The whole list, with Moorcock's comments, is here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/top10s/top10/0,6109,530819,00.html

 

[Amber]

Very interesting. What was odd, was that nearly all the author's he mentioned I'd heard/ read of, but only with a couple actually read that specific book. Hmm. Maybe I should try them out

 

[Blue Tyson]

Yeah. I have read most of his, but a minority of those on that list.

 

[The Wanderer]

Interesting list, I've only read, Dick, Bester, Aldiss of those, all of those great books

I find Moorcock Highly readable and entertaining, without there being much to think about

 

[iansales]

Odd that most of those books are from the early 1970s, and most of the writers were associated with the New Wave...

 

[Addy]

It's funny since knights and wizards have a soporific effect on me. And yet, I've heard so much about Moorcock that I'd like to give him a try. Is there any book of his in particular that would appeal to a soft SF fan?

 

[iansales]

Try Behold the Man.

 

[j d worthington]

Depends, as he's rather diverse in the sorts of tales he writes. He's never done any hard sf that I can think of, though. Behold the Man is a possibility; so is Mother London, or The Cornelius Quartet (earlier pub. as The Cornelius Chronicles). A lot of his fantasy is not really much like the run-of-the-mill, in part because his concerns are almost directly opposed to the mindset that lies behind most fantasy, so you might give The Eternal Champion (the novel) a shot, and see what you think. Other examples worth checking out would be The War Hound and the World's Pain or Blood....

 

[Connavar]

I know he is seen as a classic writer and all but why is it everytime i see a link with him, he disses things here and there.

Is he a fan of his own voice and opinion? or just its unlucky that when people links to what he has to stay its something like that epich pooh thing? Which i found funny but thats prolly cause i dont care much for epic/high fantasy

Sure he doesnt have to like spaceships in SF but for some reason it irks me he sort of sounds like a SF with a spaceship having a role isnt a good SF.

What do you guys that have known how he is prolly a long time think?

 

[j d worthington]

There's a certain amount of truth to the complaint, yes; but I'd say that's partly because it's such pronouncements that tend to get people to notice. When a writer praises someone's work, it's usually used by the publisher as a blurb, and everyone else forgets it within minutes; but when they have something harsher to say, that gets people's attention. Moorcock has had a lot of very positive things to say about writers over the years (Ed Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Jorge Luis Borges, J. G. Ballard, Pamela Zoline, Alfred Bester.... the list goes on and on), but those simply don't get much of a reaction. These do.

There's also the fact that Moorcock is an old polemicist, so when he comments on such things, he expresses himself in very strong terms -- a bit hyperbolically, in fact; so one has to balance such broad statements against other things he's said elsewhere, as these statements are intended not only to express his opinion, but sometimes also to rouse debate and get discussion going as well.

I've been a fan of Moorcock's since I first discovered his work in the early '70s, so I'm always interested in what he has to say ... which is not the same as always agreeing with him, by any means. But he usually has something worth thinking about, at very least, so I'm always interested....

 

[Addy]

Depends, as he's rather diverse in the sorts of tales he writes. He's never done any hard sf that I can think of, though. Behold the Man is a possibility; so is Mother London, or The Cornelius Quartet (earlier pub. as The Cornelius Chronicles). A lot of his fantasy is not really much like the run-of-the-mill, in part because his concerns are almost directly opposed to the mindset that lies behind most fantasy, so you might give The Eternal Champion (the novel) a shot, and see what you think. Other examples worth checking out would be The War Hound and the World's Pain or Blood....

I went and ordered Mother London. I'll post something after I read it. Thank you all for the recommendations.

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

I find Moorcock Highly readable and entertaining, without there being much to think about

Moorcock said that most of his books were meant to be entertaining, but he also added that, if someone wanted to find more profound thinking in them, they could find it.

I agree.

 

[j d worthington]

Well, as you probably noted, I certainly find a lot to chew on in his books. Even his earlier work has a lot more thought behind it than Moorcock is willing to admit; the writing in those may be wonky, sometimes crude or rough, but the ideas, the concepts, and the philosophical underpinnings are certainly there.... but then, what would you expect from a man who has admitted that the first book he actually bought as a child -- using his own money -- was Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan? Just keep in mind that darned near all of Moorcock's work is allegorical in nature... sometimes "mere" allegory, sometimes very subtle allegory interwoven with realism... but all of his work plays on different levels....

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

I recently re-read the first Elric series. I found it profound, this second time (I've grown up a little).

Didn't Moorcock publish the very first Elric novel when he was twenty-one?

 

[Addy]

I just got Elric of Melniboné. I'll be reading it next, after I finish what I'm currently reading.

 

[j d worthington]

I recently re-read the first Elric series. I found it profound, this second time (I've grown up a little).

Didn't Moorcock publish the very first Elric novel when he was twenty-one?

Let me think a minute... He was born in 1939, and the first Elric story ("The Dreaming City") was published in Science Fantasy #47, June 1961; the first part of Stormbringer (which was a serial), was published in #61, Oct. 1963. The first book of the series (The Stealer of Souls, comprised of the stories "The Dreaming City", "While the Gods Laugh", "The Stealer of Souls", "Kings in Darkness", and "The Flame Bringers") was published in 1963, while the novel version of Stormbringer (with about a quarter of the material cut) was published in 1965. (Later, in the late 1970s, Moorcock restored the material using the original serial, and revised the novel slightly as well.)

So... he published the first story of the series when he was about that age, but the first actual novel (if you include Stormbringer as such, which was actually conceived as a quartet of four novelettes comprising a larger story, from what I recall him saying) wasn't published until a couple of years later, in serial form. The first book of the series came out about the same time. The first actual novel of the series, written as such, was actually Elric of Melniboné, published in 1972....

(Ummm... the Elric series -- as well as several other things of his -- has had a very complicated publishing history.....)

And now you have much more information than you ever wanted to know.....

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

Thank you. Information is never enough. I am an information addict.

So, he had really been writing that first stuff when he was sooo very young.
Astounding maturity

 

[j d worthington]

You think that's amazing? He wrote the original version of his novel The Golden Barge when he was "around eighteen".... The Sojan stories began appearing around 1957 -- crude stuff on the whole, but as the series progressed, they began to become much more sophisticated in the ideas he was exploring....

And his first (short story) version of "The Eternal Champion" saw print in June 1962....