From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Michael Moorcock's Swords Trilogy
Date: 22 Jul 92 17:08:23 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami) writes:

>Hello Netters,

>  I just finished reading Michael Moorcock's "The Swords' Trilogy".
>  The books are really good and they certainly thrilling and not 
>  monotonous. It gets a little chaotic in the third book "The King
>  of the Swords". especially with the Chapters in Medieval England 
>  which were really a good surprise.

>  Some Questions:
>  ---------------

>  3. Is our World one of the "Million Spheres" that are in conjunction
>     and there are therefore Millions like it? is every Sphere a
>     planet? a universe?

Hmmmm, mileage varies. I think Moorcock once said he saw them kinda like
Parallel Worlds.


>  4. Why are the "Chaos Deities" (The knight, queen and king) are
>     called "The Sword Rulers"? apart from being standard Fantasy
>     buzzword I can't see any relationship between them and a Sword.

That's from Moorcock's standard mythos. Basically all the worlds consist
of a battle between Chaos and Law. In some worlds Law rules, in some
Chaos, but there's a battle going on. In many of the worlds this is
actually represented by Gods, of Chaos and Law. These Gods take a few
forms but some of them appear in more than one world. Humans can be
agents of either Chaos or Law. Some humans have a special destiny. The
Eternal Champion has the destiny always to fight in the battle in one
incarnation or another. This was because of his crime. Sometimes he
remembers past and future lives, sometimes not. There's also often a
Champion's companion.

The other main feature is what amount to magical artifacts. There's the
Runestaff and I think, Corum's Silver Hand, but mostly there's the
Sword. This is made of the same primal stuff as Law and Chaos and
sometimes is an entity in itself. Again, it varies slightly in different
incarnations.



>  5. Any other books by M. Moorcock?

Just a few. You might want to dig out the second Corum series:

The Oak and the Ram
The Bull and the Spear
The Sword and the Stallion

then there's the seven books in the Runestaff and Count Brass series.
The Eternal Champion in this one is Hawkmoon.

Then try the Elric books, there are six or seven of these. It's kinda
confusing since different editions carry different adventures and I
never did quite figure out the sequence. This also has the most
demoniacal version of the Black Sword. The books are darker in mood and
quite powerful at times.

Then there's the Erekose/John Daker books. Erekose is the first
incarnation of the Eternal Champion. Together
Erekose/Hawkmoon/Elric/Corum make up the Four Who Are One. All
incarnations of the Eternal Champion who fight alongside each other in a
special battle.....

Jerry Cornelius is also technically the Champion, but the style and mood
of these books is more abstract and less fantasy. Similarly the Oswald
Bastable books and others based on relatives and friends of Jerry
Cornelius. There was a film made of The Final Programme starring Jon
Finch as Jerry (and YES, I'd love a copy...)

Then there's the Dancers at the End of Time books. A kind of satirical
fantasy of superpowerful humans in earth's last days. They get to visit
Victorian London, one of Moorcock's favourite scenes. I liked these, but
it depends on your taste. They're definitely not your average fantasy
books.

There are a few other offshoots of the Champion Chronicles such as The
Ice Schooner, set in the same world as one of the Erekose books. There's
The Blood Red Game, an unusually psychological spacewar story. There's
the Fireclown book "The Winds of Limbo" and a couple of others. 

Moorcock also did a scientist-on-mars trilogy in the Rice_Burroughs format.

His most controversial book was probably Behold The Man. A story of how
a persecuted and neurotic jewish boy travels back to see Jesus and finds
a drooling retard. He then sets out to make the Story true by acting it
out himself. It got banned in quite a few libraries and schools years
ago....

There was a followup of this called Breakfast In The Ruins I think.

Moorcock also did a few short stories which have been anthologised. 

Most of the Champion fantasy books were knocked out at one every three
days (not kidding) when he tried to keep New Worlds magazine afloat,
many years ago. He has a few more serious books like Gloriana etc.
Mostly his more modern stuff.

I'm sure I've missed out a few gems like Sojan and The Golden Barge and
others that don't spring immediately to mind. I'll leave it there for
the books though and pass on to other stuff....

Many scenes from Moorcock novels have been depicted by the fantasy
artist Roger Matthews (?). I can remember stuff from Corum, Champion of
Garathorm, Tanelorn, The End of Time, the Fireclown.....

Moorcock has also been associated in various ways with rock music. he
had his own band The Deep Fix, named after one of his best short
stories. They produced one album: The New World's Fair based on another
favourite scene: a fairground after the end of the world. The style is
almost but not quite folk rock, with some narration from Moorcock. they
produced the singles "Brothel In Rosenstrasse" and "Dogem Dude". There's
also a tape just been released by Adrian Shaw at Cyborg Records (I can
get the address if anyone is interested).

He did some work with Blue Oyster Cult and they've done a few songs on
the Law/Chaos idea, the Fireclown (Great Sun Jester), and the Black
Sword (Stormbringer).

Moorcock's most famous connection with rock music though is undoubtedly
with the British band "Hawkwind".

Hawkwind started out in 1969 as very much an acid rock/hippie band. The
UK answer to the Grateful Dead. They played Free Festivals and layby's.
Their music had settled down by 1972 to a kind of soft metal with loads
of synthesisers. They varied it though, some tracks were just
straight-out acid rock jams and some were quite lilting snth tracks
featuring saxophone or violin depending who was in the band at the time.
They had one major hit single with "Silver Machine" in 1972.

Moorcock came across Hawkwind in 1973 simply because they were all
hanging around Portobello Road/Ladbroke Grove in London. through their
itinerant poet Robert Calvert (now deceased) Hawkwind had developed a
science fiction background to their music, often basing songs on a
mixture of SF and hippie mysticism. Moorcock appeared at a few gigs and
read poetry while the band played.

Eventually, in 1974 the Collaboration led to the album "Warrior on the
Edge of Time" based on Moorcock's Eternal Champion books.  Moorcock both
plays and narrates on the album.  It's one of Hawkwind's best albums by
one of their best lineups. 

Some of Hawkwind played on the Deep Fix album and Moorcock ocasionally
guested at Hawkwind gigs. Hawkwind continued through many lineup changes
and still with the SF ethos, with songs based on Damnation Alley and
Jack of Shadows amongst others. In 1982 they again collaborated with
Moorcock on the Choose Your Masques album which featured the Law/Chaos
idea in the title track, and other of Moorcock's ideas in tracks like
"Coded Languages".

The collaboration again became closer culminating in the 1985 album The
Chronicles of the Black Sword which detailed the Story of Elric and the
Sword Stormbringer. Moorcock did narration on the album and on parts of
the tour which followed and featured mime actors playing Elric,
Zarozinia, the chaos gods etc. The Live Chronicles double-album is a
recording made on the tour and again features Moorcock narrating the
story between the songs based on it. Again, definitely some of
Hawkwind's better stuff. The live album has just been released on CD.

Hawkwind still continue on after more lineup changes (there have now
been over 60 members of the band) and are currently touring Germany.
There's been no recent collaboration with Moorcock but I wouldn't rule
it out. I'd still like to be at a Hawkwind concert and see a portly dark
haired gentleman walk onto the stage and start reciting a poem or
story...

Anyway, if anyone wants to follow up the Hawkwind stuff just drop me
some email. There's also a Hawkwind/Blue Oyster Cult mailing list where
info on records/tours/etc is passed around and folks being spread around
the planet a bit, help each other find the albums....


>Thanks for any information and ilumination,
>  

You're welcome.

>    David Ben-Ami

FoFP