Metatemporal Detective

This Man Knows How to Write

Neth Space has just posted a review of Michael Moorcock’s forthcoming work, The Metatemporal Detective.I’m really glad to see he likes the book, especially since Neth confesses to being a Moorcock virgin. Those already initiated will know that pretty much everything in Mike’s extensive canon takes place across the various quantum realities of his “multiverse,” wherein the majority of his protagonists (and a few of his antagonists as well) are all various permutations of the same reincarnated soul. What’s more, this particular book not only collects and unifies all of Mike’s Seaton Begg stories, but also ties in directly with his recent Elric trilogy as well, so for Neth to declare that the book is “one of the more enjoyable books that I’ve read in a while” really makes me smile. He further says that “My immediate impression of Moorcock’s writing was one of awe and appreciation for someone who clearly is a master of language. The writing was an absolute joy to read while never becoming flippant. In mere moments, the mood was set and characters brought to life. This man knows how to write.”

Update: Just noticed that The Fantasy Review posted their thoughts on The Metatemporal Detective as well, which I’m pleased to say are equally as positive: “…an entertaining collection of short stories that are highlighted by controversial figures, engagings dialogues, vivid landscapes and enigmatic characters. Moorcock does an excellent job of creating engaging mysteries that kept me guessing until the very end. If you are a fan of mystery and intrigue I would recommend checking out this book. If are a fan of Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga then this book is an absolute must read and if you don’t pick it up you should be ashamed of yourself!

Update Two: And the Library Journal says, “Moorcock’s storytelling is impeccable, his humor both arch and to the point. Most libraries should consider adding this themed short story collection to their holdings.”

This Man Knows How to Write Read More »

Interzone 211: Michael Moorcock Special

Issue 211 of Interzone is a Michael Moorcock special. In addition to its regular content, the issue contains these bits of Moorcockanalia.

  • Guest Editorial: The March of the Whiteshirts
  • ‘The Affair of the Bassin les Hivers‘ (short story)
  • Lovers: A Memoir of Mervyn and Maeve Peake (extract from a Moorcock work in progress)
  • London, My Life! or The Sedentary Jew (extract from a Moorcock novel in progress)
  • Interview with Andrew Hedgecock: Staring Down the Witches (with previously unpublished photos)

“The Affair of the Bassin les Hivers,” incidentally, is one of Moorcock’s tales of Metatemporal Investigator Sir Seaton Begg, here in Paris to assist Commissaire Lapointe, in an adventure involving a certain mysterious albino. The story is collected in the forthcoming The Metatemporal Detectiveas well, out this October.

Update: Rick Keffel’s latest Agony Column looks at The Metatemporal Detective as well, while waxing nostalgic about growing up reading Moorcock as well as remembering Moorcock’s band the Deep Fix. He says, “It’s easy to get sucked back into Moorcock’s entertainingly dense and historically rich style. What’s particularly nice here is the way that Moorcock manages to pay tribute to the mystery writers who inspired him while writing some very peculiar bits of very weird fiction. “

Interzone 211: Michael Moorcock Special Read More »

Eternal Vigilance

Michael Moorcock is the subject of a big, eight page interview in the second issue of the new SF media magazine, Death Ray. Among other things, Mike talks briefly about his forthcoming novel, The Metatemporal Detective.

“We have to keep struggling in order to maintain justice — the Balance,” says Mike. “The price of freedom is to quote again, eternal vigilance. My next book, The Metatemporal Detective (due in October from Pyr), might otherwise be different from anything I’ve done before, but ultimately that’s the same message it offers.”

Meanwhile, over on his blog On the Front, John Picacio talks about the cover, posting the final front cover image, the image sans type, and the spine/back cover wrap. Elsewhere on John’s blog, he discusses the Death Ray issue and – for Elric fans – he gives a glimpse of one of his interior illustrations for the upcoming Del Rey reissue, Elric The Stealer of Souls. Together with the image on the right, these represent the first look at “the Picacio Elric.”

Eternal Vigilance Read More »

Metatemporal Matters

The fabulously-talented John Picacio has just delivered the final cover illustration for Michael Moorcock’s forthcoming work, The Metatemporal Detective.The book, coming from Pyr this October, collects for the first time eleven tales of Sir Seaton Begg vs. Count Zodiac the Albino (perhaps better known to the world as Elric of Melniboné), including the never before seen tale, “The Flaneur of the Arcades d’Opera.”

From the book description:

Seaton Begg and his constant companion, pathologist Dr “Taffy” Sinclair, both head the secret British Home Office section of the Metatemporal Investigation Department–an organization whose function is understood only by the most high-ranking government people around the world–and a number of powerful criminals.

Begg’s cases cover a multitude of crimes in dozens of alternate worlds, generally where transport is run by electricity, where the internal combustion engine is unknown, and where giant airships are the chief form of international carrier. He investigates the murder of English Prime Minister “Lady Ratchet,” the kidnapping of the king of a country taken over by a totalitarian regime, and the death of Geli Raubel, Adolf Hitler’s mistress. Other adventures take him to a wild west where “the Masked Buckaroo” is tracking down a mysterious red-eyed Apache known as the White Wolf; to 1960s’ Chicago where a girl has been killed in a sordid disco; and to an independent state of Texas controlled by neocon Christians with oily (and bloody) hands. He visits Paris, where he links up with his French colleagues of the Sûreté du Temps Perdu. In several cases the fanatical Adolf Hitler is his opponent, but his arch-enemy is the mysterious black sword wielding aristocrat known as Zenith the Albino, a drug-dependent, charismatic exile from a distant realm he once ruled.

In each story the Metatemporal Detectives’ cases take them to worlds at once like and unlike our own, sometimes at odds with and sometimes in league with the beautiful adventuresses Mrs. Una Persson or Lady Rosie von Bek. At last Begg and Sinclair come face to face with their nemesis on the moonbeam roads which cross between the universes, where the great Eternal Balance itself is threatened with destruction and from which only the luckiest and most daring of metatemporal adventurers will return.

These fast-paced mysteries pay homage to Moorcock’s many literary enthusiasms for authors as diverse as Clarence E. Mulford, Dashiell Hammett, Georges Simenon, and his boyhood hero, Sexton Blake.

Metatemporal Matters Read More »

The Metatemporal Detective

Very happy to announce that we’ll be producing another book with the wonderful Michael Moorcock. We’ve just inked a deal for The Metatemporal Detective, a short story collection featuring Sir Seaton Begg, the multiverse’s most famous metatemporal detective, as he battles his age-old enemy Count Zodiac (sometimes known as Elric of Melnibone) across the infinite moonbeam roads of the multiverse. The book will include an original tale, “The Flaneur of the Arcades d’Opera,” to provide a concluding note to the detectives battles with his arch foe.

Moorcock says, “The world of the stories is mostly set against a London where electric trams and other electric vehicles are the norm, where the internal combustion engine doesn’t exist, where mounted tram robbers ply ‘the lines’. New Orleans is run by a mysterious people who seem to speak a form of French patois and are called the Machinoix. And in the American set stories there are pools of ‘colour’ which are the power sources, while in Biloxi the Biloxi Fault threatens to blow up the world and the Mississippi is running backwards. We are never entirely sure, however, if these are the same world or intersecting ‘planes’ of the multiverse. As in the Cornelius stories, that’s up to the reader to decide.”

More details – cover artist etc… – as they become available.

The Metatemporal Detective Read More »

Scroll to Top