Michael Moorcock

Blood of Ambrose is Joe Mallozzi’s Book of the Month for July

Stargate writer/producer, avid reader, and all around great guy Joe Mallozzi has announced his June and July selections for his Book Club reads. For those who don’t know, Joe picks one or more titles a month, invites his many fans to read them along with him, and then invites the authors in for a lengthy Q&A. I had the honor to be the first such guest, but he’s gone on to have scores of authors on, including our own Justina Robson, David Louis Edelman, and Joe Abercrombie, as well as our friend & frequent cover artist John Picacio. Now, he’s chosen James Enge’s Blood of Ambrosefor his July selection, and before that, our friend Michael Moorcock’s Elric: The Stealer of Souls,(the new Del Rey edition with the fabulous interior artwork by John Picacio). Both great choices and I’m excited to see the interviews with both authors. Meanwhile, Enge himself is over the moon to be in the same post with Moorcock. Who wouldn’t be?

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Heliotrope # 5: Michael Moorcock Tribute

Issue # 5 of Helioptrope is out. It’s available online and as a downloadable PDF, and is entirely devoted to the genius of Michael Moorcock. It opens with Neil Gaiman’s “One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock,” and then a piece from Yours Truly, “Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man,” wherein I talk about Mike’s collosal influence on sf&f, “serious” literature, rock and roll, RPG and computer gaming, and quantum physics. Fortunately, Bryan Talbot is onhand to address my one serious omission. He discusses Mike’s colosal influence on comic books in “The Moorcock Effect.” Chris Roberson talks about his personal interactions with Mike the person in “Moorcock the Author, Mike the Man.” Also included are appreciates by Paul S Kemp, Hal Duncan, and Catherynne M. Valente, and Rhys Hughes. There’s a lot of Mike love in the issue, but that’s something there can never be enough of.

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Elric – The Heavy Metal Years

For all you sword and sorcery fans, here’s some rare footage of fantasy great Michael Moorcock joining space cadets Hawkwind to intone his Elric poem/lyrics on stage.

Moorcock was a part of Hawkwind for several years, and the band’s Chronicle of the Black Sword album was heavily influenced by his work. Cherry Red records recently secured the rights to release all of Hawkwind’s material, which had been unavailable for many years. More details at the Cherry Red site.

And, of course, if you delve into the Pyr catalogue, you will also find a couple of Mike’s current works…

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Lou on the Web

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Lots of Lou on the Web!

SFSignal is back with another Mind Meld. This one looks at Hollywood Science Fiction and asks “What other story, or stories, do you believe are deserving of being made into movies and why?” In addition to Yours Truly, responses are from Peggy Kolm, Michael L. Wentz, Michael Blackmore, SciFiChick, and the always interesting John C. Wright. Wright argues that, as a visual medium, “A science fiction movie that does not involve spectacle and special effects is not taking advantage of the primary strength of movies.” I concur. I’d pick my list from some newer works though, as nothing dates like the future. Still, as I say in my own piece, with the cost of CGI dropping, there’s going to be more of everything, so I think they’ll be enough to keep us all happy.

Meanwhile, I’m interviewed about illustrator Stephan Martiniere over on io9.com in “The Future Will Be Bio-Mechanical.” Some very nice samples of his work, including the concept art he did for the I, Robot film that happens to be the piece that lead me to put him on our edition of River of Gods.(And speaking about Ian McDonald books, although I’m not in it, there is an interview with Ian talking about both Brasyland the forthcoming The Dervish House up at Post-Weird Thoughts.)

Finally, GalleyCat uses the occasion of Michael Moorcock’s Grand Masterhood to quote me and others talking about John Picacio’s genius in a piece titled “A Grand Master’s Greatest Character Reborn.” This is, of course, about Picacio’s recent work conceiving and illustrating Moorcock’s Elric: The Stealer of Soulsreissue for Del Rey as well as our own The Metatemporal Detective.Michael Whelan’s Elric has always been the definitive portrayal of the character for me. Until now. Go see why.

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The Politics of SF

Interesting piece in The Guardian by Damien G. Walter called “The Politics of sci-fi” on the Hugos, the struggle for “literary respectability,” Michael Chabon as “the secret weapon of a genre that has always craved mainstream acclaim. Very soon we will reveal his origins as a genetically engineered Super Writer, bred to infiltrate mainstream literature with high-quality genre fiction. The Margaret Atwood droid may have violated its core programming by denying its science fiction roots, but we have high hopes that Chabon will perform better.”

Mention of Brasyland Ian McDonald (along with Charles Stross) as “among the hardest of hard science fiction authors.” And a nice acknowledgments of Michael Moorcock’s upcoming Grand Master award, with a nod to his overall importance to the field.

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Grand Master Michael Moorcock

From the Science Fiction Writers of America:

The SFWA® Board of Directors and President Michael Capobianco are pleased to announce that writer and editor Michael Moorcock has been named Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master for 2008. The Grand Master represents SFWA’s highest accolade and recognizes excellence for a lifetime of contributions to the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Mr. Moorcock is the twenty-fifth writer recognized by Science FIction and Fantasy Writers of America as a Grand Master. He joins Robert A. Heinlein (1974), Jack Williamson (1975), Clifford D. Simak (1976), L. Sprague de Camp (1978), Fritz Leiber(1981), Andre Norton (1983), Arthur C. Clarke (1985), Isaac Asimov (1986), Alfred Bester (1987), Ray Bradbury (1988), Lester del Rey (1990), Frederik Pohl (1992), Damon Knight (1994), A. E. van Vogt (1995), Jack Vance (1996), Poul Anderson (1997), Hal Clement (1998), Brian Aldiss (1999), Philip Jose Farmer (2000), Ursula K. LeGuin (2003), and Robert Silverberg (2004), Anne McCaffrey (2005), Harlan Ellison (2006), and James Gunn (2007).

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Moorcock & Picacio in Texas Signing

Michael Moorcock and John Picacio will be signing copies of the new, illustrated editon of Elric: The Stealer of Souls at Austin Books this Saturday. Copies of The Metatemporal Detective, with its matching Picacio cover illustration, will also be on hand, I’m told.

Details:

Austin Books
5002 North Lamar Boulevard
Austin, TX 78751
Austin Books · info@austinbooks.com · (512) 454-4197

Saturday, February 23rd, 4pm-7pm

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Metatemporal Detective: Best of 2007

Claude Lalumière has posted his SF, Fantasy, and Horror in 2007: Recommended Reading list for LocusOnline.

One of ours pops up under Collections:

“Michael Moorcock’s The Metatemporal Detective(Pyr) is good pulp-fuelled fun, filled with stories that deftly pastiche many modes of popular fiction, though these tales might be somewhat arcane for readers not overly familiar with Moorcock’s multiverse and his recurring cast of dimension-hopping characters and doppelgangers.”

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Time-Drinking Never Tasted So Good

Author, editor, commentator Jeff Vandermeer interviews Michael Moorcock for Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog today, talking about the origins of the Seaton Begg character in his recently released The Metatemporal Detective. The interview is a hoot, and well worth checking out in full, but here is a taste:

Amazon.com: Which of the following best describes your metatemporal detective, Seaton Begg (and why): “time-drunk slave to his insatiable appetites”, “linear successor to the hardboiled eccentrics of Dashiell Hammett,” “debonair ladies man who hardly has time out of the sack to solve crimes.”

Michael Moorcock: All of them.

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Michael Moorcock: Top 50 English Language Writers since 1945

The Times Online have just released their list of The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945. Quite a few genre names on the list, including Tolkien, Lewis, Pullman and Rowling, and also, coming in at number 50, our own Michael Moorcock. They say, ” Most of Moorcock’s 80-plus novels are unashamedly pulp. But he wins his place for a series of genre-crossing novels linked by a taste for metafictional devices — he often appears in them himself and characters occur and recur in ‘historical’ and ‘fantasy’ guises.” They discuss his major works and his influences on such notables as William Gibson, Neil Gaiman, Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd.

Meanwhile, Andrew McKie reviews The Metatemporal Detectivefor the Telegraph, in a piece called “Michael Moorcock: His Own Private Multiverse.” McKie opens by crediting Moorcock with bringing the term Multiverse to quantum physicists and philosophers, then describes his latest as, “tremendous fun for fans of Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps Sexton Blake, so long as they are prepared for occasional forays into the milieu of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, as well as Robert E Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian… This is all pastiche, and Moorcock’s fans will not be surprised to find that it is astoundingly sure-footed….I think it, on the whole, terrific. “

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