I’m adapting to a new schedule, so posts have slowed down of late. But here are several thoughts on Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock, Fantasy & Post-War Culture I’ve been working on recently.
Alan Moore’s foreword to a recent Del Rey anthology of early Elric stories by Michael Moorcock—The Stealer of Souls—begins by framing fictional, decadent, fey Melniboné as a real culture that preceded post-war Britain. Melniboné is Elric’s empire that he destroys in the Elric Saga. Within Moorcock’s works, the Lords of Law and Chaos are the monstrous deities that lurk in the Higher Worlds and are often the foes against which Elric and others contend. Moore represents these Lords as British politicians, as the figures of authority that not only Elric but also the counterculture of the 1960s and ‘70s opposed. In a way, the notion reminds me of Gerald Scarfe’s animation of English authority in The Wall, and the Judge at the end of the film is very much something that Elric would have found in the realms of Chaos. (more…)
Words, Words, Words 