The Stealer of Souls (59 page)

FINAL JUDGEMENT

by Alan Forrest (1965)

S
TORMBRINGER IS A
magic sword, a great, evil blade with a life of its own. It sucks souls like a vampire sucks his victims’ blood. It is the real hero-villain of Michael Moorcock’s strange new novel set in a blood-soaked and bewitched world, anti-time and anti-history, in which nightmare armies battle, statues scream and heroines can be turned into big white worms at the drop of a warlock’s hat.

Mr. Moorcock stirs up this hell-brew with an inventiveness that leaves one gasping. His is the territory that has always been dear to a certain kind of English writer, the genuine exotic, who exists to remind us that we’re really a most exotic race.

I’m thinking of people like Mervyn Peake and, in the last few years, Jane Gaskell.
Stormbringer
(Herbert Jenkins, 12/6d.) has, for me, the same kind of offbeat integrity and complete involvement with a dream-world that impressed me in
The Serpent
, Miss Gaskell’s novel about Atlantis.

Mr. Moorcock’s Bright Empire of Melniboné existed “ten thousand years before history was recorded—or ten thousand years after history had ceased to be chronicled, reckon it how you will.” It is far from easy to describe, but it is a kind of primitive myth-land with touches of Victorian Gothick, Wagnerian darkness and even undertones of the Book of Revelations.

The plot is about the battle between the Forces of Law and Chaos for nothing less than the future of the universe. The characters have a kind of human form, but we’re told they are less than men, ghostly epic-types who live only to intrigue and slaughter to settle the shape of quality of the world of real men which is to follow them.

So
Stormbringer
is an exciting fantasy about the eternal struggle of Good and Evil. The forces of Order are led by Elric, the last ruler of Melniboné, a red-eyed albino who has little real physical strength, but draws it from the soul-sucking sword. With Stormbringer in his hand, he is ten feet tall and a match for any Theocrat called Jagreen Lern, his warrior-priests and the Lords of Hell. Without the sword, he couldn’t take on a reasonably skilled light weight.

Elric is an excellent character, pretty well-rounded and convincing for a myth-figure. He could have been the familiar strong, but lilywhite hero. Mr. Moorcock doesn’t make him any such thing.

Elric and Stormbringer—between whom there’s a skillfully established love-hate relationship; neither can do without the other—take the field in a world ruled by chance, destiny, sorcery, all the supernatural forces that strangle men’s free will. The atmosphere is chilly and oppressive and that’s, perhaps, my only quibble at Mr. Moorcock’s fascinating novel.

I don’t ask for sweetness and light from science fiction, fantasy and its associated literatures, but I wish more young writers like Michael Moorcock would show us characters who are real masters of their fate and not just dancing on a cosmic puppet-master’s strings.

But I wouldn’t have missed
Stormbringer
for anything. The excitement and blood-letting never lets up, from the moment Jagreen Lern kidnaps Elric’s wife and Elric and his buddies set hot-foot across the Sighing Desert and the Pale Sea to dish the villains of Pan Tang.

Elric himself is no goody-goody, his crimson eyes burning with hate as phantom horsemen bear down on him. “He was capable of cruelty and malevolent sorcery, had little pity, but could love and hate more violently than ever his ancestors.” He’ll lop a man’s head off for sheer expediency and ask questions afterwards.

But slowly he emerges as a lone goodish man in a landscape that drips with blood and hate. And Mr. Moorcock’s landscapes are compelling.

There are dark battlefields where bloody men come screaming out of the night, black-cowled midnight horrors with fixed grins, ghastly wailing winged women running amok with their wings clipped, doom-laden seas where black, rat-infested warships fill the air with fireballs.

Elric fights an army of vampire trees with his vampire sword as they try to tear him apart using branches like superhuman fingers. He takes a journey in time to fight that dead hero of another age, Roland, to get his magic horn.

Is there too much blood? I said the weird inventiveness of it all leaves one gasping. Does it tend to drain one dry? Is there a danger of Mr. Moorcock’s work becoming a parody of itself as this kind of literature often does? On the strength of this one book, he avoids it by a hair’s-breadth and I can recommend
Stormbringer
. In a tight corner I would rather have Elric’s sword than Arthur’s Excalibur for all its malevolent habit of doing what it likes and standing there, alive, sinister and smiling when nearly every other character has had his chips in some way.

Most of all, I feel that Mr. Moorcock’s battle between good and evil is a sad story. If it did happen in some early world of supernatural twilight, a lot of men died in vain.

Elric fought for a decent world of the future, one that he would never enjoy. What did we get? Buchenwald, the atom bomb and brainwashing. Perhaps Mr. Moorcock’s world has something? Could the sorcerers have done much worse than that?

THE ZENITH LETTER

by Anthony Skene (1924)

“Woodlands”
Oakhill Gdns
Woodford Green
Essex
2.7.24

Dear Mr. Young,

Many thanks!

The Editor of the
Union Jack
of course receives letters from readers galore as to his yarns and most of them have something to say about Zenith.

They are not all complimentary, some are very much the reverse; but the Albino is usually liked (or disliked) very much indeed.

That shows, I think, that to them, as to you—and me, Zenith is a living man. It is impossible to feel strongly about a phantasm.

One likes appreciation naturally. Literary art, so far as I understand it, is translation, by means of words, from the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader, of certain interests and emotions. When I read that for you Zenith
lived
, I was delighted to perceive that, so far as you were concerned, I had succeeded.

In 1913, I encountered, in the West End, a true albino, a man of about fifty-five.

He was a slovenly fellow: fingers stained with tobacco, clothes soiled by dropped food. Yet he was dressed expensively, and had about him a look of adequacy.

I should have forgotten him in a day or so; but when, an hour afterwards and five miles away, I sat down to have my lunch, he walked in to the restaurant and sat himself within a few feet of me.

This coincidence made an impression upon my mind, and when I needed a central figure not quite so banal as Blake for the
U.J.
stories, I re-created this albino fellow “moulded nearer to the heart’s desire.”

As I expect you will agree, Mr. Young, the lordly crook exists in most of us, only he is shackled by conventions and virtues. The Jekyll-and-Hyde trick of setting him free is, of course, a trick of the writer’s trade. One cannot, alas, have the excitement of a crook’s brief life in actuality; but one can, vicariously, with arm-chair and cigarette, experience not only the actions thereof, but the re-actions also. I am telling you what you have already divined.

Regarding my novels, I regret to inform you that I have written none. The disgusting truth is that novel-writing does not pay. I have planned a novel, and soon I shall write it. I think it will be good, but I do not expect to make more than £50 out of it. That’s that. I have to live, Mr. Young. Novel-writing is an expensive hobby.

Otherwise, you appear to have read all my long stories. In my opinion (which is probably unreliable on the subject) the best chapters I ever wrote were the first one of two in “The Case of the Crystal Gazer” and the best yarn “The Tenth Case” (published immediately after “A Duel to the Death,” in 1918). The Editor liked “The Curse of the Crimson Curtain” (published recently).

In addition to these
Union Jack
, etc., yarns I have written nothing but newspaper articles, and one or two “shorts” not worth mentioning. I have a single copy of most of my Zenith yarns, but I need these frequently for reference, and further copies are, I fear, largely out of print.

I am now writing an S.B. Library story of which, when it is published, I should like to send you a copy.

That I have awakened so strong an interest in one who is, obviously, intellectually superior to the average reader of the
Union Jack
, I find both flattering and stimulating.

Sincerely yours,
Anthony Skene

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Very special thanks to The Savoyards (David Britton, Michael Butterworth, John Coulthart), to John Davey and to the residents of Sporting Club Square for all their considerable help in locating lost or forgotten material relating to the Elric stories. They are the real creators of this edition. My thanks, also, to the late John Carnell, editor of
Science Fantasy
magazine, who commissioned the first Elric stories. To Jimmy Ballard and Barry Bayley, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to write these, and to the late Sprague de Camp, who first persuaded me to write epic fantasy. To the late Hans Stefan Santesson, who almost commissioned the first fantasy story. To Jack Vance and the late Poul Anderson, who inspired me, and in affectionate memory of Fritz Leiber, who became a friend.

And, of course, I must thank my wife, Linda, for all her ongoing help and as a proper, old-fashioned muse, praising what she likes and spurning with contempt that which she doesn’t. Some of these stories were appearing at about the same time my daughters, Sophie and Katie, were also making their first public appearances, so I must thank them and the great spoon Formulamixer for their involvement. I could say a great deal about Ron Bennett, Alan Dodd, Eric Bentcliffe, Arthur Thompson, Vince Clarke, Syd Bounds and a host of others who filled the Globe in Hatton Garden when I was a boy editor and whose fanzines were so funny, literate and had almost nothing whatsoever to do with SF or fantasy but who commissioned the odd piece from me anyway, helping me get my spurs long before the time it was seemly to be published. For John Picacio and an association that now enters its second decade. And, lastly, I’d like to thank Betsy Mitchell of Del Rey books for her commitment to making these new editions the best they could be.

For further information about Michael Moorcock and his work, please send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to:

The Nomads of the Time Streams

P.O. Box 15910

Seattle, WA 98115-0910

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M
ICHAEL
J
OHN
M
OORCOCK
is the author of a number of science fiction, fantasy, and literary novels, including the Elric novels, the Cornelius Quartet,
Gloriana, King of the City,
and many more. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine
New Worlds,
Moorcock fostered the development of the New Wave in the U.K. and indirectly in the U.S. He won the Nebula Award for his novella
Behold the Man.
He has also won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and many others.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

J
OHN
P
ICACIO
has illustrated covers for books by Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Jeffrey Ford, Charles Stross, and Joe R. Lansdale, amongst others, but his very first book cover assignment was for a Michael Moorcock work. Picacio not only illustrated the cover of the Thirtieth Anniversary edition of
Behold the Man
(Mojo Press, 1996), he also contributed interior illustrations and designed the entire book. Moorcock’s early support and encouragement provided the right nudge at the right time, and that job energized Picacio to pursue a career as a book cover artist. In spring 2001, he left his day job in the world of architecture and has been a full-time professional illustrator ever since. He’s produced cover art for major franchises, such as
Star Trek
and
The X-Men
amongst others. A three-time Hugo Award nominee for Best Professional Artist, he has won the Locus Award, two International Horror Guild Awards, the Chesley Award, and the much-coveted World Fantasy Award—all in the artist category. A little more than a decade after that first gig with Moorcock’s
Behold the Man,
Picacio couldn’t be prouder to help initiate this sparkling new Del Rey series of Elric editions. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife, Traci. For more info, please visit
www.johnpicacio.com
.

ALSO BY MICHAEL MOORCOCK

Behold the Man

Breakfast in the Ruins

Gloriana

The Metatemporal Detective

T
HE
C
ORNELIUS
Q
UARTET

The Final Program

A Cure for Cancer

The English Assassin

The Condition of Muzak

B
ETWEEN THE
W
ARS
: T
HE
P
YAT
Q
UARTET

Byzantium Endures

The Laughter of Carthage

Jerusalem Commands

The Vengeance of Rome

And many more

Praise for Michael Moorcock and the Elric Series

“A mythological cycle…highly relevant to the twentieth century…The figure of Elric often resembles many purely contemporary figureheads from Charles Manson to James Dean.”

—
Time Out

“Elric is back! Herald the event!”

—
Los Angeles Daily News
on
The Fortress of the Pearl

“[The Elric] novels are totally enthralling.”

—
Midwest Book Review

“Among the most memorable characters in fantasy literature.”

—
Science Fiction Chronicle

“A work of powerful and sustained imagination…The vast, tragic symbols by which Mr. Moorcock continually illuminates the metaphysical quest of his hero are a measure of the author’s remarkable talents.”

—J. G. B
ALLARD,
author of
Crash

“If you are at all interested in fantastic fiction, you must read Michael Moorcock. He changed the field single-handedly: He is a giant.”

—T
AD
W
ILLIAMS

“A giant of fantasy.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“A superb writer.”

—
Locus