Amph "I Was A Thousand Times More Evil Than Thou!" - The Moorcock Thread

So, I've been reading the Chronicles of Corum and I thought I'd make this thread. Given Michael Moorcock's rather substantial influence when it comes to the fantasy genre (dark fantasy, in particular), creating a thread dedicated to the discussion of his oeuvre (much like the Tolkien thread) seemed appropriate. This can also include any adaptations of his work, obviously.

 

I'm a big fan of his and his approach to fantasy. The Elric series was one of my formative books during my teenage years, and his Jerry Cornelius tales blew my mind. A real master.

 

I started out reading the Elric and Corum material and by the time I got to the Erekosë novels, I was convinced that he totally deserved his legendary status. Sure, his novels are far more brief because of the pulp format, but he was a trailblazer.

Frankly, he deserves to be more of a household name.

 

Can we talk about his scathing polemics about reactionary genre authors? Those might legitimately be my favorite works of his.

The opening paragraph of Starship Stormtroopers, for example:

I mean goddamn.

 

Moorcock?

Paging Darth Punk

 

I can quote full paragraphs of Epic Pooh.

 

You'd need about 50 liters worth of aloe vera to relieve burns that hot.

 

Too many words for thread titles in bed....

I finally read a collection of Stormbringer and though I was not blown away I did geek out when Elric summoned Stormbringer and one million of his friends to destroy an enemy.

 

I've read Hawkmoon, a large chunk of Elric, the first Corum trilogy, and The Eternal Champion trilogy. Sometimes I love his work, sometimes it gets a little samey, but always worth reading. As a big fan of Jim Starlin's Adam Warlock stories from the 70s, the debt they owe to Moorcock is obvious.

 

Anything that uses the multiverse concept that Moorcock made prevalent in modern fantasy owes a debt to his work.

 

I'm surprised so little of his work has been adapted for film /tv .

is he opposed to adaptations or has no-one really bothered ?

 

It has more to do with the latter than the former. However, he was so impressed with Julien Blondel's graphic novel adaptation of Elric that he called it his favorite adaptation.

 

There have been many comic adaptations of his works.

 

He hated the film adaptation of The Final Programme (though it's a guilty pleasure movie of mine).

 

I had no idea that it was adapted into a film.

 

I loved Michael Moorcock's Elric series as a young teen. I illustrated it myself, with my own (terrible) art style. I sort of wish I still had some of those drawings.

 

A tv show

Ok. I'm in.