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Note to the reader: This column has an unconventional structure.
Indeed, (The English Assassin) is so logical an end to the series, I’m not clear why Moorcock plans a fourth. I take it that his enthusiasm for the fourth, provisionally entitled The Condition of Muzak, must have ebbed, inasmuch as it has not appeared in the last three years, while he is known to be working on other projects.
Peter Nicholls, Foundation 9, Nov 1975
The Condition of Muzak by Michael Moorcock
Allison and Busby Limited
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1977
Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize
“Of course”, said Alan, “it’s really all a question of lifestyle. There isn’t any alternative when you only have one choice”. In the background the Beatles sang Ticket to Ride at low volume on the stereo, and Alan hummed along as he loaded ammunition into his Imperial 200 typewriter.
“I see what you mean”. Alex found this amusing. “It all comes down to fashion in the end. You can’t buy the costumes any more”.
The Entropy Tango by Michael Moorcock
A Jerry Cornelius Novel
New English Library
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1981
Jerry Cornelius was born into the magazine New Worlds. Over the years, in a series of novels and short stories, Moorcock and many other writers (notably Norman Spinrad—see his The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde) took Jerry through a series of apocalypses. He was perhaps the most successful metaphor of entropy, that guiding principle culled from thermodynamics that the new wave writers paid so much lip service to. (See Pamela Zoline’s The Heat Death of the Universe—one of the metaphor’s most extreme manifestations, though totally unconnected with Jerry. And that is probably the most profound connection of all.)
He is beautiful, ageless, bisexual, multi-talented, murderous, drug-sodden, an eternal adolescent who is privy to the secrets of time travel and semi-immortality. He is both ruthless and sentimental, equally at home in a squalid crash-pad or the exotic palace of an obscure Indonesian potentate.
Neil Spencer
Review of The Condition of Muzak
New Musical Express, 2 July 1977, page 56.
The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius
by Michael Moorcock
Allison and Busby Limited
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1976
The flying boat settled at its cruising altitude of 50,000 feet. The reverberations of the four huge engines shook the cabin. Alex stropped his knife gently backwards and forwards, testing the edge occasionally to see how keen it was. “What are you going to do now?”
Alan looked out of the window at the swell of the sea far below. “I thought I might go to Australia”, he said, “but the Israelis won’t give me a visa”.
Alex shrugged. “Perhaps it’s time to transmogrify?”
“I don’t think so”, said Alan. “I’ve done it too many times. It doesn’t look any different from the other side”.
“You know best”. Alex began to shave the hairs on his legs, one by one. As he shaved, he whistled Dixie.
The Alchemist’s Question
Being the Final Episode in the Career of
The English Assassin in
The Opium General and Other Stories
by Michael Moorcock
Harrap Limited
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1984
Jerry Cornelius is the paradigmatic native of the inner city; his roles constitute a genuine paradigm set of strategies for living there.
John Clute
The Repossession of Jerry Cornelius
The Cornelius Chronicles
New York: Avon, 1977
From the streets below there came the sounds of M16s as the revolutionaries played with their victory. Alan moved the curtain gently over the window and took the telephone off the hook. “From each according to his abilities”, he said softly, “To each according to his needs”.
Alex looked up with a puzzled frown. “Was that the one who played the piano?” he asked, “Or was it the one with the greasepaint moustache?”
“Both”, said Alan.
The whimsicalities to be found in all the books are, in fact, not random, not mere conceits, but make internal references. That is to say, while I strive for the effect of randomness on one level, the effect is achieved by a tightly controlled system of internal reference, puns, ironies, logic-jumps which no single reader may fairly be expected to follow…
Michael Moorcock
In Lighter Vein
Sojan
Manchester: Savoy Books 1977, page 156
Jerry was a creature of the 1960s who hung on into the 1970s. By the time that the 1980s came along he was a bit of a has-been, almost a member of the establishment. The 1980s were the wrong time, the wrong place and full of all the wrong people. And that seems to be the reason for subtitling the new Jerry Cornelius novel as the final episode in his career. The mood of the book is sad, shot through with nostalgia. Most of the characters are there on stage; but many are not. Frank Cornelius, Karen Von Krupp, Mrs Cornelius. They are dead. Not as they have died so many times before, but permanently removed. The times are all wrong, and they won’t be back again. They’ve closed down the roof garden at Derry and Toms.
“Give Catherine my love”.
“She’s always had it, hasn’t she?” Una softened. “Or what you call love. You’re getting feeble again. I had some hope of you in the sixties. Even the early seventies”.
“Well, I can still make it then, can’t I?” His awkward attempt at machismo was awful. “I think I’ll hit Prague next”.
“Leave it out Jerry. Instant gratification will be the death of you. Try growing up”.
“But I don’t want to be a might-have-been”.
The Alchemist’s Question
The Opium General and Other Stories
Goodbye Jerry. It was fun while it lasted.
The Final Programme by Michael Moorcock
Allison and Busby Limited
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1969A Cure for Cancer by Michael Moorcock
Allison and Busby Limited
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1971The English Assassin by Michael Moorcock
Allison and Busby Limited
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1972
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