As of last month it was over a year later and this project was still running itself nicely. Only making a couple of dollars a month but it was still nice to see the shipping notification show up in my inbox occasionally.
I think I read most of the first two Cornelius books. They're an interesting mix of Spi-Fi fantasizing and a typical New Wave SF fondness for ennui and curious stylistic experiments. Moorcock calls it a quartet instead of a quadrilogy: it's not one long story, it's the same story told four times with minor alterations. In the first one super spy Jerry Cornelius is albino, but in the second he's black. Also in each iteration reality seems to be falling apart more severely.
I read these quite a while ago, but Jerry is a space captain in the Moorcock book I'm reading by audiobook now, Doctor Who and the Coming of the Terraphiles, which strikes me as a bit pornographic now that I've typed it out. Yes, Jerry's in this story too I'm told, but I havent gotten there yet. Moorcock can do that, as he's built a huge mythology around elevating his characters to archetypes.
Cornelius is recommended, but one is enough for the most part. As for his venture in the Whoniverse, a subject close to my own heart, well, it's a bit silly.
[Thanks to Prof. Faustaff for fact-checking. ]
Isn't The Cornelius Chronicles a quartet rather than a trilogy? Also, in the second novel (A Cure for Cancer) Jerry is black (or, more literally, a negative of himself from the first novel, The Final Programme) rather than an albino.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, ACfC is itself a variation on Moorcock's final Elric story, Stormbringer, just as TFP includes variations on two earlier Elric stories.