Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #211 Read online

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  A sense of shamanism

  Another Moorcock series that has grown in stature and significance over last 25 years is his alternate history of the 20th century, Between the Wars, also known as the ‘Colonel Pyat tetralogy'. The first Pyat books were published in the last decade of the Cold War; the third in a period of political uncertainty after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe; and the final book with the world caught between the Scylla of resurgent religious fundamentalism and the Charybdis of the Project for the New American Century. So to what extent were Pyat's memories of the nightmare years of the mid-20th century infected by events going on outside the books?

  "It was exhausting to write all the volumes in the Pyat sequence but especially exhausting to do the final book, The Vengeance of Rome, partly because the language of fascism (not necessarily Nazism) was coming back as I wrote. When I conceived the sequence in the mid-70s we could reasonably believe that was behind us, apart from minority groups, at least in the West. I know of course that it still existed in Russia and the Soviet sphere. Indeed, it was experience of that which sparked the idea for the book. I wasn't to know quite how relevant to the present the books would increasingly become.

  "Just as in science fiction, where you sometimes conjure up a vision which increasingly represents the present, there is a sense of shamanism involved when politics and public rhetoric reflect what one's writing about. As events came to repeat the 1930s (as did the rhetoric) it did become much harder. One wished that Pyat had lived another twenty or twenty-five years so he could deal with the events and make comparisons. But I was also pretty sure that readers would be able to make those associations. As I've said elsewhere, I don't have dumb readers!

  "All this went through my mind, of course, when pulling the threads together. And many critics saw the comparisons. The stupidest review, typically, was by D.J. Taylor who, if he read the book at all, missed much of the humour and ironic associations. But I write books for people who read with some attention, as I do, so I knew I could trust them to see the connections, even though Pyat, who died in 1977, wasn't able to applaud the rise of Thatcher, Reagan, Blair or Bush. He died, in fact, before the world changed, before Atlanticist Tories supported Blair, before Southern Democrats became Reaganites, before the reality shows and lifestyle TV."

  I ask Moorcock to what extent—if any—his response to social, political and cultural influences has altered in recent years. Has he mellowed?

  "My reaction to world events has always determined what I write. I've done it better in some books than others. I just read Cheering for the Rockets, which is my angry old man response of ten years ago to Clinton's gunboat diplomacy, but by the time 9/11 came I think I was already writing a bit more subtly about events in Firing the Cathedral. However, my anger was probably less checked by humour in that, King of the City and a few other things than it was in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

  "All that said, I did feel the strain of events seeming to catch up with the story in The Vengeance of Rome. The main problem, however, was finding the right resolution and I'm pleased that, in most peoples’ opinion, I seem to do it. I remember having similar problems with the last Cornelius novel, The Condition of Muzak. I was interested in what John Clute said in comparison of the two sequences. I suspect he was bang on. There are slightly similar resonances, of course. Both come to ground in encounters with the central character's mother."

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  Memory and need

  In Alan Wall's new book on writing fiction (Need to Know? Writing Fiction) he talks about the Pyat books in terms of the way they tackle the relationship of memory to need, and the link between need and prejudice. But to what extent does Wall's take on the Pyat books ring true for Moorock?

  "Memory and need. Good point. I'm looking forward to reading Wall's book. He's one of the best novelists I know and very intelligent. One of the few who has made it his business to educate himself in theoretical physics to a pretty high level.

  "Pyat, of course, is providing himself with desperate rationalisations at every turn and is using anticipation of a utopian future. His false memories do contribute to his need for a safe and simple future—what formulaic political systems are always promising to supply."

  So has the theme of memory and need informed the writing of other books—for example, those found in Waterstone's SF section as well as those on the ‘literary fiction’ shelves?

  "Memory and need. I grew up in a very malleable landscape, constantly subjected to bombing. Thus it became rather 18th century in its permanence, where the great architecture of Wren and Hawksmoor dominated the surrounding area for a while until 1950s brutalism began to put all that concrete back into the city and make London a lot less plastic in fact. Maybe that's the architecture of uncertain times. It certainly became more flexible by the ‘70s and ‘80s, though I'm noticing a return to brutalism in London again, which might have something to do with an underlying anxiety about the future.

  "Myth and need, of course, is a pretty regular theme in my stuff, really since I began writing. The Elric stories even touch on it, especially in peripheral stories like To Rescue Tanelorn and Earl Aubec. By 1965, with The Final Programme and Behold the Man, I was well seated on that particular horse and have hardly got off since.

  "Mother London states it pretty clearly, as have other books. We reinvent the past in order to reinvent the future, if you like. Certainly to reinvent the present. It's a process which has been well in evidence in England at least from Edward III's time. Morte D'Arthur is a reinvented history to suit the needs of the day, written at Caxton's own request. Probably the first ever commissioned ‘best seller'. The Faerie Queene was more high-minded, I suppose. And then there's Shakespeare's history plays.

  "One of the reasons I wanted to move to Texas was because the process was still very much in evidence. Scarcely 100 years from the great Western myths (which Larry McMurtry has done so much more with, in my view, than Cormac McCarthy) to the present. Conscious invention of ‘memory’ which serves the ambitions of a culture is by no means new. And it's proven especially useful for those embarking on genocide as America did during its expansion into native lands and as Arabia would like to do (as she is doing with George W. Bush's compliance in uniting previously disparate factions) as far as Israel is concerned."

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  Wandering off the narrow road

  The fact that themes such as this cut across the whole of Moorcock's work highlights one of its key attractions—and the cause of skull-splitting migraines for literary critics. Anyone dipping into the body of stories he has told over the past 50 years—he was first published in his teens—gradually realises they are reading a massive, complex and interlinked series of story cycles that cut across fictional universes, styles, forms and thematic concerns. At some point in the 1960s his narratives began to intertwine—tendrils from one story cycle meandering across genre boundaries into another. So how did it happen?

  "Probably through not knowing any better. I enjoyed such a wide range of writing from an early age—from Edgar Rice Burroughs to George Bernard Shaw to H.G. Wells. I was seventeen or so before I realised I didn't have to have three names to be a writer and used to put my middle initial in there to give it the right cadence. Given the range of techniques presented by this wide reading, it meant I could come up with a technique that was partly my own—at least when I started regularly writing for adults. I'm a typical autodidact, which means I've read widely, have enthusiasms outside the norm (Meredith, for instance) and feel frustrated with received opinion and conventional academic criticism. As a result I have an impulse towards, if you like, ontology. That is, I try to bring all my enthusiasms together.

  "Thus, when I was editing New Worlds I sought to unify this broad range of interests. I wanted it to be about art, science and writing, including poetry, and that was the chief reason for making it a ‘glossy': so w
e could reproduce contemporary artists like Paolozzi and Hamilton, so we could run photographs and so on."

  But what were the demands of a story that led him to opt for a particular approach, technique or genre?

  "When I had a particular idea that was best suited, say, to fantasy or SF, I'd write it as fantasy or SF. If comedy was a better way of handling it, then I'd use comedy. Intervention in Edwardian ideas of imperialism, especially from the ‘left'—benign colonialism—gave me Warlord of the Air. I read vast amounts of ‘minor’ Edwardian stuff at one point and I liked airships. Around 1970 I decided to concentrate on 100 years from 1870, since for me that was when modern times began—when the arguments began to anticipate post-war arguments—on race, politics, religion and so on. Also I'm just curious about everything. I like travelling. I like to flâneur around new cities. I like to sit and watch the world. I think William Burroughs was a big inspiration. Not a strong influence, any more than he was on Ballard, say, but an inspiration: he made you realise it was possible to get on top of contemporary life, that you didn't need to stick to the narrow road of modernism.

  "I had a lot of stories to tell. I learned how an icon—a single image, if you like—could become an entire narrative, so you didn't need to write that story, just refer to it, and get on with a more personal or different kind of story. If I cared about the reviewers, I'd write stuff reviewers were more comfortable with. I remember Jimmy Ballard and I sitting in Finch's one Saturday and both of us agreeing we could write narrow stuff but that there was no point in it. And then there's the other aspect—just having fun. Writing a comic. Writing a sword and sorcery story. If it didn't take up too much time I'd love to write another sword and planet story in the old Planet Stories tradition. I did it a bit in an homage to Leigh Brackett a while ago. It's sort of like playing the blues for fun. All the better if you can get together with a couple of mates. It does you good to return to your roots.

  "My Metatemporal Detective stories offer me the same pleasure. People refer to Sherlock Holmes, but they don't know about Sexton Blake, who is Begg's true inspirer, as Zenith the Albino was Elric's. Nice to have fun bringing them together. Keeping one's hand in while something a bit more ambitious bubbles on the back burner."

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  The cracking of the dam

  Over the years, Moorcock's genre blending has continued unabated. Most writers demonstrating virtuosity in popular forms and ‘litfic'—to borrow an expression from Colin Greenland—tend to distinguish their mainstream and genre work through the use of pseudonyms. There are very few at the other end, allowing their stories to leak into each other. The other notable example that springs to mind is William McIlvanney, whose ‘litfic’ characters flit into his crime stories. This seems to have had a negative impact on the critical appraisal of McIlvanney, so I ask Moorcock if he feels his work would have received a more positive response from reviewers and critics if he hadn't been so cavalier in relation to their expectations and the categories they impose.

  "I don't know. It mostly depends on luck. Pynchon, for instance, wasn't doing anything quite as interesting as the New Worlds writers in the 1970s and yet he got a lot more attention—and continues to. Of course he has an acceptable ‘literary’ style and can, indeed, write very well. As can DeLillo and as can Michael Chabon, both of whom draw on a pretty wide range of influences and techniques. Oddly, I'm used to both responses. My first books, like Behold the Man and The Final Programme were not reviewed as genre books. It wasn't until the sword and sorcery books started going into hardback that critics became confused. I remember an early review by Peter Ackroyd. He'd been sent a Corum book and was baffled by the reception I'd been given by the likes of Angus Wilson. Only with Gloriana, I think, did Ackroyd start to take me seriously. I don't, of course, get anything like the same review space in the US that I get in the UK, where people are, perhaps, more used to me reviewing general books and doing all kinds of journalism. Also Americans are actually more prone to pigeon-holing than the British. Even when publishers do their utmost to ensure that my work doesn't get in the SF section of Waterstone's, the bookshops categorise it as SF (check out Amazon)."

  Is Moorcock suggesting things are better than they used to be? Is fiction becoming less categorised?

  "I don't mind this, really, because it gets people who like my non-generic work into the SF and fantasy section where they might come across some superior work by other writers. If someone looking for Vengeance of Rome has to look in the SF section the chances are they'll take a look at an M.John Harrison or a Jeffrey Ford—there are so many good writers these days—so it's all shifting in the right direction. People such as Harrison, Disch and Ballard, who have always been ‘cross-over’ writers, have all improved the situation. Of course, there are still Litfic writers like Atwood who try to distance themselves from genre, perhaps because they genuinely believe they're inventing the tropes themselves. P.D. James's Children of Men creaked with generic conventions of the most boring kind, whereas Aldiss's Greybeard, written on the same theme some forty years ago and avoiding all the conventions isn't even in the shops.

  "I do my best in reviews to raise these points and occasionally you see something has filtered through. We keep on keeping on. There are a few better educated literary editors out there these days, not all of them cautious about their broader enthusiasms. There have always been writers who have done well as literary writers, of course, but have championed the best genre work—Angus Wilson didn't just champion New Worlds and me at the Arts Council. He recommended that Sidgwick and Jackson publish Bester's Tiger! Tiger! which is the book which got me interested in SF. Doris Lessing. Angela Carter. It wasn't only Amis and Conquest who promoted SF in the ‘50s but Amis was a calculating self-publicist in a way the others simply weren't and so promoted one kind of SF. The habits which created The Movement extended to SF and jazz which ultimately proved so disappointing to the poor old buffers. I remember a conversation with Edmund Crispin in which he said he preferred SF to remain a little pool of its own, not become part of the mainstream. They found it hard to keep that dam from cracking, eh? It's pleasant to know that overall we had time on our side!"

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  Peake experiences

  In addition to Modem Times, Moorcock has been working on The Sedentary Jew, a reworking of the myth of the Wandering Jew in which the protagonist is doomed to remain in London for eternity (see page 16). In addition, he is writing a memoir of Maeve and Mervyn Peake (see page 13).

  "The Peake memoir has proven very difficult to write, not only because I haven't always trusted my own memory but also because when I have succeeded in bringing the relevant memories back other baggage has come with them, making me confront myself in unexpected ways. Clearly, I've buried pain with memory. The story of the Peakes is a tragic one. Although I've now written at least half of it, it has been a struggle and remains a struggle. I doubt if it will read like a struggle. I hope not. But it's exhausting. Peake's deterioration into a form of Parkinsonism and the effect it had on his wife and family—and to a lesser extent his friends—wasn't easy to bear at the time and, of course, becomes almost as hard to bear when not only Maeve and Mervyn but other dear friends have died prematurely. I depend on the notion of a complex multiverse which has order and meaning, and in which justice can be created if it didn't previously exist. The reality of Peake's tragedy threatens that notion.

  "There's another reason I've had trouble working on my Peake memoir: I used to have a horror of simply remembering things wrong. My editor at Cape, Dan Franklin, told me not to worry. Even if someone disagrees, it's still your version of a story. I was a bit uncertain because I know Jimmy Ballard was a bit upset with some of my memories in Iain Sinclair's BFI book on Crash, and I wouldn't have hurt his feelings for worlds. So I became a bit inhibited. Still, maybe it's best to tell stories about only dead friends, I don't know. Or about my childhood. I've actually been enjoying reading Pete W
eston's history of SF fandom and contributing to it, seeing pictures which bring back memories of when I was an impossibly fresh-faced child editor. It's a wonder anyone took me seriously!"

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  The kindness of strangers

  Nine years ago I interviewed Moorock for The Third Alternative, and he was notably upbeat in relation to prospects for liberty and the sane, humane application of technology. But has the increasing authoritarianism of UK and US governments in the wake of September 11 2001, and the alarming realignment of church and state (in both developed and developing nations) done anything to erode this optimism?

  "Well, I'm still hopeful that we can start getting our democratic rights restored. There's a group here whose meetings I attend called the Bill of Rights Defence Committee and it's a very wide variety of political opinion from right libertarians to left anarchists—liberals, radicals, gun-controllers, anti-gun-controllers—and we are all concerned about the erosion of civil liberties. I suspect that if we get Democrats back in to power next time, they will be under pressure to repeal much of the ‘emergency’ legislation which has been subject to such abuse. Blair, it seems to me, had already responded to pressure. If the attack on civil rights in the name of ‘anti-terrorism’ continues, then I'd have reason to become gloomier of course. At the moment I'm cautiously optimistic we can reverse the trend. Ultimately, I'd hope people realise that by curtailing civil liberties politicians are acknowledging that Osama and Co have already won the war. The situation in Iraq can only be improved by the US/UK leaving and the UN moving in."