How many of these (scroll down, but later) magical masterpieces of Swords and of Sorcery have you read?
E@L has x-ed (and reddened) those he has ploughed through (27 is it?), and y-ed (and purpled) those he owns but hasn’t got around to yet, not in this realm anyway. You’ll notice that he has mainly done the pre-1980 novels and stories as he eventually turned away from such childish fun and adventure, thanks to pressing concerns, and became a boring old man at the age of 23. Maybe he overdid the fantasy schtick at the time… Maybe the guilty indulgences stole his S&S soul?
Anyway, E@L temporarily embedded his blade into Moorcock back in 1977/78 at the urging of a fellow unworldly student radiographer (who went on study for a real job as a dentist while E@L hung around on the cusp of unemployment and failure).
They are so easy to read, these slim volumes, and so much fun, at least once you get a delightedly morbid taste for soul-stealing swords and demon infested nether-realms and lots of gruesome and bloody deaths, and those dead who don’t stay dead, but aren’t zombies either, thankfully, as that would be, like, hey, a cliché.
E@L means, hey, if you're 20 years old, working full-time, studying on the evenings, are newly married and with a young baby to focus on, why wouldn’t you retreat into a fantasy world at every opportunity?
You weren’t free to go surfing on a whim anymore, at the drop of an on-shore wind and the rise of a solid swell…
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[Many years later]
So bring on the black mists and the intrigue of the gods and elementals! And get out your guitar and play some Hawkwind songs (if you know any; E@L doesn’t!).
Let’s scour the realm of second-hand bookstores and of charity store like the Salvos or Vinnies, submit ourselves to the fates of heretical churches and their sly fêtes.
Let’s overflow E@L’s already well fucking overflowing bookshelves with the adolescent fantasy dreamworld of Michael Moorcock!
More Moorcock! More Moorcock!
If you’re wondering WTF; E@L is listening to the audiobooks of the Elric saga on his morning walks, and loving them, hence this post.
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E@L considers his poor — perennially on the knife-edge of failing -- performance in his initial career (radiographer, as mentioned) due to being distracted by these stories of eternal champions like Erokosë, Jerry Cornelius, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum, and, of course, the pale, thin-blooded, reluctant, emperor, Elric of Melniboné (not MEL-kneebone but Mel-NIB-onay) with Stormbringer, his runesword, the stealer of souls!
It was not just the family stuff.
E@L means, hey, like, awesome, right?
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E@L attributes his poor performance at high school to his being distracted by those surfing whims when it blew off-shore and tide was right and swells were a solid 4-6ft (or lower)…
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E@L attributes his poor performance at surfing (he was OK, but not a star) to his mother being reluctant/unable to buy more and better surfboards for him. And for him being shit-scared of big waves. He could only afford a decent board when he left school and got a job, but see above re-marriage and progeny and work and study, and guess how well that worked out for him.
Not that he is bitter, twisted, and has his hand on the rune-encrusted obsidian pommel of his otherwordly blade…
No, his hand is on a double G&T.
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Phew! Busy guy that Michael Moorcock!
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Sigh.
E@L considers his poor history with girlfriends (only JUST plural) and wife (singular) to being obsessed with surfing. And himself. And being obsessed by obscure (to many) books, and to only ever learning four songs on his guitar and playing them on heavy repeat for 50 years yet never remembering the chord changes correctly.
And just being a selfish, ignorant dickhead in relationships, with zip EQ (see previous paragraph for pathetic excuses), and so here he is at 67, still alive despite the best effort of the invidious fates, the anger of the chaotic gods and spirits on this realm and others, only by having used the Mechanical Magic of Modern Medicine to confound his destiny and his malicious DNA, sitting alone on his balcony with a double G&T and an iPad, a thorax marred with multiple scars, a gurgling colostomy bag, and a list of the millions of books he hasn’t read, not to mention the one he hasn’t written.
Pleasant enough, right?
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But, oh, this post has gone off the rails suddenly, hasn't it?
But like, hey! What more could one expect from that plate of cheese and crackers, that (second) double G&T, and
E@L
This work by Expat@Large is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
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