Moorcock, Michael

Moorcock, Michael (1939– ), one of the most prominent of the ‘New Wave’ science fiction writers of the 1960s, part of whose aim was to invest the genre with literary merit. He edited New Worlds from 1964 to 1971, and has also edited many collections of short stories. A prolific and versatile writer, his own works include the Cornelius Quartet (The Final Programme, 1969; A Cure for Cancer, 1971; The English Assassin, 1972; The Condition of Muzak, 1977), whose central character, Jerry Cornelius, was described by Brian Aldiss as the meeting-point of ‘the world of Ronald Firbank and Ian Fleming’. The Colonel Pyat books (beginning with Byzantium Endures, 1981) explore the development of Fascism and the Jewish Holocaust through the unreliable memoirs of a self-deceiving Russian émigré snob, racist, charlatan, and cocaine addict. The poignant and optimistic Mother London (1988) celebrates the adaptability and vitality of London's people, landscape, history, and mythology through a dense non-linear narrative tracking the stories of a group of psychiatric outpatients from the Blitz to the 1980s. Other works of note include The Brothel in Rosenstrasse (1982), Blood: A Southern Fantasy (1995), and War Amongst the Angels (1996).