Stormbringer

Michael Moorcock Stormbringer (1965)
My general view of Moorcock's Elric books has been subject to a seemingly endless cycle of re-evaluation, as follows:

• Suspected that, being fantasy, they were probably shit.
• Read Moorcock and realised they might be all right after all.
• Was told Moorcock wrote them purely for the money, meaning they were probably shit.
• Read the first one anyway and realised that it was actually pretty decent, regardless of having possibly been written for the money.
• Read the next few, and sort of enjoyed them but nothing like so much as Moorcock's other novels. Ho hum.

Stormbringer is the final novel of the original six volume series. I get the impression it was intended to be the final Elric book, but the popularity of the series obliged a continuation. Of the first six, it's the one which reads like a proper novel rather than a series of short stories bolted together. Moorcock's brief introduction introduces it as his first attempt at a full-length book, then thanks David Britton for hanging onto the magazines in which it was originally serialised, and Wikipedia claims it was yet more short stories bolted together, so I guess the conclusion here is that nobody fucking knows.

Anyway, I suppose my problem with the Elric books - not that it kept me from reading these first six - is a certain absence of humour, possibly aside from the sort of humour which occasionally smashes wooden flagons of ale together with a hearty ha ha! Then again, I can see the sense in preserving the mythic thrust of these tales by avoiding knowing winks to camera, and they're all about the mythic. Stormbringer wraps everything up nicely by pushing its mythic agenda to the border of philosophy, or at least something deeper than routine chivalry and stuff about dragons. It draws back a little, at least compared to the others, to reveal the bigger and significantly weirder picture, and in doing so making Tolkien seem positively pedestrian. I now understand that Jack Vance's Dying Earth books may have been an influence, and this feels very much like a distant relative inhabiting the other end of human history, or prehistory to be specific.

So what I'm saying here is that, Stormbringer really is sort of mind-blowing by some definition, and if the previous four weren't quite so startling as the first, this grand finale rewards the effort of having read them. Even if Moorcock's principal motivation was paying off the mortgage, it doesn't really matter because this one justifies the hype.

The Eyes of the Overworld

Jack Vance The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)
Excepting Moorcock on the grounds of him being pretty much his own genre, Jack Vance is the first author of unambiguous fantasy to whom I've truly warmed, and by unambiguous fantasy I mean sagas of wizards in pointy hats inspiring quests across hill and dale, and so on and so forth. Actually, he's the second come to think of it, the first being Matthew Hughes whose tales of Raffalon are set against the backdrop of Jack Vance's Dying Earth, and this is one of Vance's Dying Earth novels - so I'm sure the sense of whatever I was trying to say can be found somewhere in that lot.

The Dying Earth is host to a post-technological society vaguely resembling our Renaissance but with magic, all occurring in the improbably distant future, at which point the sun routinely blinks out like aging strip lighting, hence the name. It was a significant influence on Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time. I could probably leave the review there, but I won't.

Cugel the Clever is discovered attempting to steal certain valuable mystic items from Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Iucounu wraps an extraterrestrial squid around the thief's liver and obliges him to travel to the far north to procure the eyes of the overworld. The eyes of the overworld allow one to see the higher reality, transforming conventional perception of our world of rancid paupers screwing and pooing in stinking hovels into a reality of Disney princesses daintily wafting from one sparkling palace to another. The novel is a quest with a spell or enchantment resolving pretty much every scrape and episodic dilemma strung along its familiar path - and with no greater sense of consequence than in any other magically driven narrative - and yet Vance proves that it really is all in the telling. His fiction is heavily stylised, erudite almost to the point of shameless ostentation, and feels fresh and lively - more so than anything involving wizards surely has the right to be. I'd be surprised if he hadn't influenced Pratchett to some extent - although his wit is possibly sharper and less obviously satirical - and he assails the reader with a disorientating barrage of peculiar ideas and images to incredibly surreal effect - somewhat like Cordwainer Smith, but - frankly, better done. I don't know if The Eyes of the Overworld exactly says anything, but then it doesn't have to. Sometimes the mood, spectacle, and delightful confusion can be enough by itself.

The Zaucer of Zilk

Al Ewing & Brendan McCarthy The Zaucer of Zilk (2012)
This was one of those things I missed, having long given up on 2000AD comic. I'd heard of it, but the title sounded like something you would expect to find in 2000AD and thus failed to pique my curiosity; at least until I happened upon this reprint and realised it was by Brendan McCarthy - which changes everything, obviously.

I still don't really know what to call this sort of thing, or even that it matters. The Zaucer of Zilk is Brendan McCarthy doing what he does best, and nothing else has really come close, certainly not Hewligan's fucking Haircut or - ugh - Really & Truly, or even Rogan Gosh for that matter. This, on the other hand, seems to exhibit kinship with Alice in Wonderland, Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time, Jack Vance's Dying Earth, Windsor McCay, and thankfully none of the also-rans who would give their collective left one to be this strange but just don't fucking get it - looking at you, Tim, Neil, and all of your self-consciously kooky spawn - also anyone who ever mistook the Cure for a wild display of imagination.

The Zaucer of Zilk tells a surprisingly traditional story using characters and settings which wouldn't seem out of place on a Nurse With Wound album, and to similarly disorientating effect but for the presence of a beating heart where one might, under other circumstances, expect to find the usual emotive button pushing. McCarthy has always been in a class of his own, but rarely has it been so obvious as it is here.

Nine Tales of Raffalon

Matthew Hughes Nine Tales of Raffalon (2017)
My initial impression of the Raffalon tales first featured in Fantasy & Science Fiction were of a sword and sorcery take on E.W. Hornung's Raffles the Gentleman Thief. The author himself happened upon this observation and set me straight, explaining that he regarded the setting of his tales as renaissance more than medieval and what I misread as significantly influenced by Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels. This made a lot of sense once I read Vance's Rhialto the Marvellous which inhabits the distant future of Earth's final years with magic having returned to human society, which has itself resumed a mostly pre-technological economy. Anyway, it turns out - as I now realise - that I hadn't fully grasped the proverbial stick and that the Raffalon stories quite deliberately inhabit the very same world as Vance's magicians; so it all makes sense now.

Rather than merely playing with someone else's train set or indulging in mimicry, Hughes explores aspects of the Dying Earth which Vance didn't seem to touch on, at least not in Rhialto the Marvellous. Where Rhialto at least inhabits the surreal world of reality warping wizards, Raffalon relies upon his wits to get him by in the semi-feudal lowlands of craftsmen and wandering pugilists; and it works because Hughes writes with the sort of elegant wit and wild invention which worked so well for Vance, whilst retaining what I've come to recognise as absolutely his own voice. Raffalon is funny without feeling the need to pull faces, and the stories wrap the reader up in all sorts of logistic knots before leading us to conclusions we could never have predicted, all of which makes for immensely satisfying reading, high on roughage and essential vitamins. Fantasy has never really been my genre of choice, but Raffalon is an exception, and I can confidently say it's because it's rare to find an author so convincing or so well versed in his craft as is Hughes.

Rhialto the Marvellous

Jack Vance Rhialto the Marvellous (1985)
This one is part of the Dying Earth series, as it's called, which I picked up purely because Matthew Hughes cited it as a significant influence on his Raffalon stories - which I can see now that I know what to look for. I tend to avoid anything involving wizards as a general rule, but as with Hughes' writing, this is clearly something else. More than anything it reminds me of Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time in being set in the improbably distant future amongst a community of peculiarly eccentric beings with strange powers. That being said, it's quite different to Dancers while being similarly distinguished as betraying no tangible influence from Tolkien or any of the usual pointy-hatted suspects.

What actually seems to distinguish Vance from everybody else - at least everybody else that I've read - is the language, ornate, luxuriant, decadent and never afraid to use an archaic term if it suits the sentence, or even to just make something up. With that which is described being at least as strange and ornate as the composition of its description, Rhialto is a delight to read, resembling surrealist fiction as much as fantasy, conjuring images as much resembling traditional Japanese art as Heironymous Bosch as Yellow Submarine; and it's nothing if not witty.

A big-bellied old man with grey wattles sidled a few steps forward. He spoke in a wheedling nasal voice: 'Must your disgust be so blatant? True: we are anthropophages. True: we put strangers to succulent use. Is this truly good cause for hostility? The world is as it is and each of us must hope in some fashion to be of service to his fellows, even if only in the form of a soup.'

The only downside here is arguably that the language is such as to require the reader's full and undivided attention, because it can be otherwise quite easy to lose one's footing and slip, mid-narrative, and a little of Vance's prose goes a long way. Then again, if that seems like it might be a problem, you should probably stick to Terry Brooks or one of those guys.