The Blood Red Game

[lordmarioh]

Hello Mr. Moorcock,

I've just finished reading The Blood Red Game and I must say I loved it! So far it's the best book I've read (that you wrote). So I must ask you: What were your main influences for writing this book? What kind of Philosophy inspired you to tell such a great tale? I say this because I've noted a lot Chaos Magick theories in your writings, also a lot of western occultism too. Am I right?

[Anonymous]

Sundered Worlds

Thanks, pard. That was the first, and one of the rare, science fiction novels I wrote, also called The Sundered Worlds, in which I introduced a number of ideas. Most of them came from theoretical physics and from my own metaphysical interests of the time, but it was primarily straight out of my subconscious and onto the page. As I always did in those days, I wrote it in about four days in two parts, originally as a two-parter for Science Fiction Adventures. What I did find was that the conventional genre of sf wasn't entirely suitable for some of the ideas I was trying to carry and so most of the work I did after that was fantasy, which seemed to me to be more easily adapted to my ideas, or mainstream fiction -- or indeed the Jerry Cornelius books, the first of which I wrote almost directly on the heels of The Sundered Worlds, as I recall. The other sf I did around the same time was mainly as serials for New Worlds, though The Fireclown was actually rejected by Carnell when he thought the magazines were closing, and published directly into paperback. The Wrecks of Time and The Shores of Death were both done as serials, as was The Ice Schooner, written as a serial for Science Fantasy when Keith Roberts was editor. Keith was helpful about certain aspects of sailing a giant schooner across the ice but liked the series so much he wrote one or two short stories with the same background. Barry Bayley thinks The Sundered Worlds was the first sf novel to refer to black holes, as well as to current
theoretical notions concerning branes and strings and so forth. I was flattered that the new Oxford English Dictionary quotes me as the first person to use the term 'multiverse' in relation to an infinity of alternative versions of our own universe but I was personally a bit disappointed in myself. It always cheers me up to hear someone's enjoyed it! So thanks again!

[ThanosShadowsage]

The Blood Red Game

Bah!

That was a great story Mike! the very idea behind The Blood Red Game is great. That was easily one of the most entertaining moments of reading that I've experianced. I didn't put the book down once until the game was over. Bravo!

Thanos