The Cruel World and its Pierrot?

[Zax]

Years ago I seem to recall eagerly anticipating an MM biog or similar by John Clute, thus entitled. I am now a shadow of my former self after all these years of adrenaline overload. What became of this? Was it planned by Savoy?

Note to MM: we share the same birthday! Except I've had fewer of them.

[Michael Moorcock]

Clute was paid an advance but never delivered. I think it's just as well, really. There is another book out about me, by the way. It's available via Amazon UK, should you want to check it out. I think we also share a birthday with Spielberg, don't we ? Sagittarians are go!

[Zax]

Hmm - getting advances out of publishers who subsequently close down sounds like an efficient way to make a living as a writer... : )

The other book will be 'The Age of Chaos', at a guess - as I recalled AFTER trawling through your stuff on Amazon! Amazing what turns up, though - I don't suppose 'Swings and Roundabouts: The Danger of Safety in Outdoor Play' by one Kate Moorcock is by your daughter? : ) (I do recall reading her sister's stuff in City Limits, I think).

Any old road, been there and read that - I rather preferred 'Death Is No Obstacle' which I liked so much I bought it before it was remaindered. I particularly liked your exposition in DINO of the systematic way you deal with structure and of your approach to the business of crafting a story. How did that book end up being packaged with the 'New World's Fair' album, by the way?

[Michael Moorcock]

Death is No Obstacle wasn't remaindered. It's still in print from Savoy, as I recall!
And yes, that book is by my daughter Kate. She's very smart and very involved in early childhood developement. She has two children of her own now and is currently working on her doctorate thesis. Which, no doubt, she'll publish in time. Sophie is currently putting an anthology together culled from her magazine Quim, which she started doing after she'd worked for City Limits and Time Out.
New Worlds Fair packaged the book with Savoy I think 'because it was there'. They had wanted to do a combination book and CD and Savoy were willing to work with them. Might have been more appropriate to have waited and done King of the City, I know.
We're discussing structure, by the way, on another thread here. if you feel like joining in!

[dlackey]

I'm a Sag too! Not the same day though, mine is Dec. 7- Pearl Harbor Day. And Larry Bird's birthday...

[Zax]

Hee hee! Apologies to all involved - the crack about DINO was meant to be an allusion to a remark you once made to the effect that you didn't consider a book to be properly published until it had been remaindered. : ) I still chuckle at this, particularly as (Eee!) when I were a lad, us could only afford t'look in remainder bookshops anyway.

This relates to how I first started reading your books, which I think you ask about elsewhere. At the age of about 11 I read in the letters page of a Marvel comic about how Marvel's Captain Marvel had white hair and maybe therefore he was an albino, and what's more didn't the Sub-Mariner look like Michael Moorcock's hero Elric who was an albino, don'cha know?

Soon afterwards I came across the Lancer (I think) paperback edition of 'Stormbringer' in Woolworth's in Llanelli, priced 9d. Woollie's was a great source of cheap US paperbacks at the time, of course, and the occasional Compact Books New Worlds would turn up there, too. Anyway, it was downhill all the way from there. That cover picture still informs my visualisation of Elric better than any other, but that could also be an aspect of the 'first contact' phenomenon you've referred to. Elric would no doubt have been alarmed to find himself in a parochial South Wales steel town: "What cursed enchantment is this?".

Nice to know that, one way and another, the Moorcock dynasty continues to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. My wife works in education and part of my own writing career is devoted to educational books, so it was interesting to know about Kate's work. I'd previously discovered Quim, as it were, via a website.

Will attempt to join structure thread, but children...attempting...to take over...computer! Arioch save me! Aaargh!......

[Michael Moorcock]

In my bones I STILL don't consider a book published until it's remaindered, precisely because I too used to buy books that came in bins rather than stacks. That's, after all, how I came to buy the Mervyn Peake first editions! And there are many first editions highly collected and costly which began life in the same bins. I almost never bought a book first hand because you could get two books at least for the price of a new one. Only as I started earning my living from books did I think it was fair to start buying a few new ones myself.
Yes, Kate's been on the radio and TV as well, talking about her convinction that children should be allowed to play, fight (to a degree) and all those other things which allow them to become properly socialised and used to negotiating their way in the world. Councils and schools have become so afraid of being sued they aren't doing the kids any favours by closing down playgrounds, getting rid of equipment and so on.
Anyone curious about Quim probably needs a bit of a strong stomach before visiting the website! While I know Sophie's highly respected in her community and so on, it's still a long way from my sense of things.
We get on fine and she has some exceptionally nice friends. We just don't talk about what they talk about in Quim... :?

[Zax]

Mmm, these days it's all a far cry from a childhood spent playing on bombsites - or, in the case of mine, the rural equivalent, which generally involved barn rooftops and rusting agricultural machinery. There's something very odd about a childhood completely devoid of physical danger. My 10-year old daughter has a friend who seems to have been kept so safe from everything and everybody that she's no longer able to cope with anything out of the ordinary. I routinely allow my children to deal with the kind of risks they're capable of managing for themselves, which they quickly learned how to do. I'm sure it's made them happier, saner and more capable.

Years ago a friend of mine used to have a clever wheeze to do with first editions. We were working for a small publishing company in London just round the corner from Jonathan Cape's trade counter. He realised that there were any number of puntable-on first editions just sitting in their warehouse, so he'd go round and buy them, claiming and getting the usual 33% publisher's discount just by waving some headed notepaper at them. He then extended the process to other publishers, salting the spoils away in mint condition. He'll probably retire on the proceeds eventually. : )

Anyway, before I turn this into a cross between the TES and a Helene Hanff site, I'm off to the 'Political Pressures' thread to report some intriguing comments about the internet - by the people who invented it...