BLOOD.

[SteffyB]

I have just found "Blood" in a charity shop and to be honest i know little about it. Is this part of a series? or a one off? Is it linked in anyway to any other MM books? (as they usually are)

Any help on this will be greatly recieved as i don't want to jump into this book if i need to read others first.

[dlackey]

Blood is a great book, but expect to give your brain a workout. The level of ambition is a bit higher than most of the EC books. The Blood Trilogy consists of these books:

Blood
Fabulous Harbors
The War Amongst the Angels

Blood kind of outlines the theories that underlay the trilogy. Fabulous Harbors is actually a collection of linked stories which are used to illustrate the various themes touched in in Mr. M.'s work over the years. Most of them read as pretty much straight EC short stories and are great fun. Adventure stories, detective stories, a Cornelius story, that sort of thing. The last book starts off as kind of a fictional autobiograpy but eventually turns into much more than that. These are definitely Multiverse/Eternal Champion books. Fabulous Harbors is the easiest to read, Angels is probably the most rewarding. I recommend them highly.

I typed up a little reader's guide that seemed to help a few people on the forum so far:

[broken link]

Although you can read the books in any order you want, I actually recommend you read the Blood trilogy after reading a bunch of other stuff.

[SteffyB]

Hi Dlacky

Thanks for that mate, your list is gonna come in very handy indeed!.......

Stef

You seem like a man in the know, could you tell me how to add a picture to your profile, excuse my ignorance - i'm new to this internet stuff....

[dlackey]

I had a problem with the pic thing myself. The pic can't be bigger than 80X80 and it can't be more than 10KB. I don't know how to edit the pictures that I wanted to use to that size, so I did a Google search for "avatars" and looked through them. Couldn't find an Elric one, but this nifty Sephiroth one looks like Elric, and that's who the character was ripped off from anyway.

I digress...

When you find one you want, right click on it and look at the properties. Make sure it fits the rules for size, and then copy the url (the internet address) for that pic by just highlighting it, then rightclicking and hitting copy.

Now come back to the forum, and click the "profile" button near the top of the page. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll see where you can put in a URL for your avatar. Right click and paste the URL in that you copied for your avatar.

hope that helps!!!

[SteffyB]

Cheers my friend, i'll give it a whirl!!!

[lordmarioh]

About the Second Ether Trilogy (is this the way these books are called, right?). Some people say that it is a second ending for the EC story (I guess you said it yourself right dlackey?). So, do I need to read the first ending (The Quest for Tanelorn) first? Is there any books to be read first?

[dlackey]

My guide is just a guide. I have the strong opinion that you should at least read all the other books listed first. And as far as the 1st and 2nd ending thing, that is just my opinion too. It could be argued that The Dragon in the Sword is also an ending to the whole thing. And every ending is also a beginning :P

[dlackey]

Oh and don't forget the "Multiverse" comic, which parallels the 2nd ether trilogy and has its own ending!!!


I've added a few things to my newbie's guide that i hope will claify things, and again, express that the whole thing is my opinion and not the views of Mr. M.!

[lordmarioh]

Well, I guess Iآ´m gonna die before reading all that! This beacuse Iآ´m still waiting for my Stormbringer and The Prince With The Silver Hand copies (it's been two whole months!) from Amazon.co.uk

[elric]

sorry mate, although I agree with you that Moorcock has been highly influencial...I really dont think Sephiroth is ripped off from Elric...would you care to explain (I mean if you said Legacy of Kain I would agree with you)

Sepiroth is not even albino...he has no sword...I could go on and on but I'm kinda interested to hear your theory

[dlackey]

Ripped off is a strong word that I shouldn't have used. Influenced by is what I should have said, and it is just my opinion. Moorcock has had quite a following in Japan and his influences crop up in a lot of video games: airships, soul sucking swords, angsty heroes, etc. Sephiroth is not an albino, but he is a pale white dude with white hair, and he's definitely a tortured soul like Elric. And he does have a sword.

[dlackey]

Lord Marioh and others:

i've revised that "newbie's guide" a little bit. Tried to clear up somethings that I felt were misleading. sorry about that. the revised FAQ should be a lot better.

[nalpak retrac]

I've written quite a lot on Blood, and if you are interested in an "academic" treatment that ties Moorcock to other authors and traditions you might take a look at my book Critical Synoptics. There is a chapter on chaos theory and complexity science followed by a chapter on MM, The Second Ether, Blake and chaos theory. By the end of the year I hope to get word about another book that will contain advanced work I've done on MM's Second Ether and Blake.

I think you'll be interested in my discussion of the chaos scientists and their connections with big trans-national banks, neo-social darwinism, and so on. When I first learned about how they are using chaos science it really curled my toes!

If you click the link to my www you'll be find a description of the book. It should be at your local university library.

Interestingly enough (and this is described in another thread) the recent film The Cat in the Hat patterns many of the ideas that the chaos theory folks are talking about, and which are portrayed in MM's work, especially the Second Ether. The box in the film, for example, containing the "chaos stuff" is very much like the fault and the color that MM describes in Blood, and so on. The ways the characters transform in The Cat in the Hat after their contact with chaos is also paralleled by the transformational expereinces of the characters in The Second Ether.

Interesting ideas!