Locations and Research

[Anonymous]

Mr M,

When you write stories set in India, or Burma, or Germany, or wherever, how do you research locations? I imagine visiting every location the Cornelius Quartet would have been pretty near impossible, and I like to think that you cribbed the location detail from old Baedekker's and pulp stories.

By the way, I've been enjoying your anthologies of Victorian and Edwardian apocalyptic literature recently. Why aren't there more anthologies like this these days...?

Ray.

[Michael Moorcock]

You might enjoy the forthcoming Moorcock's Mammoth Miscellany of Fact and Fiction coming out around Christmas this year, which will have some interesting old pieces in it -- though it covers a wider range from 1840s to the present.
Most of my fiction of the past twenty or thirty years has actually been based on places I've visited, but Burma wasn't one of them. I got most of the background for that by watching a documentary and then reading some books. By and large I do intense research, absorbing everything very rapidly. This is what happened in the Ukrainian research and so on for Byzantium Endures. In a sense I get so absorbed in the 'reality' of the place I'm writing about that I actually start to visualise it. One of the most spectacular visions of this kind was in the Yorkshire Dales near Ribblehead where the whole of Constantinople suddenly appeared before me under the bright Yorkshire sun. I know it's unbelievable but they do have sunny days in Yorkshire...
:D

[Corum]

Mike, A vision of constantinople in the Yorkshire dales is a pretty impressive feat! In actual fact we are going back there next year, to Istanbul that is, for my brother in Law's wedding.
I feel very nostalgic for the old world now and am thinking I would like to spend more time there than a short holiday. Places like the Sultan's Harem, AyaSofia Palace and Cappadocia could probably inspire alot of writing.