I'm just starting the Runestaff series and have a question

[CeeTee]

I just joined the website yesterday and I am overjoyed to be able to exchange thoughts with the great Moorcock. Ok, now to my question. How far in earth's future (beyond the 20th century) does the Runestaff series take place ? :?:

[Bob]

Hi, CeeTee.

I always saw the series to be set in a mythical past, but such is the brilliance of the multiverse that there is much room for interpretation. I can't speak for the man himself, but that was what I thought. :)

Welcome to the forum!

[CeeTee]

Nope, the story takes place in Earth's future following a catastrophic collapse of civilization (Tragic Millennium). I just want to get an idea of how many years beyond the present we are talking about.

[Bob]

OK, I was just trying to get across that life in the multiverse doesn't follow a linear path. As Mike once mentioned, trying to add linearity to the multiverse can cause all sorts of problems. What he's suggested: 'if we think of space as a dimension of time, we get an altogether different understanding which allows a broader ability to negotiate these dimensions.'

So you see, it could very well not be 'in the future', but on a different plane altogther.

P.S. I never stated it as fact, but merely what I thought.

[Caliburn]

You could say that it lies at the end of another universe in a different quantum reality (or universe in the multiverse) which could have happened if perhaps our choices had been very different.

Or perhaps it will.

The universe is far too weird to tell.

[Michael Moorcock]

Hi, CeeTee -- I did set the Hawkmoon series in 'our' future, but if you'll forgive me plugging a forthcoming book, you'll see in The White Wolf's Son that Hawkmoon's world could even, under certain conditions, exist contemporaneously with Elric's...
The time in our future would be at least a couple of thousand years.

[CeeTee]

Hi Michael, thank you for responding to my post. I was wondering, will I come to understand the events that created the Tragic Millennium by the end of this series or will I have to gain that information from another series :?:

[Michael Moorcock]

I'm afraid you;ll never know the whole story because I don't know it!
Sorry, pard.

[Anonymous]

free ourselves from pedantic rhetoricists everwhere :)

I'm afraid you;ll never know the whole story because I don't know it!
Sorry, pard.

Do you mean that you are NOT the font of all wisdom and this is not an electronic version of Ultima Thule, Valhalla, Shrangi-La, Hyperborea, Hy-breasil, The Grail Castle, Tir Nan Og or any other mythical place set apart from this world?

:lol:

Did I forget any mythical place set apart from this world? Indubitably! You forgot Utopia and.. ..

[MadGod]

Interesting.

I thought that the tragic millenium was something to do with the destruction of man by nuclear weapons.

In The sword of the Dawn, when Hawkmoon and D'averc travel to Yel to seek Mygan (IIRC) there are discussions about 'posion air'.

Perhaps radioactive air?

[kard]

the Runestaff and the Castle Brass books are maybe the best "starting point" into the whole story - somehow i have the feeling that it all ist understandable best with "The Quest for Tanelorn" - reference point for all sthe stories imho. and it surely has to get involved in the Elric film and get a prominent place in the ultimate Elric omnibus edition - which i hope will be edited.

the multiverse is, after all, one - therefore a universe. we may discover much out there, but after all, the really important things are in us - and it all comes from and leads to the one - the highest good, the highest principle, our origin and the goal of all our strive. beauty, love, truth. the human being, a free being, all actions either leading through nihilism into destruction, or through passion into felicitousness - our highest destiny, we all now of somehow, but we keep searching as long as we ask, as long as we are on the way. just a short summary (no completeness intended) on the whole thing as i understand it. :)

also congrats on the completition of the cycle. you are the Balzac of the 21st century now :D

[Captain Quelch]

The beauty of the EC cycle is that so much is left to the reader's imagination. Other authors might give you glossaries and footnotes and extensive histories- MM gives you what you need to know to understand the story and lets you fill in the rest yourself (with just a few tantalizing glimpses here and there into the mythical underpinnings of his creations). Hawkmoon could be in our world's future, it could be one of many futures for our world, or a world tangent to ours. And given that time flows in many directions across the multiverse (for example, an event that Corum remembers as being in his past, occurs in Elric's future), there isn't really any reason to exclude the idea that the Runestaff cycle occurs in our past, especially if this-

Hawkmoon's world could even, under certain conditions, exist contemporaneously with Elric's

- is the case as MM mentioned.

[Whiskers]

In The sword of the Dawn, when Hawkmoon and D'averc travel to Yel to seek Mygan (IIRC) there are discussions about 'posion air'.

Remember a couple hundred years ago when London was overcome by that poisonous fog? I always thought that The World was poisoned by pollution in that series. It was a reality where total consumption did us all in.

[Kitsune]

I'm reading the Runestaff Saga too... I've been racking my brains trying to figure out who the gods are named for... Chirshil was pretty easy, and D'nark... was easy too, but I"ve gave up on figuring out some of the others...

[MadGod]

I always thought that Narleen was new orleans, d'nark was new york? Both these places being amarehk, which i assume is america.

maybe totally wrong.