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bink_winkleman

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Can a brotha get a live action adaptation of the Elric of Melniboné saga before he dies.

Game of Thrones on HBO will eventually run its course.  How about following up one televised epic fantasy tale with another? 

I'd prefer that HBO do it since I am not convinced that Netflix or Amazon will give it the budget it deserves.

What are the fucking Weitz Brothers doing with all of the scripts they're allegedly sitting on.  They've owned the production rights since 2008.

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10 hours ago, J.T. said:

Can a brotha get a live action adaptation of the Elric of Melniboné saga before he dies.

Game of Thrones on HBO will eventually run its course.  How about following up one televised epic fantasy tale with another? 

I'd prefer that HBO do it since I am not convinced that Netflix or Amazon will give it the budget it deserves.

What are the fucking Weitz Brothers doing with all of the scripts they're allegedly sitting on.  They've owned the production rights since 2008.

That could be so awesome. But which Elric version would we want, the original that was two books or the one that Moorcock has fleshed out to a dozen volumes. Fuck it, let's just have the whole Eternal Champion saga (all seventy-something volumes) , start with Elric and end with Jerry Cornelius, I'm down with that. I love that Moorcock is trying to retcon Zenith the Albino from the Sexton Blake series into the Eternal Champion stuff. ;-)

BTW: My biggest assignment that I keep putting off because it's so intimidating is a "Best of Moorcock's SF" book, (it would eschew all the heroic fantasy, since my publisher is going to tackle that as its own series), but he's written so damn much that it's hard to imagine that I can keep this to one volume. I know, start with "Behold the Man" and go from there, but I also want to include The Black Corridor, because it's one of the best SF/Horror novels ever written and that's how I roll...

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Right now I'm on night duty, so I am reliving my high school years with a series of fan made audio books.

Some guy had the good taste to record several Michael Moorcock works and upload them to YouTube.

I just finished The War Hound & The World's Pain.

200px-War_hound_and_the_worlds_pain.jpg

I'm trying to listen to the Elric saga from the very beginning.  I've seen The Weird of the White Wolf, but have yet to located a good quality video for The Dreaming City.

I got into Moorcock in a rather roundabout way by reading the Von Bek stories first and then learning more about the Eternal Champion and even then, I read the Corum and Hawkmoon stuff before getting to Elric.

I suppose that was a good thing since in retrospect, I feel that the latter Champions didn't seem to get as much story love from Mike as Elric did and I probably would've had lesser opinions of Corum and his ilk as lesser knock offs of my beloved albino anti-hero.

I would kill to see the Bane of the Black Sword storyline on mother fucking HBO.  MAKE IT HAPPEN~!

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Funny that you mention it, but my main intro to heroic fantasy (other than John Carter and Conan) was a letter in Dr. Strange that rattled off a bunch of characters, Thongor, Elak, Dorian Hawkmoon, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, etc. I think it may have been the issue with the Black Knight guesting, but I'd have to check and I'm way too lazy to dig out the comics. Anyway, I was early teens at the time and loved the Dorian Hawkmoon books which led in turn to Elric (which at that time consisted of Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer. I don't recall which came next, the DAW books expansion of Elric or the Prince Corum novels. Corum was fine, but seemed like Elric-lite. That's one small problem with the Eternal Champion series, Elric is so fully fleshed out as a character that everyone else seems a pale imitation.

I'd be willing to bet that if Moorcock had a chance to re-do it, he'd have made all the avatars completely different physical and mental types. Remember, Moorcock started as gawdawful, and worked his ass off to become first reasonably good followed by a rise to brilliant. Really respect the guy for his work ethic and dedication to the craft of writing, if you had told me that the guy writing as "Edward P. Bradbury" would become one of the most important authors and editors of the 20th and 21st centuries I'd have laughed at you, those books were that bad...

Now if we want to talk bad heroic fantasy, we have lots of Lin Carter and Gardner Fox* to discuss...

*Great comic book writer, but my God did he suck when it came to prose.

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Understandable. You started with mature, top of his game Moorcock and went back to good-but-still-learning-his-craft Moorcock. Consider that we're talking about a fifty-year+ writing career. I don't know that there's another author that we've been able to watch grow so considerably than Michael Moorcock. 

Early sixties - awful with flashes of brilliance (moved to editorial position at New Worlds and really started getting better)

Mid sixties - Commercially competent product.

Late Sixties - Some very cool experimental stuff, Black Corridor, obviously on his way...

Early-Mid Seventies - Commercially competent product, some interesting short fiction, some flashes of things to come.

Late Seventies - Gloriana! Moorcock has arrived as one of the greatest living fantasists. There was no looking back after this.

Present day - Fucking Zenith the Albino??? Amazing stuff. For those that don't know, he dragged a villain out of the Sexton Blake stuff he read as a kid and fully developed the character, bringing him into the Eternal Champion mythos. 

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16 hours ago, OSJ said:

That's one small problem with the Eternal Champion series, Elric is so fully fleshed out as a character that everyone else seems a pale imitation.

I'd be willing to bet that if Moorcock had a chance to re-do it, he'd have made all the avatars completely different physical and mental types. Remember, Moorcock started as gawdawful, and worked his ass off to become first reasonably good followed by a rise to brilliant. Really respect the guy for his work ethic and dedication to the craft of writing, .

Holy shit, but that is so true and I think that works for most of the epic fiction or horror most people get into. 

My first experience with Stephen King was the short prose collection, Night Shift, so you can imagine how I felt when I read his early novels and discovered that Steve doesn't know how to wrap up a long story to save his life, and he's no better at it now than he was with The Stand or The Tommyknockers.

He has this fever dream of story and plot and character development that is totally captivating and then King completely fumbles the payoff.

Oddly enough, Doctor Sleep (the kinda sorta follow up to The Shining) is the complete opposite.  The story really drags in the middle and then there is this satisfying and heartbreaking conclusion that totally hits you from nowhere.

As you have already eloquently put it, the reason I have such fond memories of Prince Corum and Hawkmoon is probably because I didn't read the Elric saga first, although I do seem to recall that I did not enjoy any of the Swords trilogy stories better than War Hound or the other Von Bek tales. 

Probably because Von Bek struck me as a bit more down to earth character and was far less dour than any other Eternal Champion not named Dorian Hawkmoon, who was easily the most (gasp) good natured of any incarnation.

I also stick by my earlier conclusion that Corum was not as beloved by Moorcock as Elric was.  The Swords Trilogy was very well crafted, but you really did get the feeling with the Silver Hand books that Michael got to the "I'm tired of writing about this" stage with Corum..

You knew that eventually something bad was going to happen to Elric and as with anything else Elric would be the source of his own misfortune, but at least the White Wolf put up a helluva struggle and resisted his fate. 

Corum also tries to shrug off the tug of destiny, but you definitely got the vibe from the last chapters of The Sword & The Stallion that Moorcock was definitely out to get him.  That is sad because Michael spends the entirety of The Bull & The Spear mentally torturing the guy.

Meanwhile, Elric got the chance to experience a little bit of happiness before grabbing Stormbringer and going on one last ride.

I am not so bold as to tell a master storyteller like Moorcock how to handle prose, but I think that Corum deserved a better ending than the one he got.. 

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The one good thing about night duty is the peace and quiet.  Plenty of time to partake of some light reading or in this case, light listening.

I'm on this shift until next Tuesday so I may as well exorcise and old demon and push all the way through CJ Cherryh's Morgaine trilogy but we're not off to all that great of a start.

I'm not sure which is worse:  reading Gates of Ivrel in the conventional manner or listening to the audio book.

The audio novel itself is pretty good so far, but I'm more in tune to the mechanical flaws now that I am a jaded adult. 

Yes, CJ, I know that Morgainne is a woman.  Yes, I know she's a complete badass. 

Can we please get on with the assbeatings without you pointing out in nearly every chapter that you're breaking new ground by making a competent female your fantasy novel protagonist?

Yes, I know that Vanye is an honorable person with a code of honor.  Does he really have to experience a moral dilemma that conflicts with his integrity every fifty pages?

You have a sword fighting duo as your main characters.  Why isn't there much sword fighting in this story?

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20 minutes ago, J.T. said:

The one good thing about night duty is the peace and quiet.  Plenty of time to partake of some light reading or in this case, light listening.

12 hours of night shift is great for burning through podcasts and/or read ing material.

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I have my headphones on and two Cinemassive monitor racks in front of me with war game sim data and network monitoring systems on them.. 

You'd think I was piloting a starship.

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I'm just monitoring the war game servers to make sure the unit's training objectives are met, man. 

I can't launch any missiles from here.

I am also not allowed to have a service revolver in the SCIF.

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5 hours ago, J.T. said:

I'm just monitoring the war game servers to make sure the unit's training objectives are met, man. 

I can't launch any missiles from here.

I am also not allowed to have a service revolver in the SCIF.

Knowing you, these are probably good things. 

The Morgaine Trilogy broke no new ground and I've always had little patience with CJ for claiming it did. "C.L. Moore (that's Catherine Lucille, in case there were any questions,) and Jirel of Joiry called from 1935 to say "Hello", bitch."

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  • 1 year later...

How do you even get started on tackling Michael Moorcock's work? What's the best place to begin? I bought some paperbacks a couple of years back, but only really read a few of the early Elric short stories.

Oh, I mainly bumped this to say that I finally finished Gardens on the Moon after three attempts. Though it was a slog in places, it does inspire me to want to read the next book, so that can only be a positive.

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3 hours ago, Liam said:

How do you even get started on tackling Michael Moorcock's work? What's the best place to begin? I bought some paperbacks a couple of years back, but only really read a few of the early Elric short stories.

https://www.amazon.com/Von-Bek-Warhound-Pleasure-Sagittarius/dp/1857984366

Though it can be very hard to go to a lot of the earlier, better known but more disposable, stuff after this.

(After that I'd suggest Gloriana and Dancers at the End of Time)

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20 hours ago, Liam said:

That is one of the books I own. Excellent.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Okay, if the question is where to begin with the Eternal Champion you get one answer. If the question is "What is essential Moorcock?" You get a completely different answer. Okay, for the Eternal Champion series, here's what you need:

Series: The Eternal Champion White Wolf Omnibus

 

The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock Vol 1

Von Bek by Michael Moorcock Vol 2

Hawkmoon: The History of the Runestaff by Michael Moorcock Vol 3

A Nomad of the Time Streams by Michael Moorcock Vol 4

Elric: Song of the Black Sword by Michael Moorcock Vol 5

The Roads Between the Worlds by Michael Moorcock Vol 6

Corum: The Coming Of Chaos by Michael Moorcock Vol 7

Sailing to Utopia by Michael Moorcock Vol 8

Kane of Old Mars by Michael Moorcock Vol 9

The Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock Vol 10

Stormbringer (Tale of the Eternal Champion) by Michael Moorcock Vol 11

Corum: The Prince With the Silver Hand by Michael Moorcock Vol 12

Legends from the End of Time by Michael Moorcock Vol 13

Earl Aubec and Other Stories by Michael Moorcock Vol 14

Count Brass by Michael Moorcock Vol 15

 

Now in addition these goodies, you'll also want The Black Corridor, Behold the Man, and  The Metatemporal Detective and the three volume paperback set "Best Short Fiction of", which includes: My Experiences in the Third World War & Other Stories, The Brothel in Rosenstrasse & Other Stories, & Breakfast in the Ruins & Other Stories. Turns out that I have an extra set of the three collections and basically willing to let them go for what I've got into them. $25.00 in the US takes it. Sorry to my friends across the pond, but it costs more to ship than the books are worth and I'm not being party to that sort of nonsense. The Postal Services in every major country claim to be losing money, well here's a thought: quit jacking your customers around and perhaps people wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time and effort figuring out how to by-pass your rapacious, blood-sucking asses.

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  • 5 weeks later...
On 5/17/2018 at 6:48 PM, J.H. said:

Don't the Cornelius books also count towards the Eternal Champion cycle?
I thought they did

James

Mr. Moorcock would like you to think so. Seriously, I've read Moorcock longer than many posters here have been alive and while I'm a huge fan of the guy both as a writer and a person (what he did with New Worlds was fucking heroic), I have very little patience with his retconning everything into the Eternal Champion series. Mike, I love ya, and I'll buy your books anyway, you don't have to con me. 

Let me state for the record that I find the Jerry Cornelius stuff to be neither entertaining, funny, or worth reading under any circumstance. I applaud White Wolf for putting the foot down and refusing to include any of it in their masterful Moorcock collection (detailed earlier in the thread). Moorcock is very much the case of the scenario where you have a brilliant artist and another man. The job of the brilliant artist is to create a masterpiece, the job of the other man is to hit him over the head when it's finished so the artist doesn't screw it up with self-indulgent bullshit. Moorcock needs that other man present much of the time.

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  • 1 month later...

Holy fuck! What did I just read??? Probably the darkest, nastiest, most over-the-top sword and sorcery book ever written and I loved every second of it. Warning: this is not for the faint of heart or those easily offended by rampant sex, gore and brutality, this is fucking death metal in book form... I am referring of course to Bleakwarrior by Alistair Rennie. If you thought Elric of Melnibone was grim and that Karl Edward Wagner's Kane had a bad attitude, wait until you encounter warriors such as the Gutter (he cuts out enemies guts and eats them), Lord Brawl, The Piper Who Calls the Tune, and many others. Buy this book and as a soundtrack, check out Rennie's music project: Ruptured World; again, be warned; this is some dark, dark stuff. Makes Michael Shea's Nifft the Lean seem like a Disney fairytale. 

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I really shouldn't read any of the shit that ODJ "highly recommends."  There is a special place in hell for guys like me that buy books like this on a Sunday afternoon.

I am halfway through BleakWarrior and it is pretty fucking brutal.

It answers the question of what it would look like if Mortal Kombat were a splatter porn movie directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and yet it is also a brilliantly introspective examination of the human (inhuman?) condition..

In this ultra-violent setting we have people who clearly define themselves by what they do, and then suddenly one character begins to wonder if what he does actually should determine who he is (or more importantly, what he should become).  Is it madness to want to defy your violent nature in a world where survival depends on your level of brutality, or is it crazier to accept, nay, embrace the idea that the thing you do best in life is eviscerate other people?

Can you change your nature under these circumstances?

Should you change your nature under these circumstances?

Be not deceived.  The post graduate level of philosophy going on in this book is soaked in blood and gore and there is plenty of deviant sex to go around.  The sound you hear is not the sound of one hand clapping; it is the wet thud of someone's head being smashed open with a metal baton shaped like a giant phallus.

If you are the type that loves pulp fantasy but offends fairly easily, might I suggest one of the Conan books?  This title is NOT FOR YOU~!

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38 minutes ago, OSJ said:

"The Gutter" is now one of my favorite characters in epic fantasy, does that make me a bad person?

Oh, it most definitely makes you an awful person.

I am a big fan of The Light That Never Shines and the Sisters of No Mercy, myself.  I am total scum.

Now I know what it would've looked like if Mario Bava and Gregory Dark had co-directed a Masters of the Universe movie or if there was a G'War concert movie where the band slaughtered the audience for real or if Fritz Leiber had experimented with bath salts and ate JRR Tolkien's face off.

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