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This section is mostly about things that aren't comics and aren't by Grant Morrison. After that, I promise I'll get to the main subject.
The Final Programme (1968)
A Cure for Cancer (1971)
The English Assassin: A Romance of Entropy (1972)
The Condition of Muzak (1977)
Novels by Michael Moorcock
Moorcock needs no introduction from me, but here's one anyway. He's most widely known as an author of high fantasy; anything written in that genre after 1961 that has a sort of Gothic poetic sensibility and isn't a Tolkien riff owes a lot to his Elric series. He was also at the center of the hard-to-define-but-unmistakable New Wave movement in SF, during his time as editor of New Worlds magazine. He wrote some lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult. And he's the creator of the psychedelic fashion-forward homicidal incestuous metafictional dimension-hopping secret agent Jerry Cornelius, who appears in various forms in these four novels plus assorted shorter works.
That's the basis of Moorcock's gigantic animosity to Grant Morrison, who he thinks went beyond Cornelius homage into ripoff territory, particularly with Morrison's very early strip Gideon Stargrave and parts of The Invisibles. Moorcock has said that Morrison's done nothing but imitate him, which I don't think is true, but I do think anyone with any interest in avant-garde SF/fantasy who grew up in the '70s would be certain to absorb this stuff by osmosis even if they didn't like it—and Morrison clearly did like it. I wasn't a huge fan as a kid (at least, I thought not; I'll explain below), but I was pretty sure I had read these things too young, so I wanted to try again. Well... I'm still not a fan, but it's an undeniably unique work that I think might work better as an influence than as itself; that is, these manage to suggest all kinds of other interesting books that they're choosing not to be. John Clute in his introduction to The Final Programme makes about the best case for the series that I can imagine, and I can see what he's talking about now and then.
( Read more... )
The Final Programme (1968)
A Cure for Cancer (1971)
The English Assassin: A Romance of Entropy (1972)
The Condition of Muzak (1977)
Novels by Michael Moorcock
Moorcock needs no introduction from me, but here's one anyway. He's most widely known as an author of high fantasy; anything written in that genre after 1961 that has a sort of Gothic poetic sensibility and isn't a Tolkien riff owes a lot to his Elric series. He was also at the center of the hard-to-define-but-unmistakable New Wave movement in SF, during his time as editor of New Worlds magazine. He wrote some lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult. And he's the creator of the psychedelic fashion-forward homicidal incestuous metafictional dimension-hopping secret agent Jerry Cornelius, who appears in various forms in these four novels plus assorted shorter works.
That's the basis of Moorcock's gigantic animosity to Grant Morrison, who he thinks went beyond Cornelius homage into ripoff territory, particularly with Morrison's very early strip Gideon Stargrave and parts of The Invisibles. Moorcock has said that Morrison's done nothing but imitate him, which I don't think is true, but I do think anyone with any interest in avant-garde SF/fantasy who grew up in the '70s would be certain to absorb this stuff by osmosis even if they didn't like it—and Morrison clearly did like it. I wasn't a huge fan as a kid (at least, I thought not; I'll explain below), but I was pretty sure I had read these things too young, so I wanted to try again. Well... I'm still not a fan, but it's an undeniably unique work that I think might work better as an influence than as itself; that is, these manage to suggest all kinds of other interesting books that they're choosing not to be. John Clute in his introduction to The Final Programme makes about the best case for the series that I can imagine, and I can see what he's talking about now and then.
( Read more... )
