Genevieve Cogman - The Invisible Library (2015)

"That was the whole point of the Library: as far as she'd been taught, anyway. It wasn't about a higher mission to save worlds. It was about finding unique works of fiction and saving them in a place out of time and space. Perhaps some people might think that was a petty way to spend eternity, but Irene was happy with her choice. Anyone who really loved a good story would understand."

'The Invisible Library' by Genevieve Cogman is a thoroughly enjoyable Fantasy adventure featuring alternate worlds, a steampunkish setting, great detectives, fairies, dragons, strong female characters and books, not to mention a compelling central concept. In its inventive use of alternate realities as a series of settings for the ongoing conflict between rival forces of order and chaos, it harks back to classic Fantasy works such as 'Three Hearts And Three Lions' by Poul Anderson or Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion books. It is held together by its overarching love of fiction, and its steadfast belief in the value and importance of books; that stories are worth preserving because they tell us something important about the culture that produced them, and simply for the joy a good story brings.
   At the centre of 'The Invisible Library' is the Library itself, a vast, interdimensional space that a secret society of immortal dimension-hopping Librarians use to store fiction from alternate realities. It's an inspired creation, drawing on both Borges' infinite library and Edgewood, the house that acts as a portal between the worlds of humans and fairies from John Crowley's 'Little Big'. The Librarians themselves are a classic manipulative secret society, a force on the side of order but filled with dark secrets and arcane power games. Appropriately for a book about libraries, 'The Invisible Library' treats fiction as its playground, cheerfully mixing up Moorcockian Fantasy in its use of alternate dimensions and sinister, chaos-worshiping Fae, the Sherlock Holmes stories beloved of protagonist Irene in the form of the great detective Vale, and the scientific romances of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne in its steam-powered, Victorian-esque London. There are even elements of Lovecraftian cosmic horror in the villain Alberic, a rogue Librarian who has turned to the side of chaos to sustain his immortality. Cogman meshes all these disparate elements together seamlessly, and the book has gonzo invention to spare with its giant mechanical insects and clans of warring werewolves, vampires and fairies. It recalls the mad alchemy of the original steampunk novels by Tim Powers, James Blaylock and K. W. Jeter, rather than the more tired and cynical trappings of the genre that have been overused since.
   In keeping with the book's faith in the power of language, the Librarian's magical powers stem from language itself. The Librarians can speak the Language and force the physical components of reality around them to do their bidding, a literalised form of reification, which links thematically back to Borges. Cogman makes good use of the concept, exploring both the limitations of the technique - you have to phrase your requests very specifically for it to be useful, thus limiting its use as a 'get out of jail free' card for the heroes - and the extent to which it could be abused, in a troubling scene in which Irene uses the Language on a person to hijack an airship.
   As well as an intriguing set-up, 'The Invisible Library' also has well drawn and memorable characters. Vale, the Holmes-esque detective and Kai, Irene's assistant, trainee and secret dragon in human form, are compelling characters, all the more so for having the ability to act against Irene's and each other's interests when appropriate. Much of the philosophical weight of the book comes from Irene's attempts to keep Vale on her side. Vale is a rational and caring person who believes that the Library should use its powers to help people rather than just preserving books. One of the good things about 'The Invisible Library' is that, while the Librarians are unquestionably on the side of order, this does not necessarily mean that they are all good or nice; some of the Librarians will use any means necessary to acquire the books they are after, no matter how damaging the consequences to bystanders. We see this personified in the most interesting relationship in the book, between Irene and her ex-mentor Bradamant. Bradamant cares about completing her mission at any cost, and has thrown Irene under the train in the past to achieve this; as a result, Irene is especially conscious of how her actions affect other people, and wants to do her job without causing harm and to help people on the way if she can. Irene has to prove that she can get results whilst showing Vale that she is ultimately a moral person, unlike Bradamant. Cogman handles Bradamant and Irene's relationship very well; there's no denying that Bradamant is incredibly selfish, manipulative and unpleasant, even going so far as to drug Irene at the climax so that she can finish the job her way without Irene's interference, but she isn't the main villain, and by the end of the book there's a sense that she has learned to respect Irene, whilst Irene, by showing that she is both moral and competent is able to leave behind her hangups about being in Bradamant's shadow.

Families in Literature: The Corneliuses in The Cornelius Quartet by Michael Moorcock

From the 17th December 2014 to 9th January 2015, the Guardian ran a fantastic 'Families in Literature' series on their books blog, where various writers discussed their favourite fictional families. I sent them this unsolicited piece about the Corneliuses from Michael Moorcock's Cornelius books. They didn't publish it, so I have uploaded it here for fun.

For good and ill, our families hold such a large sway over us because they define our origins. While I've been fortunate enough to come from a nurturing and supportive background, many of fiction's most compelling families provide a much more dysfunctional environment. And the Corneliuses, from Michael Moorcock's Cornelius Quartet, are as dysfunctional as they come. Jerry Cornelius is an incarnation of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, a pansexual super suave super spy hipster, yet he is defined by his relationship to his family. The first Cornelius book, 'The Final Programme', sets the tone as Jerry leads a raid on his father's house to steal back his sister Catherine from his brother Frank. The incest love-triangle is just the start; Jerry accidentally murders Catherine and goes on a wild chase to get his revenge against Frank.

   The messy and tangled love-hate relationship between the Cornelius siblings allows Moorcock to throw both Jerry and Frank into stark relief in terms of their complementary characteristics and their symbolic nature. Jerry represents the forces of Chaos – he is an anarchic, destructive free spirit, as demonstrated by his psychedelic rock star flamboyance. Frank on the other hand, with his business suits and his neatly cut hair, represents the forces of Law – rigid, authoritarian and restrictive. Just as neither Law or Chaos are of themselves neither good nor evil, neither are Jerry or Frank; rather, they are two complimentary and opposing forces, each the other's shadow, one waxing as the other wanes, but neither can ultimately triumph over the other as they need each other to define themselves against. Moorcock casts the Cornelius brothers' obsessive and destructive sibling rivalry as the ever-shifting balance between the forces of Law and Chaos that define our interactions with ourselves and the world.

   Although Jerry's father, a great scientist and inventor, is defined only by his absence, in the third book in the sequence, 'The English Assassin', we meet Jerry's mum, Mrs. Cornelius. Mrs. Cornelius is larger than life, a lusty, foul-mouthed cockney woman who loves her food and her drink. Despite her crudeness and naivety, she genuinely loves and cares for her children, and her affection for Frank, Jerry and Catherine remains strong and sincere throughout all their violent feuds. She never judges and she never takes sides, and her death in 'The Condition Of Muzak' is one of the most affecting scenes in the series, all the more distressing for being the only death in the sequence to remain permanent.

   Throughout the Cornelius books, the Cornelius family is aided, abetted, attacked and hindered by its extended family, each of whom play their part in the symbolic tapestry of the books. There is Una Pearson, a suave female assassin and Jerry's and Catherine's on and off lover. There is Prinz Lobkowitz, who represents the fading European aristocracy, and Major Nye, a fusty old British gentleman who represents British Imperialism, and Mrs. Cornelius' lover, the miserable Russian Colonel Pyat. The later Cornelius books have an experimental structure, and feature these characters struggling, feuding and fighting with each other, forming and breaking alliances, all whilst desperately trying to out play each other. In writing the Cornelius books, Moorcock was influenced by the comedia dell'arte, with Jerry playing the role of Pierrot, the sad clown, while Catherine is Colombine, the lover he is always destined to lose to Una, who plays the part of the trickster Harlequin. The books follow the characters across alternate universes, as they play their complicated games of assassination, betrayal and murder, allowing the characters' symbolism to recombine and reconfigure in enlightening and seemingly infinitely possible arrays.

   Their shifting alliances and endless petty squabbling makes the extended Cornelius troop act and behave like a large, dysfunctional family, but this is also shown in their dependence on each other. Whatever we feel about our families, they are where we come from, and that will always be a part of who we are. Wherever Jerry, his family and his friends go in the multiverse, they always wind up recapitulating the same interactions and the same situations with the same people – each other. In 'The Condition Of Muzak', Jerry questions his own nature by exploring his place within the cast of characters. He spends much of the time in the book in a fugue, returning again to key moments from the previous books, or flitting about behind the scenes in the narrative dead space as various characters wait for the action to start. For all Jerry's supernatural charisma and sixties psychedelic coolness, he is only able to recapture his spark and enthusiasm, and achieve self-knowledge by discovering and accepting his place in his family.

Poul Anderson - Three Hearts And Three Lions (1961)

"Hasten, hasten, best of horses! Oh, run, my comrade, run as no horses ever did erenow, for surely all men are pursued with us. Haste thee, my darling, for we ride against striding Time, we ride against marching Chaos. Ah, God be with thee, God strengthen thee to run!"

'Three Hearts And Three Lions' is another charming and hugely influential Poul Anderson fantasy. While it lacks the strum und drang atavistic intensity of 'The Broken Sword', much of that book's invention and storytelling deftness is on display here. Whereas 'The Broken Sword' is fully emerged in its brutal Fantasy world of vengeful doomed Vikings and manipulative gods and elves, in 'Three Hearts And Three Lions' Anderson uses a modern day viewpoint character who is swept into a magical realm, who acts as a viewpoint character for the audience. Holger Carlsen is an affable everyman who finds himself transported into a different world where it seems like he is destined to play a key role. As such he's the ancestor of all the subsequent modern day viewpoint characters thrust into fantastical situations they don't understand, from Michael Moorcock's Erekose to Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, and 'Three Hearts And Three Lions' has provided a blueprint for subsequent variations and deconstructions of the chosen one story.
   Holger Carlsen is a Danish engineer who, during World War II, is hit by a shell and wakes up naked in a forest, in a world where it turns out that magic is very much real, elves, trolls and giants exist alongside the legends of our world, and the history of our world is just myths and legends. Carlsen finds that he is the knight of Three Hearts and Three Lions, a figure that appears to be of great importance in this world. Duke Alfric and Morgan le Fay, the leaders of the Faeries, are incredibly keen to have him either killed and out of the way, whilst a Saracen is looking for him. With the help of Hugi the dwarf and Alianora the swan-may, Carlsen goes in search of the sword Cortana, which is tied with his destiny as the knight of Three Hearts and Three Lions, and may have the power to send him home.
   Anderson uses Carlsen as a viewpoint character, through which the audience gets to vicariously experience the wonder and confusion of being plunged into a strange and fantastical world. However, while characters such as these can make an easy entry point for the reader into what might otherwise be a strange and disorientating world, they also run the risk of being so much of a blank slate that they come off as bland, or worse, as a wet blanket, oblivious to the wonders around them as they try desperately to get back home to rural Kansas. Anderson avoids this quite elegantly and inventively. Carlsen's stolid engineer's mind allows him to succeed as a knight by coming up with very modern and practical solutions to the fantastical challenges that face him. So he defeats a dragon not by expertise with a sword, but by using cold water to make it overheat like a boiler, and he works out that the curse of the troll's gold is caused by the radiation released when the carbon in the troll turns to silicon when it turns to stone in the sun.
   This rationalism extends to Calrsen's ontological understanding of the fantasy world he finds himself in. Calrsen theorises that, as quantum theory allows for an infinite number of alternate universes, it's possible that a universe exists in which all the myths and legends of our world are fact, and magic exists as a physical force, and that he has somehow been transferred across the boundaries between alternate realities. Michael Moorcock would later develop this idea as the basis for the multiverse, the ever shifting alternate realities through which the Eternal Champion wanders. It's interesting that a writer like Anderson who is so adept at writing wonderful fantasy stories should be so concerned with rationalising them, perhaps coming from his need as a writer of hard SF to make sure the worlds in his writing follow the laws of physics, and have vaguely plausible excuses for when they don't. Rather than making his fantasy world less magical, the fact that the non-magical aspects of the world are so realistically rendered makes the fantastical aspects of the world more believable.
   'Three Hearts And Three Lions' also presents another idea that would provide a cornerstone for Moorcock's Eternal Champion series, namely that of the eternal struggle between the forces of Law and Chaos. In Anderson's book, Law, as represented by humanity and Christendom, is under threat by the forces of Chaos, as represented by the forces of Faerie, which is mirrored by the conflict between the Allies and the Nazis in our universe. While the idea has the seeds of its origin here, Moorcock would go on to develop the idea of the balance between Law and Chaos more fully in his work. In 'Three Hearts And Three Lions', Law is basically the equivalent of good, whilst Chaos is evil. In Moorcock's work, neither Law or Chaos is good or evil in and of itself; they are two natural forces that need to be in equilibrium, and evil arises when there is an imbalance in either direction. This allows Moorcock to fully explore the nuances only hinted at in Anderson's work.
   Moorcock would later echo Carlsen's fate with that of Erekose. Carlsen discovers his identity as the knight of Three Hearts and Three Lions is that of Holger Danske, a knight of Arthur's round table who returns during times of chaos to save the world. Having saved humanity from the encroaching forces of Faerie, he is whisked back to our world where he helps to defeat the Nazis. But this means he is separated from his love, Alianora, as Erekose is from his love Erminzhad, and he is destined to search for a way to travel across alternate universes to find her again.
 

Michael Moorcock - The Shores Of Death (1966)

"There comes a point in a situation like this where you become so far removed from actuality that your own system of lies defeats you. It has happened often enough in the past. Your lie becomes your reality - but it is only yours. You begin to operate according to a set of self-formulated laws that conflict with the actual laws of existence."

'The Shores Of Death' is Michael Moorcock's post-apocalypse novel. Whilst Moorcock has always had a penchant for destroying the world in creative ways, and the situation here is as imaginative as one would expect, the real focus here is on how people react to the end of the world and the knowledge of the impending extinction of the human race. It's a novel about fear, and how both individuals and societies react to it. In the introduction, Moorcock compares the structure of the novel to that of J. G. Ballard's 'The Drowned World' and Brian Aldiss' 'Greybeard', in that the book first explores the effect of the disaster on society before focusing in on its effect on one individual. As in those books, the SF-nal set up of the apocalypse provides a stark setting that reflects the psychology of the characters. But whereas Ballard explores the atavistic primal unconscious buried beneath the veneer of civilisation, Moorcock concerns himself with how even a utopian society can slide into extremism when faced by fear, and how when confronted with our own mortality even intelligent and well-adjusted individuals can wind up making terrible, selfish decisions.
   In 'The Shores Of Death', aliens stopped the rotation of the earth, using a form of radiation that eventually makes people infertile. Life is only possible on the hemisphere facing the sun, or in the band of twilight between that hemisphere and the freezing cold dark of the hemisphere stuck facing night. Clovis Marca escaped from the twilight region where he was born to become a popular government official in the utopian society on the light side of the Earth. Following the discovery that the entire human race has become infertile, people must face the fact that they will be the last generation of humans ever to live before the race becomes extinct. As fear spreads, the formerly utopian society degenerates into paranoia, violence and extremism. Meanwhile Clovis becomes unhealthily obsessed with tracking down Orlando Sharvis, a brilliant scientist charged with crimes of horrific human experiments, who nonetheless could be the only person capable of saving the human race from extinction.
   Moorcock's portrayal of a decadent society on the verge of collapse is compelling and disturbing. The continuous thread throughout all of Moorcock's work is the balance between Chaos and Order, and how both are necessary for change, which itself is necessary for a healthy society. Like the planet frozen on its axis, the society in 'The Shores Of Death' has stagnated, and its utopian nature is the flipside to a darker side. The news of humanity's imminent extinction shows up how fragile this well-ordered society is, how quickly it descends into destructive decadence. People move from one party to another, trying to hide how frightened they are behind the mask of hedonism. Moorcock perfectly captures the undercurrent of nervous tension, people desperate to convince themselves that they're having a good time so that they won't have to dwell on their own mortality. This volatile atmosphere leads to the formation of a fanatical cult, the Brotherhood of Guilt, who are convinced that humanity's fate is a divine punishment, and a group of masked, uniformed vigilantes, lead by Clovis' old colleague and friend Andros Almer, who decide to take stopping the cult into their own hands. As the government collapses due to apathy, the power of Almer's vigilantes grows, and Almer uses more and more extreme methods to garner and maintain control, until he winds up the dictator of a fascistic society ruled by fear.
   Now, none of this is particularly subtle, but that's actually kind of the point. The people in the book are just as capable of seeing the historical parallels as the reader, and know exactly where this is going as well, yet they are unable to stop it. The point is that people should know better when extremism comes knocking at our door, but it thrives on fear, which all too often strips away our ability to act rationally. At the end of the day there usually isn't anything particularly subtle about a despot's rise to power, and that's what makes 'The Shores Of Death' so unsettling. There's a fantastic scene in which Clovis confronts Andros Almer and pleads with him to see reason, but it turns out that Almer knows damn well the consequences of what he is doing, and is consciously playing the villain. Faced with the same fear that everyone else is facing, Almer is stepping into the role of dictator not so much to gain control of the situation as that it provides him with a set script and rules to work to. Even if the role is villainous, it's still a clearly defined role, which he finds preferable to facing his own mortality, something for which there is no script. Moorcock gets a lot of mileage out of showing how Almer is ultimately swallowed up by the one dimensional pantomime villain role that 'dictator' is.
   Clovis deals with his fear in a different way that is no healthier. He withdraws from his social responsibilities and becomes obsessed with tracking down Orlando Sharvis, despite frequently being warned off him by the mysterious Mr. Take. Sharvis represents science completely uncoupled from its ethical responsibilities. A post-human who has modified himself to be a giant with a snake-like head, Sharvis takes no actions for himself but will happily grant any request asked of him, for a horrific price. In order to reach his secret base on the inside of the moon, which is now submerged in the ocean on the dark side of the Earth, Clovis first has to make his way through a village inhabited by those who have made a bargain with Sharvis, a horrifying vision of hell filled with people suffering the ironic consequences of their poorly phrased wishes. The nightmarish fates of these people and Mr. Take's own explicit warnings are not enough to dissuade Clovis from making a Faustian pact with Sharvis. Again, it's not difficult to see exactly where this is going, and the power Moorcock generates from this is that the reader can clearly see the intelligent and streetwise Clovis driven into this terrible bargain because of his own fear, when he could have lived the rest of his life happily with the woman who loves him. Fear of our own mortality frequently results in us not living our lives to the full. And so Clovis is granted immortality, and the ability to reproduce with his girlfriend, ensuring that both himself and humanity will continue, but at the expense of ever being able to feel anything again.

Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword (1954)

"'Can you not feel it? The monstrous slumbering power locked in that iron, held by those runes so ancient even I cannot  read them - the power ravenous and resistless and - evil! there is a curse on that weapon, Skafloc. It will bring the bane of all within its might.' Her eyes were wide and frightened. She shivered with a cold not that of the dungeon. 'I think - Skafloc, I think it were best for you if you walled up that sword again.'"

Poul Anderson's 'The Broken Sword' was first published in the same year as Tolkien's 'The Fellowship Of The Ring'. Both books are landmarks in Fantasy in very different ways. Ably informed by their authors' passion for and study of Norse mythology and Icelandic sagas, the books set both the subject matter and the tone of the Fantasy genre from then until the present day. Yet the books could not be more different. Compared to the bulk and meandering of Tolkien's masterwork, 'The Broken Sword' clocks in at a remarkably swift 274 pages, and in place of Tolkien's gentility is a savagery and brutality that harks back to the original sagas and myths that both books draw on. While the tropes and modes that Tolkien set in stone would influence the bulk of mass market Fantasy produced for decades, Anderson's novel, though less well known, anticipates the grimdark nature of modern masters like George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie, whilst providing an alternative template to Fantasy for those put off by Tolkien's twee-ness that would be taken up by the likes of Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison. 'The Broken Sword' is frequently regarded as a Fantasy classic, yet after reading Anderson's disappointing 'Tau Zero' I had been avoiding more of his work. Yet where 'Tau Zero' is clumsily written with poorly realised characters, 'The Broken Sword' sings off the page, and while it would be a stretch to paint it as overtly feminist, in this regard it is easily more progressive than 'Tau Zero' and 'Lord Of The Rings', having multiple strong female characters with agency. 

So good it's been a Fantasy Masterwork twice

'The Broken Sword' is about doom. Characters have to face the frequently bad consequences of their and their ancestors' actions, frequently hindered by supernatural forces much stronger than them. It opens with Orm, a viking who kills an Englander and all of his family in order to steal his land, save for an old witch who escapes. The witch, desiring revenge, directs a passing elf to steal Orm's newly-born son and replace him with a changeling, setting off a series of events that can only end in their mutual destruction. Skafloc, Orm's son, is brought up among the elves, learning their skills with fighting, hunting and magic. Valgard, his photo-negative changeling, his brought up as Orm's son, where his aggressive and surly nature isolate him from his family. Whilst Skafloc is beloved by the elves and goes with them to fight in their wars with the trolls, Valgard is manipulated by the witch into killing Orm and his sons and selling his daughters to the trolls in order to become one of their generals. The elves and the trolls are natural enemies and always at war, yet they can't let their fighting get too serious otherwise the gods and the giants will join in, leading to the end of the world. Yet the gods are already involved; on the day Skafloc was brought to Alfheim, a messenger of the gods presented him with a broken black blade, saying that one day he will have need of it. This is Tyrfing, forged by the giant Bolverk, a powerful weapon destined to play a role in Ragnarok.
   The book unfolds beautifully, events following on from one another in inevitable certainty towards Skafloc and Valgard's twinned fate. The book is driven by Anderson's beautiful prose, (something I genuinely never thought I'd write); using almost entirely words with Old English sources, full of inversions, and evocatively poetic, Anderson accurately summons the feel and texture of the Norse myths he draws from as much as the subject matter. Characters even frequently burst into verse, like the skalds, which of course Anderson knows the rules for and follows. Which is not to say he shies away from violence. 'The Broken Sword' features enough bloody battles and brutal violence to satisfy the most hardened of Abercrombie fans. It also rattles along at an incredibly sprightly pace, largely due to the fact that Anderson is incredibly focused on the main thread of the narrative. Lesser writers would have used the diversion of Skafloc and Mananaan's flight from the ice giants to pad the book out, whereas Anderson hints at wider adventures tangential to the main narrative, allowing our imagination to play within the gaps left by the main story and freeing him up from getting bogged down in trivialities while he's building to the climax. The book also manages to tie together multiple strands of mythology. Anderson lifts from Norse, Irish, Celtic and Christian mythology when he chooses, yet has the talent to tie it together into one coherent world.
   Of course none of this would work if the book didn't have strong characters to inhabit this coherent world. Skafloc and Valgard are perfect foils for each other, each cursed by being in the other's natural place, each manipulated by forces outside their control, ultimately their hatred for each other winds up being the last thing they have. The forbidden love between Skafloc and his sister Freda is all the more affecting because Freda is a well developed character in her own right. Freda is smart, resourceful and can handle herself in a fight, winding up with a fairly impressive troll body-count. In the end, she is the one with control over their relationship, and her tragic decision to return to Skafloc at the worst possible time is hers alone. Simirlarly, Leea, Skafloc's elf foster mother, though she is defined in the book largely through her relationship to Skafloc, but is cunning and wily. Leea and the rest of the female elves even get their turn to save the day, as they kill the trolls in their sleep and steal the keys to let Skafloc and the elf army into the castle. Leea and Freda even have conversations that aren't about Skafloc, allowing the book to technically pass the Bechdel test. Again it's not perfect but it's considerably better than 'The Lord Of The Rings' in this regard and many of the Fantasies that follow it. Then there is Tyrfing, the black blade, the broken sword itself, a weapon of evil that howls like a demon, must drink blood once it's been drawn, and ultimately turns on its user. The influence on Michael Moorcock would be clear even if his endorsement wasn't on the cover of the latest printing.

The 1971 Sphere reprint has a beautiful cover, but includes the Bowdlerised text in which Anderson himself made his own book less awesome. Both Fantasy Masterworks editions happily restore the original 1954 text.

In the end, the gods manipulate elves, trolls and humans alike for their own means. Odin has been driving everything from the start, to fix Tyrfing and to breed Skafloc and Freda's son, whom he claims from Freda as a price for saving Skafloc, so that he can be a hero who will wield the dangerous sword for the gods. This ties into the book's main theme of fate. All the characters are up against hugely powerful forces, there is nothing for them to do but to choose how they will face them. Having left 'The Broken Sword' open for a sequel, Anderson never wrote it. But it's enough that he wrote this great book, one that we can be thankful for both its own merits and its influence on generations of Fantasy writers to come.

Michael Moorcock – The Cornelius Chronicles (1969-1977)

“Jerry didn't mind the bombs as much as the rock scene. He wouldn't care what they sent so long as it wasn't Simon and Garfunkel.”

   

Jerry Cornelius is quite possibly the weirdest incarnation of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion. Jerry is an achingly cool secret agent assassin pansexual music snob who dies and comes back to life frequently. He's armed with supercool weapons like the needlegun and the vibragun, and he throws parties so cool that everyone from Elric to Charlie Parker to Hawkwind attends, (though no one leaves). While all incarnations of the Eternal Champion strive to restore the balance between the forces of order and chaos, Jerry is purely a force of chaos who is never happier than when tearing down empires, regimes and civilisations, or just generally running amok. All this is weird enough, but it doesn't cover the way in which the stories are told. Moorcock wrote the original four Cornelius novels at the height of the 60s counterculture and SF's bold and experimental New Wave, leading him to write a series firmly engaged with its turbulent time and enlivened by the avant-garde techniques of William Burroughs. Aside from the first book in the quartet, the Cornelius stories are told out of chronological order and interspersed with cut-up text from headlines, adverts and newspaper articles to emulate a true sense of chaos. But for all that, Moorcock's pulp instincts and his feel for a good story hold the whole thing together, creating one of those rare pieces of art that manages to be both boldly experimental and immediately engaging. Indeed, these four books may be the great man's crowning achievement.

The Final Programme (1969)

Amazingly, the actual book is arguably weirder than the cover. 

   'The Final Programme', the first Cornelius novel, is relatively straightforward. 'Relatively' being the operative word. When we are first introduced to Jerry Cornelius, he is scheming with a bunch of dubious characters to storm his father's house by sea where his brother, Frank, has holed up so he can steal back his sister and lover, Catherine, from him. This should appear familiar to fans of Moorcock's work, as it's basically the same plot as the first Elric novel. But it is far from simply being a retread. Whereas Elric has always been about moral ambiguity - Elric realises that a lot of the stuff he does simply isn't very pleasant, and boy does he angst about it - Jerry Cornelius is gleefully amoral. Even when he accidentally shoots and kills Catherine, as Elric does to his sister in 'The Dreaming City', he seems more sulky because he's lost this particular game rather than devastated by the death of his true love. 

Jerry, seen here Corneliusing

   Jerry's associates are lead by Mrs. Brunner, the ying to Jerry's yang, a Thatcher expy who represents order at its most fascistic and stiffing. She is hoping to use the technology designed by Cornelius' father to create a computer capable of running the ultimate programme that would be able to predict the fate of the earth and everyone in it to the smallest detail. On the promise of revenge, Jerry tags along with Miss Brunner to track down Frank through secret Nazi caves in Lapland to find a secret document left by Major Newman, an astronaut who allegedly gained some profound insight on a mission that went wrong. This of course Moorcock fans will recognise as a retelling of the Elric story 'While The Gods Laugh'. 

Pictured: cosmic illumination

   Like Elric and his sword Stormbringer, Jerry and Miss Brunner are suggested to be two halves of one whole. In much the same way as Elric draws energy from Stormbringer eating souls, Jerry is a kind of energy vampire who feeds off the life energy of those around him. But Jerry shows himself to be a very different kind of (anti-)hero to Elric. For much of the book he just coasts along; even the promise of revenge against Frank hardly seems to get his blood flowing, and he barely tries to stop Miss Brunner from completing her evil plan. In addition, unlike Elric, Jerry Cornelius likes sex. A lot. In addition to his incestuous relationship with Catherine, Jerry will and does sleep with anything that moves, male or female, allowing himself to be seduced as much as seducing. 

   In the end, Miss Brunner runs her final programme and has sex with Jerry, and the merge into the hermaphroditic being Cornelius Brunner, forming a kind of dark messiah that brings about the apocalypse by leading the whole of the human race into the sea to drown. Perhaps as chaos and order have been united in the perfect balance, there is nothing left for this universe. (This is the first book in a series).

The triumph of Cornelius Brunner

 A Cure For Cancer (1971)

"This book... has an unconventional structure."

   Jerry Cornelius returns in 'A Cure For Cancer', apparently none the worse for wear for merging with Miss Brunner and causing the apocalypse. Perhaps more than any other incarnation of the Eternal Champion, the Cornelius stories make full use of the concept of the multiverse - different alternate universes in which the same struggle between order and chaos is endlessly recapitulated. 'A Cure For Cancer' warns us at the beginning that it has an unconventional structure. While 'The Final Programme' is a linear story that, while weird, still holds together and makes narrative sense, the rest of the Cornelius Quartet from here on out is told out of chronological order, in a series of disjointed but related scenarios playing out in different times and in different universes, as characters representing larger concepts interact. We already have Jerry representing chaos and Miss Brunner and Frank representing the extremes of order, but 'Cancer' expands the Cornelius troop to include the greedy and lustful Bishop Beesley, who represents organised religion. 

Pictured: subtlety

   This time round, Jerry manifests as a photo negative version of himself from the previous novel - white hair and ink black skin and teeth. This Jerry is hardly a moral inversion of the old Jerry - he's just as amoral here as he ever was. This time he's searching for a device he invented that allow him to switch between universes - at the cost of absorbing life in this universe - in order to find a universe in which his beloved Catherine is still alive. 

   As well as facing off against Bishop Beesley, who wants to steal Jerry's device to create a universe of such pure order that time itself will stop, Jerry has to contend with the deranged military forces that Frank has allied himself to this time, militaristic psychopaths who have turned England into a battleground in order to wipe out what they see as some kind of ideological cancer. 'A Cure For Cancer' was written during the Vietnam war, but it's not hard to see how its satire remains pertinent today. 

   While the disjointed structure makes it difficult to figure out exactly what's going on, that's kind of the point. Here Moorcock is plunging us directly into the chaos, and his disruption of conventional narrative structure comes off as a masterstroke. The characters are well drawn enough and there is a consistent texture of atmosphere that the novel maintains its own momentum and is able to come together somewhat for its conclusion. While Jerry may be amoral, selfish and dangerous, he's a darn slight better than the forces he's up against. 

The English Assassin: A Romance Of Entropy (1972)

"As he had often suspected, the end had come quietly and the breakdown had been by slow degrees. In fact the breakdown was still going on. Superficially there was nothing urgent about it. As the weeks passed and communications and services slowly worsened, there always seemed to be a chance that things might improve. He knew they could not improve."

Ashes to ashes...

   Jerry Cornelius himself sits this one out for the most part, which is understandable as the guy's in something of a bad way, drudged up from the ocean floor or screaming incoherently. But that's OK because it gives us more time to focus on the supporting cast. Una Pearson, the suave female assassin who first appeared in the Oswald Bastable novels but is much more at home in the Cornelius crew, takes centre stage here, acting as much as an agent of chaos as Jerry ever did, shooting up European aristocracy and taking his place as Catherine's lover as well. Catherine herself finally gets to spend some significant time alive and undergoes some character development herself. We are introduced to Prinz Lobkowitz, who represents the fading European aristocracy (and gets killed by Una a lot), Major Nye, who represents British Imperialism, Jerry's larger than life cockney mum and her lover, the lugubrious Colonel Pyat. 

   'The English Assassin' follows the unconventional structure of 'A Cure For Cancer' but takes it even further. While in 'Cancer' there was more or less a single narrative thread that it was just about possible to untangle, 'Assassin' atomises the narrative further, providing a series of vignettes occurring across multiple universes and time streams as the characters struggle for the upper hand in this particular iteration. Whilst not providing a solid narrative drive, each of these scenarios deepens our understanding of these characters and the way they interact. Although they all have different agendas, over the course of the novel we see just about every possible permutation of characters working together to further their own needs, proving that they are not as different as perhaps they would like to believe. The openness of the symbols recurring throughout the Cornelius stories and the vagueness of the actual plot allow a myriad of interpretations, which again is perhaps part of the point. 

The Condition Of Muzak (1977)

"Soon he was nearing London. In the evening light the city was phosphorescent, like a neon wound; it glowed beneath a great scarlet sun turning the clouds orange and purple. And Jerry was filled with a sudden deep love for his noble birth-place, the City of the Apocalypse, this Earthly Paradise, the oldest and greatest city of its Age, virgin and whore, mother, sister, mistress, sustainer of life, creator of nightmare, destroyer of dreams, harbour of twenty million chosen souls."

"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of muzak."

   How do you bring to an end something as open-ended and bizarre as the Cornelius Chronicles? 'The Condition Of Muzak' manages the nigh-impossible by acting as both a summation, a clarification and an obfuscation of everything that's gone before. The narrative is as jumbled and as piecemeal as in 'The English Assassin', but here the pieces of story we get appear to be from in between and behind the scenes of all that has gone before. Or is it? Are we catching Jerry in between the missing gaps in 'A Cure For Cancer', are we going to get enough context to be able to put all the events in 'Assassin' into a coherent order? Moorcock is aiming for nothing so simple. These could be the missing pieces of story, or they could be part of some other similar iteration in a different universe, or it could be Jerry sighing and going through the motions of repeating everything from the previous books for our own benefit. Or perhaps, as some sections of 'Muzak' indicate, Jerry is just some seedy kid from Ladbroke Grove who dreams of being a multiverse-surfing super spy because he and his beloved spacerock group The Deep Fix just can't catch a break. The Appendices at the back of the book thumb their nose to the very idea of continuity, giving a timeline of events across the whole of the Twentieth Century and the whole of the world which one man could not possibly have taken part in.

   The interactions between the characters this time round give us some of the clearest examples of who they really are. For example, Miss Brunner explains to Jerry, "Liberty! How I hate it! Given the chance I intend to establish a sane element of authority in this country again." 'Muzak' also puts Moorcock's vision of the future into clearer focus. A recurring element of the endgame scenarios dreamed up in the Cornelius Chronicles is the Balkanisation of larger states, and this is shown clearly here, with England splitting up into a multitude of tiny city states. 

   Also in focus is is Jerry himself and his role in the narrative. The novel's title refers to something that was once shocking and invigorating becoming mere background noise, a condition both Jerry and the Twentieth Century find themselves in at the beginning of the story. The sixties have given way to the seventies, the hippy dream has died and as a new age of cynicism is ushered in Jerry finds himself disillusioned with all his musical heroes, and perhaps with the very idea of heroism to begin with. If you deal in it all the time, even chaos can become boring. Jerry's ensuing identity crisis is played out with reference to the comedia dell'arte, with Jerry (and the audience) assuming that he has the role of Harlequin, with Catherine as his Columbine, and this drives his attempts to find a universe in which he can be with her. However, as the story continues, he begins to realise that his true role is that of Pierrot, the sad clown, and that he is always destined to lose his Columbine, and that Una Pearson is her Harlequin. While this suggests that Jerry will never be able to be with Catherine, it provides Jerry with a way out by taking the narrative pressure off him. Jerry ends his chronicle with the chance to shrug off the chains of narrative conceit, to stop being merely a symbol of chaos and perhaps to live a while as just a person.