Michael Moorcock - Author - and his Multiverse (edited version)
Created | Updated Feb 11, 2017
This is a collaborative entry. If you have anything to add about the fantasy author Michael Moorcock, please feel free to edit this article. See Collaborator's personal space for more information on how to do this.
Michael Moorcock is a prolific British fantasy and science fiction author, probably best known for his fantasy saga The Tale Of The Eternal Champion. This sequence of loosely interconnected books concerns the "Eternal Champion", who has many identities in different times and dimensions, but always fights to maintain the balance between ordered Law and random Chaos. Though he may not know that he is an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, or that his ultimate destiny is to maintain the Balance.
Moorcock's Life
Moorcock was born in London in 1939. He began his editing career at the age of sixteen when he became editor of the Tarzan Adventures magazine. From 1964 to 1971, he worked as editor of the New Worlds magazine, and helped to change its emphasis from old-style science fiction with rockets and rayguns to "New Wave" science fiction written in a more experimental style and more inclined towards softer sciences such as psychology.
In 1963, he won the Nebula Award for his novella Behold The Man .
Moorcock himself has always made a distinction between his "serious" writing and what he virtually dismisses as "popular" fiction. The implication is that the more throwaway "popular" stuff buys time for him to work on the material that he wants to be remembered for: not hack-and-slay action of the Elric or Hawkmoon type, but the deeper, philosophical, more "literary" works such as Gloriana.1 The irony, of course, is that without the "popular" Hawkmoon series, and their creation of the nightmare country of GranBretan, the deeper philosophical work of Gloriana would not have a setting to happen in.
Similarly, as Moorcock grows older, he's moved away from his roots and his writing style has become more sedentary. The crowd-pleasing sword and sorcery hack-and-slay epics which made him comfortably off (if not actually rich)are receding further and further into the past. The most recent (1993) novel in the Elric series, The Revenge of the Rose, written twenty years or so after the majority of the Elric stories, might well be by a different author. It is wordier, bulkier, goes deeper, and altogether of a different order of creation to the early Elric tales: while Elric always had his moments of philosophical angst in between the hacking and slaying, in this novel the angst is all and the hacking and slaying is relegated to a distinctly secondary level.
Moorcock has frequently collaborated with the rock band Hawkwind, and has written the lyrics to three songs about aspects of the Eternal Champion for the band Blue Öyster Cult.
Most of the time he performs with his own group "The Deep Fix" in clubs and pubs in London, where he still maintains a home(his main address these days is in Texas. This appeals to the Moorcock sense of humour, as after the publication of Behold the Man, he received death threats from the heart of the Bible Belt)
Selected tracks by The Deep Fix can be heard on the various "Hawkwind: Friends and Relations" CD's which are in circulation.
The Tale of The Eternal Champion
In the beginning there was Elric of Melnibone
In the Dawn Ages of the world, Elric was the hereditary emperor of the Melniboneans, a race of long-lived beings who are decadent and totally amoral, often taking a delight in cruelty - Elric is the only one of them to have any moral sense. Because of his sensibilities and his physical weakness (he is an albino who is dependent on drugs and herbs to give him any vitality at all) many believe that he does not deserve to be emperor. In the first book of this long saga, his cousin Yyrkoon attempts to assassinate him and take the throne.
During this book, Elric acquires the evil black sword Stormbringer which he will bear for the remainder of the saga. By the end of the book, he is in a position to marry the woman he loves and reclaim his throne, but chooses instead to travel the world having adventures in an attempt to find out who he truly is.
Stormbringer2 is a sentient and highly aggressive weapon which steals the souls of its victims and transfers their energy to Elric - while he bears it, his need for drugs to sustain him is reduced. However, the sword will frequently attack of its own will, and kills Elric's friends several times during the series. Although Elric feels dependent on Stormbringer to survive, he also feels repelled by its aggressive nature and makes some unsuccessful attempts to get rid of it. On one occasion he threw it away while flying on a dragon at a great height, but it apparently came back to the armoury under its own power.
The Black Blade also travels down the ages with the Eternal Champion. In the Chronicles of Hawkmoon, it takes the form of an evil, sentient, pulsating black jewel which is surgically implanted into the skull of Dorian Hawkmoon, last duke of Köln and last enemy of the evil civilisation of Granbretan, to enforce his conformity to the evil Chaos-kingdom.
In the lives and times of Jerry Cornelius, the Black Sword reincarnates as the deadly sleek black Needle Gun - consider the time when, as Elric, the Champion summons up an infinity of brothers and sisters of Stormbringer to fulfil one exceptional need, where the power of Stormbringer needs to be magnified a millionfold. Cornelius, guided by science rather than sorcery, discovers the Needle Gun can spit out the same soul-killing firepower in the form of tiny yet lethal needles...
Very occasionally Stormbringer takes its own form, as of old, and the Champion receives a sickening intimation of evil past and evil to come. On lifting the sword, consciousness of his fate and memories of Elric often surface. (this happens to John Daker - who becomes Erekosë, the last incarnation of the Champion, in Phoenix in Obsidian After months of bad dreams and surfacing memories of his incarnations as the Champion, punctuated by memories of an evil black sword, Daker is drawn accross the dimensions to a world of ice, under threat from the outside, where the Champion's Sword has been preserved... Daker reluctantly takes up the blade, and suddenly knows all. Worst: before he can stop himself, Stormbringer moves of its own volition and takes the soul of a passing servant girl, much to Daker's shame and guilt.)
In the days of Prince Corum, the Black Sword takes a form which is remembered in Irish mythology as the Dagda - half-man, half-harp - whose demeanour is like that of the human form Stormbringer takes when its job is completed and Elric's world is completely dead, sapped of all soul energy.
"Farewell, friend. For I was ten thousand times more evil than thou"
The Dagda haunts Corum until their final meeting and Corum's death, whichh reverses entropy and brings about the restoration of that plane of the Multiverse - this is another Moorcock theme, of sacrifice bringing redemption and reversing entropy.
A more philosophical thought about the purpose of Stormbringer
The Black Blade is certainly a manifestation of evil and dark volition. But is this all there is to the sword?
A brief look at Moorcock's cosmology. It should be remembered that this was once a startlingly new perspective on the age-old problem of Good and Evil: it takes what could be called the "Tolkien Doctrine" and expands it into a third and fuller dimension.
To Tolkien, there was no problem with Evil. Writing as a committed Christian, it was self-evident that once the Created turns its back on the Creator, evil follows. There is the absolute evil of a created being which by deliberate choice refuses to honour and obey God the Creator - the fall of Melkor in Middle-Earth is a deliberate echo of the Fall of Lucifer in Christianity.
In Middle-Earth, we also have the relative evil of the rebellion of the Elves, who refuse to heed the archangelic Valar and set sail back to Middle Earth: they choose to exile themselves from paradise, but like Adam and Eve, there is hope for a redemption which is forever barred to Melkor and those who fell with him. The Elves will always remember and call upon the Valar in time of need: their primary loyalty is unassailable.
The problem is that this is a cosmology that only makes sense to those who approach it from a Christian perspective. Why cannot an Orc repent, for instance, if originally the orcs are a race who were bred from elves who were debased and corrupted by force? If a little Elf is in every Orc, then surely a spark of the uncorrupted life-force is there that can be the seed of redemption?
This is a rather two-dimensional approach to fantasy fiction that creates largely two-dimensional cardboard characters. For instance, Aragorn is only seriously tempted once - by the Palantir - but withstands with little seeming effort. Good characters do not easily cross to Evil nor do Evil characters repent: everything appears fixed by some absolute process of determinism. An abyss separates the two predetermined camps which is virtually uncrossable in either direction 3.
Michael Moorcock asks the basic question - is any of this absolutism even remotely credible? In real life, people wobble, and sway, and falter, or agonise about their actions: surely a hero is entitled to a bit of wavering?
Moorcock, in a moment of sublime inspiration, sets aside the sterile and increasingly meaningless categories of "good" and "evil".
Recognising a different imperative with its roots in thermodynamics rather than religious morality, he introduces the polar opposites of Law and Chaos. At either end of the spectrum - absolute Law or absolute Chaos - lies Entropy, the heat death of the Multiverse.
The Etenal War between the Gods of Law and the Gods of Chaos is often mistaken for the struggle between Good and Evil. (in Middle Earth, Gandalf and the powers of the West might stand for Law; Sauron and the East are the local representatives of Chaos)But the Gods of the Multiverse are beyond petty classifications like this.
It is the eternal struggle that gives the Multiverse its life: pockets of order and relative stability (where Law is dominant) might exist for several thousand years at a time, enough to allow intelligent civilizations to evolve. But change and variety (Chaos) must also happen - otherwise all worlds end up as the flat uniform grey horror of absolute Law where no change or variety is permissible.
Similarly, out of the boiling and ever-changing stuff of absolute Chaos, there must be a mechanism to allow Law to enter and create, from the infinite possibilities of Chaos, enough stability to allow intelligent life to colonise. We see in the novella Master of Chaos something of how this mechanism works: Aubec of Malador is another manifestation of the Champion, who is charged with creating new lands for Law out of the Chaos-stuff at the edge of creation. With his Consort, Micella, this manifestation of the Champion succeeds in creating new lands. 4.
But Law and Chaos are subject to a greater law still: that of the Cosmic Balance that prevents one side getting over-powerful and which fundamentally holds the universe together. The Balance has its physical manifestation in the form of the Runestaff.
It can be seen that regardless of the Power that the Eternal Champion thinks he serves - Elric is sworn to Chaos but serves Law despite himself, while Aubec thinks he is sworn only to Law - the Champion is in reality the servant of the Balance, the fulcrum point between Law and Chaos.
This can be seen in the very last monents of Elric's universe, where all he loves is gone and he is alone in the grey waste of absolute Law.
In succession, the Black Sword has slain Zarozinia (who has voluntarily flung herself upon it) Rackhir, and finally Moonglum, the companion, who has seen his death is necessary to bring about closure of the old world and the birth of the new. One last thing is necessary. Elric becomes the last victim of the Black Sword and last thing of the old world to perish. And here a strange thing happens. Stormbringer loses his form as a sword and becomes humanoid. As the form of the sword changes, as Stormbringer (for now) leaves the world, it as as if the pent-up energies of millions upon millions of souls are released and the world is transformed.
Stormbringer, in the final analysis, also becomes a servant of the Balance and is forced to give up its stored soul-energy to renew the world and reverse Entropy.
Having by default absorbed all the soul-energy of an entire world, including that of Elric, Moonglum, Zarozinia/Cymoril and Yyrkoon, the sudden release of all Stormbringer's sentient captives at the very least recreates a world; at most it forms a universe. This, then, is the Multiverse of Moorcock's novels....
But as we have seen, the Sword5, like the central characters, is fated to recur again and again down the ages of the Multiverse.
Elric: the First Champion
The Elric saga is much darker than most fantasy, and can be seen as a direct parody of Robert E Howard's Conan series - instead of a big tough barbarian blithely hacking his way through hordes of enemies and eventually becoming a king, Elric is a weak and sickly but highly educated emperor who voluntarily chooses to abdicate. He is sometimes described as an "anti-hero", perhaps because he is far more angst-ridden than your typical fantasy hero, and because Stormbringer sometimes forces him to kill innocent people. However, he often acts in a noble and heroic manner - he shows mercy to the people who planned to kill him in the first book, and on one occasion almost dies rather than kill an innocent person with Stormbringer to restore his energy. Moorcock says in the introduction to the book Elric of Melnibone "I prefer to think of him simply as a hero" and goes on to describe how alienated heroes such as Elric who are able to stand apart from their society can be very useful in pointing out its weaknesses. Indeed, Elric tests the weaknesses of High Melnibone to destruction: distraught in love for his sister Cymoril, reduced to a sorcerous trance by his half-brother Yyrkoon, he is prepared to see the city destroyed by the Sea Kings' armies as the price for rescuing her. 6
The Elric Cycle: the books and stories
It is difficult to put together a precise tally of the Elric books, as over the years, Moorcock's publishers have taken advantage of the fact that these are not so much novels, as collections of short stories and novellas. Thus the stories which were grouped together in the original 1960's and 1970's collections have been broken up and published in a different sequence in the 1980's and 1990's reprints. Moorcock himself has also returned to the Elric series on at least three occassions to "complete" it with additional books. This is aggravating and annoying to anyone trying to collect a full set of Elric stories from his first appearance as a sickly albino emperor, to his last bowing out, having had part-responsibility for destroying the whole world. At some point, it is hoped a full chronological sequence of Elric stories (as opposed to printed collections) can be added here, but the publisher's almost random attitude to reprints makes this more difficult than it need be! A first tentative attempt to put the Elric writings in "chronological" order might be:-
Elric of Melnibone:-
A Melancholy King
The Sea King
The Shade Gate
The Weird of the White Wolf:-
The Dreaming City
While the Gods Laugh
The Singing Citadel
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate*:-
The Sleeping Sorceress**:-
** This is a self-contained novel in its own right, rather than a collection of short stories.Also issued under the title of The Vanishing Tower
The Revenge of the Rose*:-
The Bane of the Black Sword:-
The Stealer of Souls
Kings in Darkness
The Flamebringers
To Rescue Tanelorn :-
Elric at the End of Time*
Stormbringer:-
The Coming of Chaos(previously "Dead God's Homecoming")
The Sad Giant's Shield
Doomed Lord's Passing
Books marked *:- are not a part of the original Elric cycle: they were written later and slotted into the sequence to "fill in gaps in the story"
The Cast of Characters
i People:- Elric is the first manifestation of the Eternal Champion. This first life, and Elric's signing of his soul to the god Arioch of Chaos, sets the scene for his eternal doom, to return again and again and again.
Similarly his consort, Cymoril, seals her own fate by love of the Champion, and voluntarily returns for him - while he is fated to return, he is never alone. He will always have the comfort of the incarnation of the Consort, at least for a time. In Elric's world, Cymoril, after her death at the Black Blade, returns in the form of the beautiful Zarozinia, who sustains Elric to the end of that world.
Elric is also given the Companion to Champions: on one level, the traditional "comic relief" to the brooding careworn hero, but on the other, a necessary part of the structure. As Elric, the Hero receives the services of two Companions: Rackhir the Red Archer, and more importantly Moonglum. Moonglum, the penultimate victim of Stormbringer, also dooms himself to return as the Eternal Companion. Sometimes he is doomed to be conscious of this fact - as Jhary A'Cornel.
Finally, there is his nemesis, his shadow-self, Prince Gaynor the Damned, whose doom is to seek to thwart the Champion. It is clear Prince Gaynor is originally Yyrkoon, and this is his fate in the multiverse: sometimes evolved and knowing (as Gaynor); sometimes unknowing but sentient (Frank Cornelius) and sometimes as gross animate matter dedicated to slaying the Champion - the Blob-Monster that Elric and Rackhir meet en route to the Pulsating Cavern attacks them with an unreasoning desire to kill, and only realises a little of its identity on dying, when it identifies itself as "Frank..." - a name meaning nothing to Elric, who is yet to live a life in which he is Jerry Cornelius and has a brother called Frank.
Paradoxes of this sort pepper the pages of Moorcock's books...
ii) Places
Melnibone
The Dreaming Isles which for thousand upon thousand of years were the centre of the Melnibonean Empire, principal city, Immryr. Its last Emperor is Elric the 23rd, albino and wastrel.
Tanelorn
Tanelorn is the oasis of peace in the Multiverse.
the Kamarg may be, in the time of Hawkmoon, the earthly manifestation of Tanelorn Eternal. Situated in the south of France as is the Camargue in our world, it is a place of great beauty and the only part of Europe unsullied by Granbretan. Hawkmoon makes common cause with the people of the Kamarg, led by Count Brass and his beautiful daughter Yisselda, to fight the dark science and chaos-masked armies of Granbretan.
Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove
The home of Jerry Cornelius in the stories: this is a London partly as it was in Moorcock's childhood,after WW2, but before Thatcher and the property boom. All literary Londons are to some extent a fantasy creation: Moorcock's is no exception. The city provides backdrop to the asdventures of Cornelius, this civilization's Champion Eternal.
Schloss Ravensburg
Here, sometime in late 1940, a hysteric, a club-foot, an arrogant and grossly obese drug addict, a weakling dreaming of physical perfection, and an effete aristocrat, met and performed a rite.
At the same time, Elric, accompanied by Moonglum, are passing through on their way between planes.
What little power the Ravensburg ritual manages to attract delays them slightly. They understand nothing of the harsh, raven-like cackling of the strangely clad physically poor specimens before them. Elric speculates they are human lords sold to Chaos, as all are wearing a variant of the Chaos cross on their arms, in blood-red and death-black, as well as a grinning skull motif on their clothing.
Meanwhile, Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering and von Ribbentrop behold a manifestation of an Aryan warrior lord from the dawn of time, and demand to know what direction Germany’s future should lie in, now the West is conquered. Elric, disorientated, points towards the door of the chamber, seeking to command silence and the withdrawal of these specimens. However, he is also pointing East, which Hitler et al pick up as the vision fades and their visitors disappear. The Nazi warlords, excited at the success of their rite to conjur up the Aryan proto-warrior King Barbarossa, concur: we invade Russia. Meanwhile, Elric and Moonglum wonder if this is some sort of private jest on behalf of the Cosmic Joker, which they will never know the meaning of….
Elric briefly appears in our plane of reality and effects the outcome of WW2 in The Dream-Thief's Daughter, a novel which is not,in the main, about Elric, who is a secondary character.
iii) Things
the Runestaff
This is the earthly, physical, manifestation of the Cosmic Balance. It is discussed at greatest length in the Hawkmoon saga, where it may alternately take the form of an androgynous child, dressed like a Buddhist or Hindu avatar. The Runestaff/Balance also has its Herald and occasional Champion, the Knight in Black and Silver, who manifests to steer the Eternal Champion onto the best course of action and to aid his quest when this is in the best interests of the balance. Sepiraz, in Stormbringer, is the first incarnation of the Herald of the Balance: it is likely the personality essence of Sepiraz also lives on down the ages in the form of this minor character.
iv) Events
the Conjunction of the Million Spheres
When this rare (but not that rare!) cosmic phenomena occurs, it permits extraordinary things, like the direct physical meeting of one or more incarnations of the Eternal Champion. {Perhaps the most blatant example of this is in the novel The Sailor on the Seas of Fate , where to save the Multiverse a whole ship is crewed with manifestations of the Champion…)
Gods and God-like Entities
i) Gods of Chaos
Arioch; Xiombarg; Mabelarde, Vezhan, Hionhurn the Executioner, Eequor7 , Narjhan. There is also Balo, who is a lesser Chaos entity - a court jester, perhaps a manifestation of the elusive Cosmic Joker.
ii) Gods of Law
Donblas the Justice-Maker; Lord Arkyn 8
iii) Entities of Neutrality
The Grey Lords
iv) Gods and servants of the Balance
See Sepiraz; also the Knight in Silver and Jet.
v) Others - anomolies and oddities
the Dog and the Bear - the primitive gods of primitive men, thought to be very minor Chaos-entities.
Rhynn the Wading God and his brother Kwll:- the Great Old Gods who claim allegiance to none, including the Balance
The Fhoi Myore Primitive entities whose true home is the icy cold Limbo between the Planes. Thrust into the far distant past of a people who may be Gaelic in a country that may several thousand years later become Ireland, these decaying, dying, creatures frantically seek to make Eire their frozen cold home. They are such creatures of horror that Irish mythology preserves their dread memory stiill, as Fomorians.
Only Prince Corum may lead the Gaels against them, and in so doing he meets his own doom at the hand of the Dagda.
"the Hand that holds the Balance" - mentioned very, very, seldom in the sagas - the notion of yet another layer of Godhood standing behind Law, Chaos and Balance, perhaps an ultimate Creator. Elric glimpses this Hand briefly, in the last moments of his life.
Moorcock's Other Works:Incarnations of the Champion down the years of the Multiverse
As Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln:-
The Jewel in the Skull
The Mad God's Amulet
The Sword of the Dawn
The Runestaff
Count Brass
The Champion of Garathorm
The Quest for Tanelorn
As Jerry Cornelius:-
The Final Programme
A Cure for Cancer
The English Assassin
The Condition of Musak
The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius
Short story - The Dodgem Division in My Experiences in the Third World War
The Adventures of Catherine Cornelius and Una Persson in the Twentieth Century
As Jherek Carnelian (in the "Dancers at the End of Time" trilogy):-
An Alien Heat
The Hollow Lands
The End of all Songs
Elric at the End of Time*
*in which Elric of Melnibone, to his bewilderment, ends up among the effete dandies at the End of all songs, one of whom he realises is his incarnation in this particular Age.
As Prince Corum Jhaelin Irsei, last of the Vadagh:-
The Knight of the Swords
The Queen of the Swords
The King of the Swords
The Bull and the Spear
The Oak and the Ram
The Sword and the Stallion
Other aspects of the Champion Eternal:-
Clovis Marca - The Shores of Death
Mr Newman - The Real-Life Mr Newman
Jerry Cornell- The Chinese Agent
Michael Kane - The Martian Trilogy
Simon of Byzantium - The Greater Conqueror
Karl Glogauer / Jesus of Nazareth - Behold the Man
Oswald Bastable - the Warlords of the Air trilogy
External Links
Dungeons and DragonsThe original American role-player game is very heavily influenced by Moorcock's fantasy fiction. Apaert from providing a full panoply of Gods, non-human characters, ghosts, ghoulies and Things of the Wandering Monster type, Moorcock's writings generate the moral and philosophical stance of the players, who may align to Chaos or Law or Neutrality as they please. Later versions also assign a secondary choice of Good or Evil, so there are nine moral types in D and D which make permissible combinations of these qualities.
(Check the "D and D" manuals for deeper interpretations, if this interests you. Or you may go to Alignment in Dungeons and Dragons, for a deeper explanation and discussion of this topic.)
Blue Öyster Cult.
Chck out the LP's Mirrors , Cultosaurus Erectus and Fire of Unknown Origin , all of which have tracks written by Michael Moorcock.
Discworld and beyond
The comic author Terry Pratchett uses his first Discworld book The Colour of Magic as a glorious romp through conventional fantasy fiction. Part of the joy of the early Discworld novels, while they are still "free-associating" in a dimly realised generic fantasy landscape,lies in what can only be called "trainspotting".
This means ticking off the sly sideways references to serious fantasy fiction and the way in which their creations are being sent up by Pratchett. His creation of Kring the sentient and articulate black sword can only have been lifted from one source... here the Black Sword is suffering from a mid-life crisis, recounts its history at long and interminable length to Rincewind the wizard, wearily demands to know what the point of it all is, and speculates about the advantages of being beaten into a ploughshare, whatever one of those is, which it has heard is the ultimate fate for all swords that have lived a good and dutiful life....
1At a Hawkwind gig at the University of East Anglia in November 1984, this Researcher heard the fey and acid-tongued lead singer Dik Mik utter the words "Mike Moorcock sends his apologies for not being able to be with us tonight... he's hopelessly behind on his writing schedule, as he's only written six books today"2 The Black Sword remains a potent icon for heavy metal bands. No less than three heavy rock outfits have celebrated the evil blade in song: Hawkwind - Chronicles of the Black Sword, and Needle Gun; the Blue Öyster Cult Black Blade; and Deep Purple Stormbringer It can only be wondered, in a musical genre that is renowned for shoving balled-up socks down the front of its collective tight trousers, how much of this is due to the obvious Freudian symbolism.3 This is possibly why the most interesting character in the book - and the film - is Gollum. A character who sinks through squalor into Evil, who is given a real incentive to redeem himself and who nearly manages it. Smeagol wrestling with his dark Gollum-self is quite possibly the deepest and most acute writing in LOTR 4 Micella reappears in Phoenix in Obsidianwhere her sacrifice redeems a world5 It is an interesting point that the Sword Stormbringer, the Runestaff, and the Black Jewel/power-ring are three of the archetypes of the Tarot deck. (Sword, Staff and Stone) The fourth is the Chalice, cup or grail. The Chalice appears as a central motif in Phoenix in Obsidian . The huge golden Screaming Chalice becomes the repository for the soul-stuff excreted by Stormbringer (called here "The Blood of the Sun") when the Sword and the Cup come together, in a meeting parellel to the Great Rite of witchcraft. When Sword and Cup meet, the etenal twilight of Erekose's world becomes the full light of a renewed sun, the ice of that world begins to melt, and, ritual completed, the co-equal forces of Sword and Cup are physically taken out of that world. However, the willing sacrifice of Micella the Silver Queen is needs to make this renewal possible. 6 The Eternal Triangle of Elric, Cymoril and Yyrkoon sets the pattern that will recur time and again accross the annals of the Eternal Champion. At the other end of Time, the tale of Jerry Cornelius rescuing his sister Catherine from their evil half-brother Frank is a direct and deliberate echo of the fall of Melnibone: history repeats itself and the Eternal Champion, his consort, and Gaynor the Damned, play out the same drama ("The Final Programme") 7 Douglas Adams created a Hoolavoo for the H2G2 novels - a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue that had to be refracted into a free-standing prism for stability. It is interesting that in The Singing Citadel, the Chaos-lord Eequor is effectively "a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue". Moorcock's use of the concept dates from 1970; Adams' from 1979. Did DNA read Michael Moorcock and unconsciously borrow a character - or was it creative coincidence?8 It can be seen Moorcock got more fun out of Chaos gods: thus far the count is eight named Chaos deities to two of Law!
