Michael Moorcock, Elric: Song Of The Black Sword: Elric Of Melniboné / The Fortress Of The Pearl / The Sailor On The Seas Of Fate / The Dreaming City / While The Gods Laugh / The Singing Citadel

Elric is the albino sorcerer emperor of Melniboné, an ancient and dying kingdom of (essentially) elves that places the highest value on adherence to tradition and ritual. Melniboné is threatened by the rise of humans in the nearby Young Kingdoms, but Elric believes that adopting their values may be necessary for survival. He is sickly and reliant on drugs -- or the energy offered to him by his evil soul-sucking sentient black sword Stormbringer -- to sustain his life. He is in love with his hot cousin Cymoril. His rival for her affections and for the throne is his evil cousin Yyrkoon, who also at some times bears Stormbringer's evil sword counterpart, Mournblade. This equation is supposed to add up to a colossal tragedy, though looking at its execution it's another story.

Elric is Moorcock's most popular and enduring creation. I'm not exactly sure why, judging from the 60s novellas that made his reputation, but of course I don't have the full story yet (there's another volume of Elric books to get to later). While "Elric was created in conscious opposition both to the infantile and macho tendencies of the day" (from the intro), and you can tick off the ways his characteristics differ from that of, say, a Conan or something (he's introspective! and typically uses sorcery before swords! and so on), the differences are minor and cosmetic; the plot structure remains essentially similar, and the prose vacillates between darker and lighter shades of purple. And in terms of originality, I see a great many similarities here to C.L. Moore's wonderful Jirel of Joiry stories, and the comparison is not favorable to Elric.

These stories are arranged chronologically and, though in most cases publishing order is clearly the way to go [1], there appear to be no problems with this reading order.

Elric Of Melniboné: A purely plotty prequel (written slightly later, in the 70s), this sets up Elric's default state of affairs -- sexy cousin, evil cousin, torn between his heart and his duty -- by pretty much repeating the conflict that occurs later with vague attempts at inversion (here it's Yyrkoon with human allies against Elric with Melnibonéan allies, when it's the other way around in the future). Yyrkoon tries to kill Elric, usurps the throne, and kidnaps Cymoril and puts her in a magic sleep. Elric casts some Mana-series summon spells and is aided by his patron Chaos Lord, Arioch, whom he's sworn to but whose agenda he's not entirely on board with. Memory is the clumsily-handled capital-T Theme of this book, and there's some pointless business with a giant magic mirror that wipes your memory that's best forgotten. Elric's sidekick for this outing is Rackhir the archer, who goes on to star in "To Rescue Tanelorn" but whose presence is unnecessary here. To prevent Yyrkoon from gaining ultimate power and possibly destroying the world, Elric meets the sword Stormbringer and forges a symbiotic relationship that promises Bad Things in the future.

At the end of the book, Elric decides to take a year-long sabbatical to visit the human kingdoms (to discover what needs to change for Melniboné to become great again), which of course seals everyone's fate since he leaves Yyrkoon in charge. We should be feeling that Elric, taking steps to reform his country and ironically giving Yyrkoon what he wants (so he can find the job is more complex than he thinks), is making the difficult but correct decision here, even though the consequences down the line will be dire -- just as when he takes up Stormbringer for the first time (because the alternative is clearly worse) or when he spares Yyrkoon's life earlier (which is necessary for plot reasons). The decision is presented here and in later books as an act of idealism. But there are other candidates for the regency that aren't blatantly evil and depraved and unrepentant in their villainy, as well as conceivable safeguards that might be put in place. Elric's choice just comes off as unbelievably dumb (rather than naive -- he knows better), which robs the situation of the little inherent tragedy it had.

The Fortress Of The Pearl: This is how to subvert a typical swords-and-sorcery fantasy story.

Fortress deals with an adventure in the Young Kingdoms during Elric's wandering period. Written in 1989, almost two decades after the completion of the main series, it can't alter anything major in Elric's story, and thus it's spent cheerfully racking up minor inconsistencies in another setting with a cast of characters who enter and leave the story here -- this rarely works out well (Battlestar Galactica: Razor, I'm looking in your direction), but here it's a good thing, stripping the conflict down to create the compelling Aristotlean tragedy that the Elric books should have been in the first place but weren't.

In the other books, tied as they are to a supposed tragedy played out through thinly drawn character relationships, we're told that Elric's conflict is with fate -- he's sworn to serve the forces of Chaos, but sometimes resists it; he is forced to rely on his evil sword, even as it cuts down those he loves the most; he seeks Tanelorn and peace and freedom from the guilt and uncertainty that plague his mind, but his talents and personality and heroic nature all too frequently lead him to war; in fighting itself he sometimes finds serenity, but he hates that it's only achievable there. But this conception of fate is dull, almost always conceptualizing the characters as pawns of the story gods and the author's convenience. The choices Elric makes, we are told over and over again, are unimportant, since the story is fated to end up the same way no matter what.

Here, we're given an actual believable tragic flaw that directly springs from qualities in Elric's character (unexamined in other stories), and we're presented with an ethical context with the constant emphasis on the power and significance of individual choices and acts (and here's the important part: This emphasis goes beyond dialogue related to the unfolding of the tragedy itself. It's borne out in the worldbuilding and the details. It's not just people saying, "Choices are important!").

The plot: Elric limps to the isolated desert republic of Quarzhasaat, which warred with Melniboné in ages past and now bears more than passing similarities. He is forced (by a corrupt aspiring politician called Lord Gho) onto a quest for a possibly mythical Pearl at the Heart of the World in order to save the life of an innocent whom he has endangered. The eventual location of the Pearl (and titular Fortress) is the mental landscape of a comatose young girl, priestess of a nomadic tribe and victim. To enter this dream world, Elric teams up with a Dreamthief (think Alundra) named Oone; she is wise and sardonic and pretty much steals the show. After they achieve their goal, Elric returns to Quarzhasaat to fulfill a bargain. Then we're reminded of what type of story we're reading, and we wish we weren't.

While Stormbringer is sidelined, the base-level character dilemma is kept but defamiliarized; Elric is poisoned and reliant on Lord Gho for a life-sustaining drug. This is a parallel with an important difference: In the other stories, Elric is forced by circumstance and plot contrivance to utilize Stormbringer, which leads to the death of the people he cares about. Here, the dependency aspect is highlighted in the service of a new and much more interesting Elric, a moral agent who values his principles over his life. It's in an examination of those principles that the novel finds its power.

Though he claims to reject Melnibonéan values, Elric is still a child of privilege. He criticizes the decadent legacy of his forefathers (built on an alliance with the forces of evil) and bemoans the debt his fathers have incurred (and that he must pay) while feeling pride in his heritage and demanding the noble treatment he feels he deserves. His reason for journeying is to discover ways of reforming his society. He thinks of himself as a hero, and we start out justified in believing that; he's willing to die in the desert rather than suck souls to survive, and he only goes along with Lord Gho's plan because the guy is threatening some kid who only got involved in the first place through an act of kindness. Quarzhasaat is a deluded society responsible for many evils (just look at all the people murdered in the search for the Pearl), and we share Elric's contempt for his people's ancient enemies. Then the world widens, and we meet more people and other viewpoints, people with their own stories which only cross Elric's path briefly (such as the nomads, Jasper Colinadous and his winged cat, or the first Dreamthief who dies but seems to have had quite a life). We meet Oone. She shares her perspective with Elric, and with us. She tells him of other worlds and other realities, showing him that he doesn't have to be tied to this dimension or the fate he feels is set out for him. She's insightful, telling him, "You believe [Stormbringer] to be part of your identity but it is not. It is your nemesis" (p.195). His dependence on Lord Gho's drug vanishes in the dream world, and he has no need of his sword, either -- giving him the serious opportunity to free himself of it. The Pearl is revealed as a fantasy made real, and she makes clear that he can do the same; any number of alternative paths are open if he only sets his will toward them.

By the time the Pearl has been found and Elric and Oone make their partings, we're ready for Elric to make things right when he sets back to Quarzhasaat to finish his mission.

He does. In the worst way possible.

Having learned nothing from his experiences, Elric takes the flimsiest conceivable pretense to settle his people's age-old score, resulting in his taking a truly loathsome vengeance. It may be justice -- these people are awful and powerful and pretty much deserve death -- but that's entirely beside the point. Earlier, musing contemptuously on Quarzhasaat revisionist history, he pinpoints the central theme of the novel, considering "the power of the human mind to build a fantasy and then defend it with complete determination as a reality" (p. 139). It never occurs to him that him that his values, the loyalties he feels to his ancestors and to Chaos, have been constructed in exactly the same way. Of all the fantasies he might have made real, this is the one he chooses to defend; the tragedy of the Elric saga is thus re-envisioned as a failure of imagination.

The book is patchy and imperfect, to be sure. The prose isn't fantastic, though it's a definite step up from the earlier books. The journey is of inconsistent quality -- there are some neat moments (the advance funeral the nomads hold for their archenemy), some missteps (the explanation for the identity of the dream world's Queen posited at the end of Book 2 is considerably more affecting than what actually turns out to be the case), and some annoyances (that Pearl Warrior and his lame mystic talk, familiar from any Whedon show) -- but it fulfills its purpose by being expansive enough to take us entirely out of Elric's viewpoint so that we can see his final actions as petty, pointless, and unnecessary.

Anyone can write a typical violent, bloody fantasy story and then rebuke the readers for enjoying the carnage (this is what the earlier Elric stories tend towards). But this is a novel where the eventual bloodshed isn't thrilling -- it's disgusting and disappointing, and you're left knowing that there was another way. Isn't this a much more successful way to oppose the values of generic violent, bloody fantasy?

The implication of Oone's subtle and remarkably effective final lines is far more damning of Elric than any of his countless self-recriminations after accidentally killing a loved one, betraying comrades, and the like. If she's proven wrong in any of the subsequent books, I would consider that a colossal mistake; this is a plot thread that is meant to dangle forever.

The Sailor On The Seas Of Fate: Read this Swanwick essay. I am sympathetic to his argument for the value-neutral use of the term "fix-up novel." To say that if you publish a section of a novel that works as complete, publishable short fiction on its own essentially invalidates the novel from artistic consideration is absurd, and it's a shame that it happens. But Swanwick's essay amounts to a defense of the artistic potential of works that fall between categories -- the likes of The Fifth Head Of Cerberus and Go Down, Moses -- then muddles that with a defense of the carefully sequenced short story collection, and I don't know if anyone's arguing to say that you can't arrange a collection so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is an attempt to defend a valid structural choice (that superficially resembles a form at one point favored by lazy hacks) from unfair critical dismissal, and to that end I applaud it. But if I find that a novelist has deftly welded a number of short stories (even some I might have previously read) together into a successful novel, what I notice is the successful effect; I'm not thinking "fix-up." It's the failures that bring the term to mind -- when the author tries to string together (using thin connective tissue and a framing story or something) incidents whose plots are self-contained and which don't progress thematically or in intensity, and these incidents do not illuminate each other or contrast meaningfully or anything.

This feels like that sort of fix-up to me.

Feeling down since his journey through the Young Kingdoms hasn't been as productive as he wished it to be (he hasn't been making friends), Elric makes a halfhearted attempt to end it all but is convinced to keep going by the sudden appearance of the plane-sailing black ship from Erekose's adventures.  The ship is manned by a number of other manifestations of the Eternal Champion, and the most important guests are Hawkmoon, Prince Corum (I haven't met him yet, and neither has Elric, but he seems to have had adventures with Elric and the other Champions before), and Erekose himself. They bond over their collective angst, their individual searches for Tanelorn, and the fact that they all have the same personality. Brought together to fight some evil god-sorcerers from another universe who've set up camp on a ruin of (one version of) Tanelorn, the four heroes face some berserker baboons and merge their minds and bodies into a super-powered ultra-hero with limitless power. The cosmic threat obliterated, they disperse, and Elric continues sailing.

In the next section, Elric disembarks the ship when it passes his own world, befriends a merchant/sort-of-pirate captain called Count Smiorgan, and becomes drawn into the drama (and pocket dimension) of a legendary Melnibonéan sorcerer, who once killed his One True Love out of unfounded jealousy and now, centuries later, has found the girl reincarnate. Said reincarnation knows nothing of her previous life, and is understandably not too keen on the idea of becoming the property of this obsessive loser; Elric helps her out by providing resolution to a loose end from the story in the past, the sorcerer gets killed, and they all move on with their lives.

From here, Elric and Smiorgan get picked up by this bold human adventurer-duke who drafts them into his search for the ruins of a supremely ancient city and its legendary jade idol, whose jeweled eyes are said to have mystic powers. The city is in a deep jungle, and, since this is pulp, you'd better believe that jungle is infested with savages. Sub-human, possibly soulless savages. Ugh. On the brightside, this section contains the only funny line in the entire volume: When the group is beset by mosquitoes, "Elric was not troubled by them, perhaps because no insect could desire his deficient blood" (p. 387). Anyway, they meet Elric's world's equivalent of the Wandering Jew and are forced to summon Arioch to possess the idol which apparently puts a curse on the planet that will lead to more bad things happening down the line and it doesn't really matter and everyone dies pointlessly except for Elric and Smiorgan.

These adventures, if presented individually, would be weaker than the other Elric novellas. They don't provide progression to the overall saga (piling on more portent doesn't really count), and they're rather forgettable in and of themselves, straightforward, lacking in consequence, and neither cohering nor complementing each other to any great degree; there's a conceit assigning the sections to the past, present, and future that doesn't hold up to scrutiny (because their plots aren't *about* those states/times/conditions), and none of the three stories highlight any particular aspect of character because the Elric stories are all about enacting the same character conflict with different backdrops [2]. Stitching them together allows them to be sold as a novel on sheer accumulation of word count, which of course is why the fix-up form has a bad name in the first place.

The Dreaming City: I guess this started it all. Fans of lame Freudian symbolism and drug metaphors, this one set the standard! Yyrkoon has usurped the throne and put Cymoril to sleep again/for the first time. Elric has given up on reforming Melniboné; he's out for blood, allying himself with a consortium of sea traders and lords to sack the Melnibonéan capitol city, Imrryr, and burn the place to the ground, with the sole provision that Yyrkoon and Cymoril remain unharmed. Wouldn't you know it? That pesky evil magic sword won't follow orders, and both cousins get hella stabbed to death. Lamentation, of course, ensues, capped off when Smiorgan gets killed by a final volley of attack dragons. No! Not Smiorgan! Why must the good die so young?

While The Gods Laugh: This is not how to subvert a typical swords-and-sorcery fantasy story.

Shaarilla of Myyrrhn (oh, those names) manages to penetrate the barrier of self-loathing and general antisocial bitterness Elric has raised in the wake of his homeland destruction with a quest he just can't say no to. The legendary Dead God's Book is said to have the answers to all mankind's problems. Shaarilla has discovered where it's located, but needs Elric's help to get past the monsters and shit. He'd love to find the book, too, since he really wants to verify whether a benign Christianity-style God exists and if there's more behind his universe than Moorcock's Law/Chaos/Balance nonsense. Which is kind of a decent motivation, all things considered.

On the way, they meet an adventurer named Moonglum, who endears himself to Elric with his allegedly fun and lighthearted nature (this is not actually in evidence here). After fighting all manner of zombies and beasties with unlikely names, they attain their goal and find the Book. Oops! It crumbles to dust when Elric tries to pick it up. Despair ensues.

It's anti-consolatory fantasy of the cheapest sort, expecting its readers to actually be surprised when there's no instant magical solution to the world's woes. The allegorical point swallows up the surface narrative, and for what? Miéville has received some justified criticism for didactically bludgeoning his readers, but at least in Perdido Street Station, he's confounding the expectations they (the readers) might have reasonably developed from the story itself (taking the garuda's guilt as noble, etc.). Here, the author is just saying that bottom-of-the-barrel wish-fulfillment fantasy sucks. Brave stance to take.

The Singing Citadel: This feels like it's setting up stuff for later, what with the addition of characters who aren't immediately killed off (plus Moonglum's still around), but it's not very substantial on its own. The citadel of the Jester of Chaos has materialized in the realm of a hot and powerful queen. Elric is enlisted to investigate, he quickly solves the problem with the application of sorcery, and, unsatisfied with her available slampiece options, Queen Yishana decides that he's the only man for her. This doesn't sit well with a previous suitor, an evil sorcerer who called dibs on her before. This guy ticks Elric off, so he dumps Yishana and sets off on a vengeance quest. The queen gets over it.

[1] I can think of several series books that work much, much better in publishing order (we all know that the chronological reordering of the Narnia books is unforgivable) but none whose effects improve when read in chronological order. You might start the Vlad books with Taltos,  but I prefer it with the context from Jhereg->Yendi->Teckla, and there are good reasons to read it directly before Phoenix (though Dragon pretty much decides this issue for you). You could switch up The Player Of Games and Consider Phlebas and not miss much. But, while you could read The Hallowed Hunt or Barrayar first (or as standalones) without comprehension problems, I'd try to stop you from doing so. Furthermore, there are plenty of prequels that rely on the reader/viewer's knowledge of the original work, and a few that you can read first without significant harm, but there is not a single one to my knowledge that works *better* when read first.

[2] Compare this to Bujold's Borders Of Infinity, whose component novellas each tell a fundamentally different type of story centered around one of Miles' roles/identities. Of course, even with the tossed-together framing story, Bujold didn't try to pretend that Borders was a novel.