The inner sleeve of this nicely formed hard cover collection describes the contents as "a collection of Michael moorcock's most ambitious recent fiction" which might have been an honest declaration of the publisher's intentions in 1984, the year it first hit the shelves, thats almost forty years past.Yet the work feels as forward thinking, as genuinely progressive as it did back then. Although we know the actual historical outcomes of some of the situations Michael Moorcock's prose was taking us tumbling into. Even he did not forsee the pathologies endgames, overtaken as most were in criminal barbarity of every hue. The potency of this collection of prose and essays remains vital if at times fractured, seen through a lens distorted by time and its many resolutions. Things may not always work out the way we hope but is that cause for not hoping?
Certainly not.
It kicks off with a story I read not so long ago. The Alchemist's question which was heralded on the cover as; "including the final Jerry Corneilius adventure." which turned out not to be entirely accurate, as it was not the final word on Jerry, in much the same way as return Of The Jedi turned out not to be the last word on StarWars. Even if I am not entirely sure what I mean by that. And I am someone who watched that movie on Betamex, which makes me a survivor in much the same way as...well, you get the picture. Hopefully.
