Sasha Luss, Una the Goddess
The Opium General - outstanding Michael Moorcock collection including a Jerry Cornelius novella, four short stories and three essays. Here goes for my write-up on the novella (a Jerry Cornelius fan just can't help himself), the title short story and one of the essays. Enjoy!
THE ALCHEMIST'S QUESTION
Halfway through The Alchemist's Question, we come across these telling lines: "Between 1979 and 1984 something dreadful had happened to human morale. No amount of pep-talk could re-kindle the light of optimism. The world had given itself up to despair. It had even lost confidence in the power of its own greed."
Published in 1984 (echoes of the date in the above quote), The Alchemist''s Question also appears in a quartet of short novels forming Michael Moorcock's A Corenlius Calendar. This to note our British author had oodles more to say about Jerry Cornelius & Company in the years following his mind-bending, genre blasting Cornelius Quartet (The Final Programme, The Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak).
However, unlike his Cornelius Quartet novels with their slicing and dicing of time along with shifting narratives performing loop-the-loops, the shorter Alchemist's Question unfolds in straightforward linear progression as if the Mighty Moorcock's storytelling simmers down along with Jerry Cornelius in middle age. Oh, yes, gang, Jerry is now forty-years old (sigh). Oh, Jerry C, oh Michael Moorcock, time has finally caught up with you!
In the opening pages, we read: "He ran quivering white fingers through his antique hair, engulfed by nostalgia for those years when he had been the epitome, the chief troubleshooter, for the Simple Answer." And further on, we come upon this exchange: Prince Lobkowitz asks Jerry: "You're pale. Have you been ill?"
"Just the end of an era." Jerry was anxious to reassure him. "Nothing serious."
"End of an era," refers to those swingin' sixties, a time to experiment, a time to sweep away rigidity and welcome in fluidity, a time to come together with the Fab Four and jump with Jumpin' Jack Flash and the Stones. Going, going, gone - we're now stuck with Margaret Thatcher and her right-wing conservatism. Woops. I meant to say Miss Brunner and her death-dealing fascism. What's to be done? For Michael Moorcock to tell, but here's a hint: "Una gasped aloud. Then she was laughing. She had accepted her Goddess. Herself."
THE OPIUM GENERAL
A tender tale of the relationship between a former rock 'n roll star by the name of Charlie and his girlfriend, age twenty-five, hunkered down in a London basement apartment. Charlie's wartime experience is about to drive him off the deep dark end, not to mention the fact he can't put his hands on any dope.
We witness the interplay of at least four elements: codependency, addiction, madness and battle fatigue (to use an old-fashioned term). You get to choose which one of the four leads the list. And here's one of my favorite bits:
"He lay in his red Windsor rocker. He wore nothing but army gear, with a big belt around his waist, a sure sign of his insecurity. He drew his reproduction Luger from its holster and checked its action with profound authority. She stared at the reddish hair on his thick wrists, at the flaking spots on his fingers which resembled the early stages of a disease. His large flat cheekbones seemed inflamed; there were huge bags under his eyes. he was almost forty. He was fighting off mortality as ferociously as he fought off what he called 'the mundane world'."
STARSHIP STORMTROOPERS
Go get 'em, Michael Moorcock! In the essay first published in 1978, in the spirit of New Worlds magazine revolution, our British author takes aim at the likes of H.P. Lovecraft (misogynist racist), Robert Heinlein (authoritarian militarist), Any Rand (right wing anti-trade unionist), J.R.R. Tolkein (upholder of bourgeois virtues) and L. Ron Hubbard (Dianetics Scientology). I wonder how Michael's views have changed, if at all, in the past 40 years.
British author Michael Moorcock, born 1939
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