Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcockis an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth18 December 1939
gun thinking people
If the people at the top think that reaching for a gun will solve the problem, why shouldn't the people at the bottom think the same?
mean men thinking
Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.
men thinking return
It's getting late. I must return to my ship or my men will think I've drowned and be celebrating.
character thinking unhappy-childhood
Arthuriana has become a genre in itself, more like TV soap opera where people think they know the characters. All that's fair enough, but it does remove the mythic power of the feminine and masculine principles. So I prefer it in its original form, even if you have to wade through Mallory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur' - people smashing people for pages and pages! It still has the resonances of myth about it, which makes it work for me. I don't want to know if Mordred led an unhappy childhood or not.
thinking ideas bigs
I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.
quarrel religion secular wholly
I come from an almost wholly secular background and have no quarrel with religion.
bernard edgar huge
P.G. Wodehouse was a huge influence on me when I was younger, as were Edgar Rice Burroughs and George Bernard Shaw.
earliest scenes tend work
Some of my earliest work was in comics. I tend to think in pictures and always like to write scenes possessing the dynamic you find in comics.
good innate
I have a kind of innate sense of structure, which also makes me a good mimic.
believe cease europeans happening land neil serious though time travel
Though I don't have any serious argument with Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods', I believe that Americans cease to be Europeans - the land makes them become Americans. You see it happening all the time when you travel around America.
breeding dogs family funny living london number strike uncle
I had this funny family. At one end, they were breeding dogs in south-east London - for greyhound racing - and at the other, my uncle was living in Downing Street. And I would actually go to Downing Street, which didn't strike me as funny. I'd get on the number 15 bus.
age carbon copies upright
I'd started doing fanzines from the age of nine. I'd been doing as many copies as you can get carbon paper into an upright typewriter, and I'd try to sell them at school.
real hero real-life
Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves.
facts problem solutions
The problems for which I could find no solution in fact had no solution.