The Cornelius Chronicles Vol. II: The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius / The Entropy Tango [Paperback]

Michael Moorcock (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 341 pages
• Publisher: Avon Books (Mm) (August 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380750031
• ISBN-13: 978-0380750030
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,967,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock now lives in Texas. A prolific and award-winning writer with more than eighty works of fiction and non-fiction to his name, he is the creator of Elric, Jerry Cornelius and Colonel Pyat, amongst many other memorable characters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moorcock's Finest, December 16, 2000

By 

D. Scott McMillin (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cornelius Chronicles (Paperback)

The Cornelius Chronicles along with The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius, Life and Times of Jerry Cornelius, and The Entropy Tango represent some of the best fiction Moorcock has ever penned.

As a young teenager I devoured Moorcock's Eternal Champion books, but it wasn't until college that the Cornelius books held any interest for me, and at that point I had stopped reading SF/Fantasy altogether (I had Nabokov to read...). In many ways Jerry is the mature reader's Eternal Champion--the novels do echo many of the themes found in the other EC novels.

I actually find it quite daunting to sum up The Cornelius Chronicles in such a limited space. My 1977 Avon edition is almost 1000 pages and the four novels that make up the Chronicles (a tetrology?) offer different experiences and styles.

My nutshell: The Chronicles are concerned with Jerry's struggle for identity amidst the entropy of urban life in 1970's London. Satirical, funny, sexy, and sad; filled with a wonderful cast of characters. It really is genre-busting--from 60's spy flick to urban realism. Postmodern (in the literary sense; search for Brian McHale). In many ways it reminds me of Pynchon's V.

Find and buy these books if you can. Hopefully they will, as the author states above, be published again. Of Moorcock's "SF" work, these (with Behold the Man) are the ones that should stay in print--eternally.

4.0 out of 5 stars Super Reader, August 29, 2007

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This Fontana edition contains the first two books of the Jerry Cornelius Quarter, The Final Programme and A Cure For Cancer.

Jerry Cornelius may be one of the wackiest and wildest superhero adventurer types ever created. Deliberately created by Moorcock to be the ultimate chameleon, which has seen him featured in many places and times. This leads to people looking for people with similar names in famous events in history.

In the Final Programme he is a swinging super-agent with a needle gun.

His family is no less whacky, given his sister is sometimes his lover, and his brother sometimes his target.

A hero like this must have similarly bizarre antagonists, enemies, and allies.

He certainly does, and Una Persson, a female version of himself, to some degree, is also one of his sister's lovers.

Basically, Jerry stuff is a little hard to explain.

4 out of 5

Jerry Cornelius - 2 A Cure For Cancer

There is a whole bunch more Jerry Cornelius weirdness here. He is still roaming around 1960s London, among other places, and in conflict with the villainous Bishop Beesley.

Some people are certainly going to find it too weird, or too impenetrable to enjoy, I think, as it is by no means straightforward, but this is part of JC's appeal.

5.0 out of 5 stars A little imagination helps, February 1, 2005

By 

calmly - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Cornelius Chronicles (Vol. 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

So if a little imagination helps, consider what it's like when your imagination is unreined. No reason to let a little reality stand in your way. And when the forms are constrained, it only somehow heightens the free play. Reinvention of self has rarely gone so far. Jerry's or yours.

Moorcock wrote about these stories: "Part of my original intention with the Jerry Cornelius stories was to 'liberate' the narrative; to leave it open to the reader's interpretation as much as possible - to involve the reader in such a way as to bring their own imagination into play."

These chronicles are among my favorite literary works. Each is a different literary experiment. Transform the mundane, don't let it run you down. How cool can you be? How important can you be? How intriguing can the folks you hang out with? Only Jerry seems to know. Let him show the way. Profound? Well, it's at least great, incredibly well-written fun.

Read "Dancers at the End of Time" if you want to see how well Moorcock can construct a "traditional" story. But if you want to see Moorcock's talent unleashed, give The Cornelius Quartet a try.

P.S. This version includes an outstanding introductory essay by John Clute: "The Repossession of Jerry Cornelius" Although a brief 15 pages, it made this tetralogy more meaningful more meaningful for me, albeit at the cost of being quite revealing of what Jerry Cornelius was about. I welcomed the early revelation.