Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunningly good, June 23, 2002
This review is from: The Cornelius Quartet: The Final Program, A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak (Paperback)
I found this one of the most amazing books I have ever read. After the first one, which is fairly straightforward though written with a sardonic humor, they get better and better, with more and more information adding to your first impression, rather like a good movie by Lynch, say. Don't expect anything like you've read before, even if you've read other Michael Moorcock titles. The first one deals with Jerry Cornelius's quest for revenge and the microfilm which contains the information to make the 'final program' of the title -- a computer program which will put the sum of human knowledge into a single, self-reproducing human being. The second one, A Cure for Cancer, changes pace and style and has direct reference to the Vietnam War, set in a London which has been taken over by American 'military advisors', who are occupying Europe. Here Jerry also visits America and meets Indians, black power activists and so on in his search for his sister and for the black box which enables people both to change identity and travel through the multiverse, through multiple versions of our own realities, all of which bear satirical or ironic reference to the world we know. By The English Assassin Jerry is in a coffin, living dead, being traded between his enemies and friends across a Europe embroiled in civil war which prefigures what has since happened in Yugoslavia, Russia and elsewhere. The style and the substance of the books matures and deepens as you go, but also the characters become more complex and interesting. We meet Bishop Beesley and his daughter, Miss Brunner, the Thatcher-like character, Major Nye, the embodiment of idealistic imperialism and Colonel Pyat, whose story is continued in Moorcock holocaust series beginning with Byzantium Endures. References to both American and European history, especially imperial expansion, abound, but there are some wonderfully funny and dramatic scenes. Here you can see how much has been borrowed for whole series of comic books, movies and other novels, including Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright series and Grant Morrison's Invisibles series, along with a lot of alternative history series, such as Harry Turtledove's. But Moorcock is also a literary writer, so there is always much more going on. By the time we get to the resolving volume The English Assassin, the books are making more and more sense on more and more levels.
This is probably the richest and most mature of the books and Moorcock manages a heart-rending Christmas resolution which has the same mixture of melancholy and merriment you find in the best Dickens. At last you start to understand why literary critics have likened Moorcock to a modern Dickens. Also, you realise that everything you have read up to this point can be interpreted in a TOTALLY different light. Don't expect anything like the regular sci-fi tale, however good. This is more like Pynchon or
DeLillo and can only be fully appreciated if you accept it as a literary novel, rather than the popular adventure novel it sometimes pretends to be! A genuine masterpiece and deserving of every praise it has received. I remain stunned and deeply
impressed. And I thought it wasn't possible to feel like this
from a novel any more. I'm now reading King of the City, which
is a weird kind of development from this. I'm looking forward to finding a copy of Mother London, which I'm told is even better!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Gravity's Rainbow of British New Wave Sci-Fi, August 10, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Cornelius Quartet: The Final Program, A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak (Paperback)
The adventures of Jerry Cornelius! To paraphrase the back of the 1977 Avon edition, copulating, hallucinating, devastating, and coming back from the dead. Frequently. What a pleasure it is to see Mister Moorcock?s wild ride back in print again. So what?s it like? Imagine if Edgar Rice Burroughs was transmogrified into William S. Burroughs and he/she teamed up with Thomas Pynchon to leading us all screaming and mad into the sea. In reality, this one right here in front of you, Michael Moorcock did an experimental cut-up job on his escapist power fantasies (his Elric books specifically) and managed to conjure up a priddy picture of England?s Dreaming circa 1965-1977. Magnificent characters, all suffering from a cosmic, entropic personality crisis stumble and scheme through a barely comprehensible (but nevertheless still audible) conspiracy between the forces of Chaos and Order. Or something like that. Or maybe nothing like that at all. And even if you are a Mexican American living in San Francisco (my own current incarnation) who has never been to Ladbroke Grove except in the pages of crazy books, it will all make (non)sense and seduce masterfully somehow. Billed as the first time these four novels have appeared un-cut and uncensored in the USA, this new edition comes with a few caveats. Upon casual inspection, the text does indeed contain the odd phrase and sentence here and there that are nowhere to be found in previous US printings (specifically that ?77 Avon edition). But the old Avon also contains the odd bit here and there that doesn?t appear in this new edition. This seems to be the case the most often with the second novel, A Cure for Cancer. To sum it up, the restored material is pretty insubstantial, as is the missing material. Until a truly Cornelius Quartet ever materialize in this multiverse, this one will do except for ... the lack of John Clute?s introductory "The Repossession of Jerry Cornelius" essay which graced the old US edition. It was a spectacular piece of textural analysis that added much to the enjoyment and appreciation of the 900 + pages to follow. Oh well. This is all minor picky stuff really. And what with that war going on and everything ? just get your head around it already.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moorcock's Finest, June 20, 2001
This review is from: The Cornelius Quartet: The Final Program, A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak (Paperback)
The Cornelius Quartet 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 Quartet in such a limited space. My 1977 Avon edition is almost 1000 pages and the four novels that make up the Quartet offer different experiences and styles. My nutshell: The novels 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. I'm excited to see their re-release. They've been out of print for too long. Of Moorcock's "SF" work, these (with Behold the Man and Mother London) are the ones that should stay in print--eternally.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
