The current excitement over Peter Jackson's big-screen Lord of the Rings adaptation has nourished the myth that Tolkien's novel singlehandedly invented the genre of heroic fantasy. What nonsense. LotR popularised an already long-established pulp sub-culture, arguably tainting it with a crude quasi-Catholic morality and engendering in innumerable successors an unhealthy fetish for unpronounceable place-names and po-faced Arthurian mysticism. Decades before Frodo Baggins set off to unseat the forces of darkness, writers such as Jack Vance and Robert E. Howard were penning dark, deft sword and sorcery tales, rich in decadence and moral ambiguity. He might blanch at the comparison, but British fantasist Michael Moorcock is their spiritual heir; a singular dissenting voice in the drab post-Tolkien orthodoxy.
Chiefly famous for his starkly amoral s 'n' s jaunts, Moorcock is a literary chameleon, flitting with a giddy capriciousness unique in genre writing. Comprising more than 100 novels and countless short stories and essays, his bibliography is a hallucinatory sugar-rush. Lurid fantasies stand cheek by jowl with labyrinthine literary follies and adroit social commentaries. Beat that, Professor T. Moorcock makes no secret of his loathing for Tolkien, dismissing the Oxford don's ponderous fables as misogynistic and na∩ve. Could the contrast between LotR and his own canon be more pronounced? The best-selling Elric saga features a vampiric anti-hero enslaved by a soul-devouring sword. His Corum trilogy chronicles a maimed superhuman's quest for revenge. The Hawkmoon series sets a vicious mercenary loose in a ghastly post apocalyptic Europe. Unlike the sub-Tolkiens' dreck which crowded bookstore shelves this Christmas, Moorcock's sagas are droll and self deprecating; 10,000 miles removed from the lugubrious elves 'n' orcs blockbusters bemoaned by the literary mainstream. In the oeuvre of science fiction, Moorcock has wielded comparable influence. As editor of the groundbreaking 1960s journal New Worlds, he spearheaded the radical new-wave movement, paving the way for category-defying authors including J.G. Ballard, M. John Harrison and Brian Aldiss. Somewhere along the way, he found time to indulge his love of progressive rock, collaborating with 1970s guitar druids Hawkwind and releasing several lush, overindulgent solo records. Only Moorcock's foray into screenwriting came unstuck. Not even his boisterous script could save 1970s dinosaur flick The Land That Time Forgot. Now nudging 70, Moorcock shows no inclination of slowing down. His most recent Elric novel kicks off in Nazi Germany, melding high adventure with barbed political invective. Tolkien's meek world building never seemed so dreary.
More on Michael Moorcock at www.multiverse.org