Michael Moorcock strikes again (Dancers at the End of Time - Michael Moorcock)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Dancers at the End of Time - Michael Moorcock
Date:	15/11/00 (94 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Imagination; seamless, soaring; A

Disadvantages: Wierdness; sufficiently advanced technology to be mistaken for magic; C+

The Dancers At The End Of Time
Michael Moorcock strikes again. This is theoretically Volume Seven of the Tale of The Eternal Champion, which might require a little explanation. The majority of Moorcock's novels tie into one gigantic story arc, which weaves in and out of various times and places in fantasy, with occasional trips to science fiction and the wilder shores of the real world - alternate versions of it on occasion.

Have you ever noticed how many SF and fantasy authors cluster round the first half of the alphabet? Asimov, Clarke, Poul Anderson, Dick, Gibson, Aldiss, Baxter, Benford, Heinlein...an overwhelming preponderance, and most of the rest around S or W. Moorcock, in his capacity as a distinguished editor, was responsible for furthering the careers of many good writers- and others, I suspect, simply out of alphabetical proximity, they being put on bookshop shelves next to him. Just an aside.

Characters from some of his books pop up fairly frequently in the others, and it centres on one soul- the Eternal Champion, incarnated as many different characters; Elric (and probably Stormbringer as well), Erekose, Corum, Hawkmoon, Bastable probably, all manifestations; different in individual character, attitudes, methods and cause, but parts of the same whole, sharing some of the usually bitter and bloody memories of the other.

I say 'theoretically' because this has looser connections to the main structure than most. It is a love story and a farce, the central characters being Amelia Underwood, initially reserved Victorian lady with more spirit than she gives herself credit for, and Jherek Carnelian- who is almost certainly a distant and by comparison rather reserved version of the oddest manifestation of the Eternal Champion and one not directly part of the canon at all, Jerry Cornelius- published, like Colonel Pyat, separately. The Cornelius stories in the Tale of The Eternal Champion are shared world tales, versi
ons of him - occasionally her or it- by many different authors; very wierd and perhaps too strong a taste for lighter or occasional readers, the literary equivalent of a very potent curry.

Of course, the best fantasy literature is like that; although you know it's going to bend your mind, you go ahead with it anyway, because it seems too much, too tantalising to ignore. So it does, and you come out of it changed. Moorcock at his best can certainly do this. I have to confess that for me that particular volume didn't, because there were too many hands behind it - could draw but not hold, in effect. This, I think, does.

It's actually light relief from the Eternal Champion, in a way; what happens is that a decadent far future society, to whom all is aesthetics - afficionados of the much later and comparatively witless Eric Brown and Blue Shifting know what I mean- where all values, because they relate to the way people interact wth one another, are obsolete; with extreme power, they only need each other for amusement. Not viciously, though - they aren't Melnibonean; playfully, perhaps.

The world gone by is their primary source of amusement, drawn on for masques, pageatry, mannerisms to amuse- both the characters and the readers through how astonishingly, grotesquely - and explicably- wrong they are; everything telescopes into everything else as seen from the End of Time, you see. The mixes and muddles over the reconstructions that are one of their chief entertainments...oh, dear.

(Worth noticing in passing is a short story, not here, in which Moorcock takes a rise out of his firstborn character by transporting Elric- the moody, self dramatising one- to the End of Time, and satirises all fantasy by having them take his ridiculous quest, megalomaniac pronouncements, posturings and so forth with total deadpan seriousness- in addition to 'let's humour this lunatic, he passes the time'. If you ever wanted to
know how the sane, mundane world thought of you...dazzling.)

Of course he uses this to point out how ridiculous all the superficial trappings seem. Seen from near infinity, is there really that much difference between the twelfth and the twentieth centuries? We look like a bunch of ants jumping up and down with photocopied placards saying 'I'm Different!' And lord help us when we actually are, especialy when seen through the eyes of a jaded aristocracy. Perhaps I have, but Moorcock is too good to let opportunities lie that go by. Then one day- as the result of fiendish machinations- the real thing arrives on their doorstep; an unwilling time-traveller, Amelia Underwood, from the late Victorian age. Jherek promptly decides, for the sake of something to do, to fall in love with her. Two products of more utterly different cultures it would be hard to find anywhere in the Timestream. Unfortunately- and in liberating her from her immediate if gentlemanly captor, hilariously- he does; and she does not, yet.

I have to admit, this is a book you lose track of as you read. I can imagine how frustrating it would be to read in individual volumes, but so much happens. The society of the end of time is careless about children, on the whole - Jherek was the first for a long time, and at the beginning of the book we find him in bed with his mother- but there is a paternity related plot, in connection with the imminent demise of the cosmos. Is there something deeply wrong with science fiction, that it throws up so much death imagery? There are Victorian policemen who try to arrest Jherek- a sequence somewhat Dickensian, but better and far more intrinsically funny scene, in which he follows Amelia home, effectively, to rescue her from her husband. I can't quite decide whether the Victorian sequences are a searing parody of the genre or merely a very fine example. They are whiplashed back to the future - their incomprehension is a joy to behold - a
long with conventional alien space travellers who have come to warn the Endtimers about the heat death of the universe in which their reckless power requirements have played a large part. Who completely fail to understand and perform, incidentally, the functions of the Three Stooges - or at least as they would if they were armed with rayguns and intent on rape and pillage, a threat which some of the citizens of the End of Time regard as just the thing to brighten up a dull afternoon. Pay careful attention. You may find yourself laughing - or boggling - so hard you inadvertently fail to follow the plot. Selective breeding, incidentally; Amelia and Jherek. A good deal of the humour is dark in tone, but very, very much worth it, far more intelligent than most SF humour which leans to cheap laughs. A worthy part of the Eternal Champion series, which probably deserves to be read for about that long.

Imagination; seamless, soaring; A
Wierdness; sufficiently advanced technology to be mistaken for magic; C+
Scene- setting; A small society in which every one is their own creative minority, all moving in different directions; B+
Characterisation; Moorcock can certainly write real people when he wants to; A
Overall; one of the three or four wittiest pieces of SF ever written; A-

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