Michael Moorcock – Page 10

More trip texts

More psychedelia of a sort. Anthologist Michel Parry, who died last year, was a familiar name to British readers of fantasy, horror and science fiction for his themed collections: Beware of the Cat (1972; horror stories about cats), The Devil’s Children (1974; horror stories about children), The Hounds of Hell (1974; horror stories about dogs), Jack the Knife (1975; Jack the Ripper stories), The Supernatural Solution (1976; occult investigators), Sex in the 21st Century (1979), and so on.

Parry also compiled multi-volume anthologies throughout the 1970s, two of which have always stood out for me: the Mayflower Books of Black Magic Stories ran to six volumes presenting a wide range of occult fiction that included a number of obscure tales from Victorian and Edwardian writers; for Panther Books he compiled three collections of drug-related fantasy and SF stories that are just as varied, and may even be unique for the way they place authors as such as Lord Dunsany and Norman Spinrad together in the same volume. Both series are very much of their time—occult psychedelia!—and are worth seeking out, if you can find them. I emphasise the last point because it’s taken me a while to find a copy of Strange Ecstasies that wasn’t being offered for bizarrely inflated prices; my paperback habit has its limits… None of these anthologies have been reprinted so they’ll become increasingly scarce. For more invented drugs, there’s a good list at Wikipedia.

Cover art by Bob Haberfield.

Strange Ecstasies (1973)
The Plutonian Drug (1934) by Clark Ashton Smith
The Dream Pills (1920) by FH Davis
The White Powder (1895) by Arthur Machen
The New Accelerator (1901) by HG Wells
The Big Fix (1956) by Richard Wilson
The Secret Songs (1962) by Fritz Leiber
The Hounds of Tindalos (1929) by Frank Belknap Long
Subjectivity (1964) by Norman Spinrad
What to Do Until the Analyst Comes (1956) by Frederik Pohl
Pipe Dream (1972) by Chris Miller

Cover art by Bob Haberfield.

Dream Trips (1974)
The Hashish Man (1910) by Lord Dunsany
As Dreams Are Made On (1973) by Joseph F. Pumilia
The Adventure of the Pipe (1898) by Richard Marsh
Dream-Dust from Mars (1938) by Manly Wade Wellman
The Life Serum (1926) by Paul S. Powers
Morning After (1957) by Robert Sheckley
Under the Knife (1896) by HG Wells
The Good Trip (1970) by Ursula K. Le Guin
No Direction Home (1971) by Norman Spinrad
The Phantom Drug (1926) by AW Kapfer

Cover art by Brian Froud.

Spaced Out (1977)
The Deep Fix (1964) by Michael Moorcock
All the Weed in the World (1961) by Fritz Leiber
The Roger Bacon Formula (1929) by Fletcher Pratt
Smoke of the Snake (1934) by Carl Jacobi
Melodramine (1965) by Henry Slesar
My Head’s in a Different Place, Now (1972) by Grania Davis
Sky (1971) by RA Lafferty
All of Them Were Empty— (1972) by David Gerrold

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Trip texts
• Acid albums
• Acid covers
• Lyrical Substance Deliberated
• The Art of Tripping, a documentary by Storm Thorgerson
• Enter the Void
• In the Land of Retinal Delights
• Haschisch Hallucinations by HE Gowers
• The art of LSD
• Hep cats

Weekend links 240

The Death of Chatterton (2014) by Kehinde Wiley.

• Mixes of the week (and the week before that): The Conjurer’s Hexmas: Second Rite by SeraphicManta; Secret Thirteen Mix 140 by Deaf Center; Best of 2014: A Highly Opinionated Mix by Robin The Fog.

• Never mind Music for Airports, how about Music for Neurosurgery? The Tegos Tapes Edits are extracts from “12 hours of unheard Vangelis music soundtracking films of various surgical operations”.

• “It was one of the first magazines that, with science-fiction and comics together, proposed comics for adults.” Aug Stone on 40 years of publisher Les Humanoïdes Associés and Métal Hurlant.

• Zinesters Do It on the Photocopier: Stephanie Schroeder on the Queer Zine Archive Project. Related: Holy Titclamps by Larry-bob Roberts.

• A Year In The Country reached the end of its 365 posts. The archive is well worth a browse.

• “These people love to collect radioactive glass. Are they nuts?” asks Ben Marks.

• Think before you share: 86 viral images from 2014 that were totally fake.

• The Anti-Tolkien: Peter Bebergal on Michael Moorcock.

• Extracts from Alan Bennett‘s diary for 2014.

• John Cage 4’33” Autotune

• Alpha (1976) by Vangelis | Reve (1979) by Vangelis | L’Enfant (1979) by Vangelis

Moorcock: Faith, Hope and Anxiety

Photo of the author by Linda Moorcock.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had another new piece of work to reveal, and this is it, a poster/promotional piece for Russell Wall’s forthcoming documentary about Michael Moorcock. The main challenge with one was to create something that would give a sense of Moorcock’s extensive career and the genre-spanning content of his many books.

I took the 1970s as the starting point, since this was the period when his reputation as a writer was established worldwide. The decade began with Britain’s bookshelves being colonised by Moorcock’s SF and fantasy novels published by Mayflower with vivid covers; it saw a cult feature film—The Final Programme—made from his first Jerry Cornelius novel, and it ended with the fourth Jerry Cornelius novel, The Condition of Muzak, winning a serious literary award, the Guardian Fiction Prize.

So the general appearance of the design, the headline typography, and the colour scheme are a nod to the Mayflower covers and especially to Bob Haberfield’s artwork which often used a similar style of Tibetan flames and clouds. The rest of the type is set in Rockwell, a preferred typeface of the Hipgnosis design team for much of the 1970s. Early on I had the idea of filling the design with stylised graphics like those used by some of the Hipgnosis illustrators, chiefly George Hardie, but that idea receded once the composition began to arrange itself. The fountain pen is the main hangover from this, a hard-edged graphic tilted at an angle like many of Hardie’s illustrations. The pen is a little inappropriate given that Moorcock is famous for knocking out novels at speed on a typewriter but it made a good visual rhyme with the guitar, a Rickenbacker like the one the author played in his Deep Fix band.

Elsewhere there are many specific references competing for attention: the Elric head is Jim Cawthorn’s illustration from the first edition of Stormbringer (1965); the Jerry Cornelius figure (straddling a repurposed Mayflower logo) is one of Mal Dean’s best, as seen on the cover of issue 191 of New Worlds magazine; the sorcerous blades are my own designs from 1985 as seen on the sleeve of Hawkwind’s Chronicle of the Black Sword album; the Beardsley figures from Salomé were a vague gesture to the 1890s but the Pierrot figure happens to be one Moorcock used for a while as a bookplate, something I didn’t know until I’d placed it in the design; the cat at Pierrot’s feet is another Beardsley from one of the Bon-Mots books; the London skyline is a contemporary one, London past and present having been a continual feature of Moorcock’s writing throughout his career. Lastly, all these details are contained by a graphic based on Abram Games’ BBC TV ident from the 1950s. When Russell and I began talking about this project the words “television biography” were being used so this would have connected to that idea, and to the decade when Moorcock’s career began.

I don’t know when the documentary will be released but any news will be posted here in due course. There’s also talk of making copies of the poster available for purchase but nothing concrete has been decided yet.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Eduardo Paolozzi at New Worlds
• Elric 1: Le trône de rubis
• Into the Media Web by Michael Moorcock
• The Best of Michael Moorcock
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others

Weekend links 225

Still from The Shaman-Girl’s Prayer (1997), a video piece by Mariko Mori. This page has pictures of Mori’s futuristic/cosmic performances, films & environments.

• Time Out of Mind (1979) was a BBC TV series about science fiction writers, five short films concentrating on Arthur C. Clarke, John Brunner, Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey and an sf convention. I was only interested in the Moorcock film at the time, not least because it featured a short clip of Hawkwind playing Silver Machine, and inserted scenes from the film of The Final Programme (1973) between the interviews. The Moorcock episode is less about his books than about New Worlds magazine and the so-called New Wave of sf in general, so you also see rare footage of M. John Harrison in a Barney Bubbles “Blockhead” T-shirt talking then ascending a limestone cliff, and bits of interviews with Brian Aldiss and Thomas Disch. Ballard isn’t interviewed but is present via a scene from the Harley Cokeliss film Crash! (1971) in which Gabrielle Drake slides in and out of a car while someone reads Elements of an Orgasm from The Atrocity Exhibition.

• “…there happened to be a book on Ritual Magick that talked about John Dee and summonings and Dr. Faust and all that kind of stuff. So then obviously at that age, too, I read HP Lovecraft and then Michael Moorcock and what they call fantasy literature. Through HP Lovecraft I discovered Arthur Machen, and I think that sort of percolated down inside…” Dylan Carlson of Earth talking to Steel for Brains. The Wire has the vinyl-only track from the new Earth album, Primitive And Deadly, and a track from Carlson’s solo album, Gold. Related: Artwork by Samantha Muljat, designer/photographer for the new Earth album.

• Phantasmaphile has details of the next two issues of deluxe occult magazine Abraxas. Issue 6 includes a major feature on Leonora Carrington while Luminous Screen is a special issue devoted to occult cinema.

• More Broadcast: Video of a performance at Teatro Comunale di Carpi, March 2010 (part 2 here), and “constellators and artifacts” at A Year In The Country.

• “Petition demands return of ‘Penis Satan’ statue to Vancouver.” There’s an uncensored photo of the contentious statue here.

• Literary Alchemy and Graphic Design: Adrian Shaughnessy on James Joyce’s writings among graphic designers.

• Frank Pizzoli talks to John Rechy about “the gay sensibility”, melding truth and fiction, and his literary legacy.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 127 by Roberto Crippa, and FACT Mix 459 by Craig Leon.

• Alan Moore has finished the first draft of his million-word novel, Jerusalem.

• Crazy pavings: Alex Bellos on Craig Kaplan’s parquet deformations.

• Noise Not Music: “Live recordings, obscure cassettes and more…”

• Pylon of the Month

• Zoot Kook (1980) by Sandii | Rose Garden (1981) by Akiko Yano | Telstar (1997) by Takako Minekawa

The Use and Abuse of Books

Savoy • Savoy • Savoy: The first wave of book covers pinned to the Beardsley wallpaper of the Deansgate office.

I often feel I’m in a minority in never having been desperate to see my work in a gallery. We are, after all, living in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (thanks, Walter), and the idea of having to visit a physical location in order to see a work of art can seem like a rather antiquated affair. (Plenty of arguments counter this, of course, but I don’t create anything that needs to be experienced in situ, and I’m also not enmeshed in the art market.) So it’s been surprising this month to realise that examples of my work are currently on display in Monterey, California (the Tentacles exhibition), London (Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK at the British Library which ends today) and in Manchester (The Exhibition Centre for the Use and Abuse of Books at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation). If all goes according to plan, some of my steampunk book covers will also be exhibited in Beijing next month; more about that later.

Britton & Butterworth by Kris Guidio (1986).

The Use and Abuse of Books is a necessarily brief overview of the 40-year history of Savoy Books, a notable moment in the life of the company since this is the first time any Manchester institution has acknowledged the existence of a local publisher with such a long, varied and often controversial history. In part this is a result of the cultural histories of Manchester concentrating almost exclusively on the music scene. Many of the books and features written about Manchester arts have been produced by DJs or ex-musicians who appear tone-deaf to literary culture despite the existence of Carcanet Press (established 1969), Savoy Books, and other more recent publishers who are happy to operate outside London. (The venerable Jon Savage gets a pass here.) Carping aside, The Use and Abuse of Books describes itself thus:

Featuring text, images and rare promotional content from Savoy’s infamous 1989 publication Lord Horror, the exhibition tackles the question of whether the depiction and description of horrific acts is justified in satire. In 1992 Lord Horror was declared by Judge Gerrard Humphries as ‘a glorification of racism and violence’ whereas writer Michael Moorcock believed the book to belong to ‘a tradition of lampoon, of exaggeration. Its purpose is to show up social evils, and the evils within ourselves.’ Displaying artwork from Sinister Legends and Meng and Ecker alongside other panels from rare comics and graphic novels (including Reverbstorm), The Use and Abuse of Books also examines the relationship between text and imagery within Savoy’s publications, revealing how artwork from John Coulthart, Kris Guidio and James Cawthorn supplements and enhances the storytelling through visual references to architecture, cultural figures or specific works of art. The exhibition will be open 10am–4pm weekdays and in the evenings during events from Friday 15th August until Friday 5th September. (more)

Some of my pages from Lord Horror: Reverbstorm have been printed large-size for the walls, and there’s also a life-size cardboard figure of my Beardsley-style Lord Horror. Savoy publications past and present are on display, including some of my book designs. It’s fitting that this should be taking place under the aegis of the Anthony Burgess Foundation; Burgess was a great Joycean and a champion of two Savoy favourites: William Burroughs and JG Ballard. I can’t imagine him getting too enthusiastic about many of Savoy’s publications but I’d hope he might have appreciated the spirit of Mancunian bloody-mindedness in which they were produced.