Michael Moorcock's favourite science fiction novels

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Giovanna Clairval

I recently re-read the first Elric series. I found it profound, this second time (I've grown up a little).

Didn't Moorcock publish the very first Elric novel when he was twenty-one?

Let me think a minute... He was born in 1939, and the first Elric story ("The Dreaming City") was published in Science Fantasy #47, June 1961; the first part of Stormbringer (which was a serial), was published in #61, Oct. 1963. The first book of the series (The Stealer of Souls, comprised of the stories "The Dreaming City", "While the Gods Laugh", "The Stealer of Souls", "Kings in Darkness", and "The Flame Bringers") was published in 1963, while the novel version of Stormbringer (with about a quarter of the material cut) was published in 1965. (Later, in the late 1970s, Moorcock restored the material using the original serial, and revised the novel slightly as well.)

So... he published the first story of the series when he was about that age, but the first actual novel (if you include Stormbringer as such, which was actually conceived as a quartet of four novelettes comprising a larger story, from what I recall him saying) wasn't published until a couple of years later, in serial form. The first book of the series came out about the same time. The first actual novel of the series, written as such, was actually Elric of Melniboné, published in 1972....

(Ummm... the Elric series -- as well as several other things of his -- has had a very complicated publishing history.....)

And now you have much more information than you ever wanted to know.....

[Giovanna Clairval]

Thank you. Information is never enough. I am an information addict.

So, he had really been writing that first stuff when he was sooo very young.
Astounding maturity

[j. d. worthington]

You think that's amazing? He wrote the original version of his novel The Golden Barge when he was "around eighteen".... The Sojan stories began appearing around 1957 -- crude stuff on the whole, but as the series progressed, they began to become much more sophisticated in the ideas he was exploring....

And his first (short story) version of "The Eternal Champion" saw print in June 1962....