Elric of Melnibone

A few months ago I finished re-reading this saga for the third time.  These were fantasy stories written by Michael Moorcock in the 1960s.  I had originally read them in high school, long before digesting Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, so for a long time they were my standard for fantasy fiction.

 The main series consists of six silver (or white, depending on the publisher) small paperback books:

 Elric of Melnibone.  We’re introduced to the initial set of major characters:  Elric, Yyrkoon, and Cymoril, and the setting:  a fantasy world where Chaos & magic predominate; law, which takes the form of reason, logic, and science, is extremely weak, and the Lords of Law, while they do exist, are essentially banished to other planes, whereas the Lords of Chaos tend to be widely worshipped and acknowledged, and even appear in person several times, mostly Elric’s own patron deity, Arioch.  In particular, the two major countries, Melnibone and Pan Tang, worship Chaos, while none of the upstart Young Kingdoms appear to worship Law. 

            By this point, Melnibone, an island empire run by decadent sorcerors, has been in decline for centuries, and the former vassal states of humans, contemptuously referred to as the Young Kingdoms, have gained their independence and are beginning to flex their muscles.  Although still not yet fully capable of defeating Melnibone itself – which is protected by long-sleeping dragons which breathe napalm – they are moving in that direction.  In particular, Melnibone’s major rival, Pan Tang, is developing its sorcerous powers and cultivating a tighter relationship with the Lords of Chaos in order not merely to challenge Melnibone’s supremacy but to take over the entire world, on behalf of Chaos itself.  Melnibone and Pan Tang are loosely analogous to early 20^th century England and Germany, respectively.  Some of the Young Kingdoms have Earthly analogies, but this whole element is so attenuated, that it’s clear Moorcock was less interested in making any real political statements and more interested in simply using the world he knew as a convenient basis for his fantasy land, nothing more. 

             Elric himself starts off as the Emperor of Melnibone, but he is an albino, weak and unable to do much without sorcery and drugs.  Moreover, he’s moody and introspective, and doesn’t blindly accept centuries worth of brutal hegemony and depravity at face value.  His cousin Yyrkoon, who has no such scruples or doubts, covets the throne himself – “if you’re not willing to wield Melnibone’s vast power to corrupt and enslave the world, why don’t I take over?” - and barely bothers to conceal his ambition or contempt.  Elric is dating Yyrkoon’s sister Cymoril, and hopes to make her empress one day.  But fate has other plans…

            After Yyrkoon kidnaps Cymoril and takes her to the remote and primitive land of Oin & Yu, Elric follows them with the aid of the Ship of Land and Sea.  Eventually Elric has to chase Yyrkoon into a shade dimension, where he finds Stormbringer, a greater demon bound into the form of a huge, black sword.  The sword eats the souls of those he slays, excreting the magic energy into strength for Elric to enjoy without having to rely upon the drugs and sorcery (unreliable and far less effective) he used before.  But the sword also has a mind of its own, and is never completely under Elric’s control; is he its master or its slave? In particular, it has a nasty habit of impaling itself into the friend standing closest to Elric. This tends to give Elric a bad reputation, though doesn’t seem to affect his ability to find companions, lovers or adventures.

 Sailor on the Seas of Fate.  Elric leaves Melnibone run by Yyrkoon – despite everyone’s advice to the contrary – and goes off to explore the Young Kingdoms in one of these “finding myself before college” type of deals, albeit considerably more complex and dangerous than backpacking around Europe.  Fortunately he has Stormbringer to assist him.  Three separate adventures:  the 4 who are 1 (Eternal Champions cameo, part 1), Saxif D’aan, and R’len K’ren Aa.

 Weird of the White Wolf.   Elric leads the Young Kingdoms fleet to Imryrr; they loot the city, then get wiped out by the Dragon Riders on the way back.  In a heated confrontation deep inside the city, Elric ends up killing not only Yyrkoon, but also Cymoril as well – both victims of Stormbringer’s appetite for souls, both good and evil.

            Elric meets Moonglum, and from then on they are inseparable companions.  While Elric has his head in the clouds, pondering issues of fate, destiny, death, love, etc., Moonglum manages the pair’s finances and makes sure they have a place to sleep that night and food to eat. 

 The Vanishing Tower.  Elric meets the Burning God in Nadsokor (city of thieves and beggars), meets up with the other Eternal Champions (cameo part 2), finds Tanelorn (a magic, neutral city of peace) and FINALLY dispaches Theleb Ka’arna, a nasty sorcerer he’d been butting heads with ever since they competed for the affections of Queen Yishana.

 Bane of the Black Sword.  Back to Tanelorn, and he hooks up with Zarozinia, his last girlfriend.  [According to the Stormbringer stats, she is 10 years old, but the story describes her as no younger than her late teens.]

 Stormbringer.  Everything gets tidied up!  While the prior two books were on auto-pilot and don’t have much strategic value in the series, the final book does move things along in a dramatic fashion.  In particular, the Gods of Law, previously practically nonexistent in the series, now decide to emerge from literary obscurity and assist Elric.  He battles the armies of Chaos, who are led by the Theocrat of Pan Tang, Jagreen Lern.  The ultimate outcome is…well, I consider it worth wading through the six book series to get here.

 These are the main six books.  There are two more, plus a trilogy, which don’t really fit into this:  Elric at the Edge of Time (somewhat psychedelic but not very entertaining) and Fortress of the Pearl, which is enjoyable in its own right.  The latter sets up the Dreamthief trilogy, which is very recent, but promises only a more tangential role for Elric. 

 Eternal Champion.  Moorcock couldn’t leave well enough alone, and created 3 other “champions”: Erekose, Hawkmoon, and Corum.   Of these Erekose has only one book, The Silver Warriors, written in the first person.  Corum has a set of six (two trilogies: The Knight of the Swords, The Queen of the Swords, The King of the Swords; and The Bull and the Spear, The Oak and the Ram, The Sword and the Stallion), which are very similar to Elric’s.  His deal is he’s lost a hand and an eye, both of which are replaced with magical artifacts.  I recall an SNL skit parodying Steven King’s amazing ability to churn out horror novels seemingly automatically – the pages fly out of his typewriter.  For me, the Corum stories were like that, Moorcock’s fantasy system reduced to a set of repetitive and forgettable books.  Hawkmoon was a little better (The Jewel in the Skull, The Mad God’s Amulet, The Sword of the Dawn, and The Runestaff).  These are set in a “fantasy Europe” with “Grenbretan” as the arch-villain nation.  After the disappointment with the Corum series, I was expecting to dislike the Hawkmoon stories, but I found them to be quite enjoyable – except the very end, which was extremely disappointing.  

 In fact, realizing that his own fiction had become somewhat self-parodying, Moorcock went a step further to develop the Jerry Cornelius series (which I have not read, but plan on doing). 

 Stormbringer, the roleplaying game.  Similar to RuneQuest (also made by Chaosium), this allowed you to make an Elric wanna-be character, though Mournblade (Stormbringer’s twin sword) was off-limits.  My top character was a grotesquely powerful Melnibonean sorcerer, Jermyn Relic, thanks to a poorly designed scenario, “Hall of Risk”.  The game was well-supplied with scenarios, but I don’t recall any of them having the same cosmic impact as Elric himself; the idea was to play IN his world, without changing anything which actually happened.  A clever DM could have arranged a meeting with Elric, but chances are your character would probably lose the fight.  On the other hand, perhaps Jermyn Relic would have had a fighting chance….

 Moorcock and Hawkwind.  Leaving aside the two songs Moorcock co-wrote with Blue Oyster Cult, “Great Sun Jester” from Mirrors and “Black Blade” on Cultosaurus Erectus (for all its brevity, however, the song nevertheless nicely sums up Elric’s issues), Moorcock’s main musical relationship was with Hawkwind.  He wrote several of their spoken word songs, e.g. “Sonic Attack” and “The Black Corridor”, and inspired an entire concept album devoted to Elric, The Chronicle of the Black Sword.  Moorcock is often described as being as much a member of the band as Stacia or Bob Calvert, in a role like Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead) or Peter Sinfield (King Crimson).

 Elric vs. Conan.  Robert E. Howard was writing in a small town in Texas, mostly in the early 1930s, during the Great Depression, when most people would probably enjoy escaping into fantasy worlds far away from unemployment and starvation.  I keep hearing about “Conan seeks to regain his lost throne of Cimmeria” and similar Aragornesque allusions, but somehow I must have missed the story where this is explained, and I’ve read most of the original Conan stories.  In fact, even when offered to share a throne with a lusty queen or empress, Conan declines, and goes off on his own again for more adventures.  The man cannot be tied down.  I really see no evidence that he’s anything more than a lone adventurer who makes his own rules and goes his own way.  Nor does he ever speak of destiny, fate, or anything of that nature.  Conan is the ultimate man of action: he simply goes out and does things.  If they were ever to team up together, Conan would probably smack Elric in the face and say, “Stop asking silly questions with no answers.  Just go out and do.  If this is indeed your destiny, you’ll wind up doing it anyway.  If it’s not, you can do as you please.  So why ask?”

 Elric vs. LOTR.  Likewise, “fate and destiny” don’t appear to be an element in Lord of the Rings.  Frodo and Sam take the Ring to Mount Doom not because Gandalf or someone else told them, “it is your destiny”, but because “it would be really bad if Sauron got hold of this, so it needs to be done, and someone needs to do it.  Tag, you’re it.”  Tolkien falls short of implying the mission is guaranteed to succeed.  On the other hand, for all of Tolkien’s rich linguistic and cultural background for Middle Earth, even The Silmarilliion is very vague about who the gods and deities of Middle Earth are….if any.  Is Sauron the Devil?  Or simply a vastly powerful being of evil?  Who is God?  Are there gods?  No real answers.  All the most powerful magical beings disappear into self-imposed exile and/or retirement in the Grey Havens (whatever, and wherever, they are), and non-human races either die off or – as the hobbits do – simply seem to converge with humanity.  

            However, despite the absence of Lords of Law, Lords of Chaos, a “balance”, etc. there is “good” and “evil” in Middle Earth and not merely a difference of viewpoints; Tolkien was not a moral relativist.  The good guys fight for what they know to be good against what they know to be evil; good is indeed good, and evil is indeed evil.  Aside from Sauron, Tolkien simply doesn’t identify or personify these forces into tangible deities who can be summoned (“blood and souls for my lord Arioch”) or appear for whatever reason.  

            I find it difficult to decide, between Elric and Lord of the Rings, which is better.  Suffice to say that they are different, and both are very good.

 As yet, none of Moorcock’s stories have been made into movies.   Since the Elric stories are his most famous and popular, I would think those would be first; much has been made of the stark contrast between Elric and Conan, and the latter by now has had no less than three movies.  Likewise, not only has Peter Jackson adapted LOTR to the big screen – successfully – even Tolkien’s more childlike prequel, The Hobbit, is due to be released  (I won’t hold my breath for a Silmarillion movie).  For Elric himself as a character, I’d be inclined to cast Stuart Townsend in the role, if not Orlando Bloom.  But we’ll have to see what happens.  The colossal failure of the “John Carter” film, a good story with a solid literary background, may be scaring the money away from an Elric project.  Stay tuned.