Reading list - Updated 8 September 2011: mrs

mrs_persson

Reading list - Updated 8 September 2011

Dec 30, 2020 12:00

Here follows a list of the books and stories in which Una appears in order of publication, and also a bunch of notes for the newcomer to Moorcock's work. If you have any questions, please let me know and leave me a comment! I'm happy to blather on about these books at length.

Update 4/22/2011: The good folks at Multiverse.org have done a lot of great work in updating Una's entry at the wiki there, and their list of her appearances and mentions is even more comprehensive (including several stories where she is mentioned, but does not actually put in a significant appearance). They also state outright that she is Oone the Dreamthief in The Fortress of the Pearl. So there.

1970s

The Warlord of the Air - 1971 (N)
The English Assassin - 1972 (JC) (Book 3 of the Cornelius quartet; see Notes below)
The Land Leviathan - 1974 (N)
The End of All Songs - 1976 (D) (Book 3 of the Dancers at the End of Time; see Notes)
The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century - 1976 (JC)
The Condition of Muzak - 1977 (JC)
Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen - 1978 (revised 1993)

1980s

"Everything Blowing Up: An Adventure of Una Persson, Heroine of Time and Space" - 1980 (by Hilary Bailey, collected in The New Nature of the Catastrophe)
The Entropy Tango - 1981 (JC)
The Steel Tsar - 1981 (N)
"Elric at the End of Time" - 1984 (D/E) (collected in Elric at the End of Time)
The Alchemist's Question - 1984 (JC)
"The Murderer's Song" - 1987 (JC) (collected in Casablanca and The New Nature of the Catastrophe)
The Fortress of the Pearl - 1989 (E) (well, I think that she's Oone the Dreamthief, anyway)

1990s

"The Spencer Inheritance" - 1998 (JC) (collected in The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius, 2003 edition)
"The Camus Referendum" - 1998 (JC) (ibid)

2000s

Firing the Cathedral - 2002 (JC) (ibid)
"Crowning the Kitten" - 2003 (JC) (Guardian baton story)
"The Mystery of the Texas Twister" (SB) (collected in The Metatemporal Detective)
The White Wolf's Son - 2005 (E)
"The Affair of the Bassin Les Hivers" - 2007 (SB) (op cit)
"The Flaneur des Arcades de l’Opera" - 2007 (SB) (ibid)
Elric: The Balance Lost, issue 3, page 1 - 2011 (E, SB, others) (by Chris Roberson)

Abbreviations:

N: Nomad of the Time Streams (See also Patrick Cordiner's essay.)
JC: Jerry Cornelius
D: Dancers at the End of Time
E: Elric
SB: Seaton Begg

Notes for the Interested Reader:

If you're an absolute newbie to Michael Moorcock's work, you should at least read some Elric, the character for whom he's best known. Luckily Del Rey has published some beautiful new editions of the Elric stories (Stealer of Souls, To Rescue Tanelorn, The Sleeping Sorceress, Duke Elric, Elric in the Dream Realms, and Swords and Roses). At minimum you should get the first volume, Stealer of Souls, which includes the novel by that name and the bleakest high fantasy novel of all time, Stormbringer. Sure, it's a bit pulpy, and it's not Moorcock's best prose, but it's a classic. Moorcock's later Elric trilogy (the one that starts with The Dreamthief's Daughter) is really best appreciated in the context of all his other books; don't go there first. For more about Elric, refer to this reader's guide. (Yes, that's also me.)
If you want to tackle the Jerry Cornelius books, start that series by reading the Cornelius Quartet straight through, available in an omnibus edition and comprising The Final Programme, A Cure For Cancer, The English Assassin, and The Condition of Muzak. The last book in the quartet gains a lot of its emotional weight and power from having read the first three, and the other Cornelius novels and stories are best understood in light of the original quartet, publication order notwithstanding. (Note: Adventures of Una Persson... was published in an edition with -- for no reason that makes any sense to me -- with the completely unrelated The Black Corridor. Avoid this edition; it mangles the text of both books.)
ANOTHER NOTE: I just (March 2011) discovered that the Fontana edition of the Cornelius Chronicles actually retcons Una into the first two books, The Final Programme and A Cure for Cancer, where she was not previously. Details here. *facepalm* Since the Avon edition, which contains the pre-revision text and does not include Una, is what I know, that's what I'm sticking to. Goddammit, Mike.
YET ANOTHER NOTE (8/2011): In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill), Jerry's fearsome mother appears as Mina and Allan's boarding-house landlady, and Jerry, Catherine, and Frank have cameos as small children. Later in LoEG Century: 1969, Jerry himself appears in his A Cure For Cancer guise. And if you look carefully, you'll spot Michael Moorcock and the Deep Fix in a basement nightclub, singing about the Runestaff and Una.
The Dancers at the End of Time core trilogy comprises An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, and The End of All Songs. Much as I love the JC stories, the Dancers trilogy is probably some of the most enjoyable reading; the writing is gorgeous and I find the characters completely delightful. It's basically Moorcock's love letter to the aesthetes and decadents of the late 19th century, Algernon Swinburne in particular, and centres on the inhabitants of the End of Time: immortal, immensely powerful beings who while away the heat-death of the universe by living for art and pleasure alone. The trilogy encompasses what happens when one of their number falls in love.
Gloriana is Moorcock's homage to both Mervyn Peake (whose work you should really read, if you haven't) and Edmund Spenser. I feel obligated to note that the original ending will give major fits to any feminist with an ounce of self-worth, constituting as it does a character's self-actualisation through an act of rape. Moorcock went back later and revised the ending to ... well, to make it less rapey, to be honest, and to make it more empowering to the female character, but it's still a bit uncomfortably put together-and really both endings bother me in light of how much I enjoyed the rest of the book, which is excellent. Proceed with caution.
The Nomad of the Time Streams books are held by many to be an early exemplar of steampunk. I quite like them, and they're key to understanding Moorcock's concepts of the Multiverse. They document the adventures of Oswald Bastable, an upstanding British soldier who gets bounced across alternate versions of the twentieth century, exposing the dark underside of colonialism and western imperialism as he does so.
Beyond the stories and series mentioned here, there's an absolutely vast amount of other books to read. I find the Second Ether series (which starts with Blood) to be fairly heavy going, but some people really like it. His Multiverse comic that he did with Walt Simonson is well worth checking out, especially as it elaborates on the structure of the Multiverse. The Pyat books are fantastic. I like the Von Bek books a lot as well (and reading them is important to understanding the place of that extensive family in the Multiverse), especially the gorgeous The Brothel in Rosenstrasse. And everyone should read Mother London-it's some of his best writing, capturing London through the eyes of its characters in truly extraordinary fashion, and an amazing book.
Not all of these books are readily available in print, but AbeBooks.com is your friend. You can find almost any of them there, often for bargain-basement prices.
Doctor Who fans may be interested in The Coming of the Terraphiles, which for all intents and purposes is Michael Moorcock writing a crossover between the Second Aether books and the Whoniverse. It's a wild ride, with many fond nods as well to P. G. Wodehouse, and it's kind of incredible for a longtime fan of both Who and Moorcock to see the Doctor rattling on about the Multiverse, Law and Chaos, and all the rest.