Happy Birthday, Michael Moorcock!
Today is Michael Moorcock's 69th birthday. Yes, only 69 - judging from the length of his bibliography, one might think him closer to 169. I recently did some redecorating in my house, and this was the first time I was able to fit virtually all of my Moorcock hardcovers in the same bookcase:
This is just the hardcovers (and a few outsized paperbacks). Another shelf is filled with mass market paperbacks, another holds graphic novels, comics, etc... I'm sure there are Moorcock readers with even bigger collections.
He's been my favorite writer since a friend introduced me to Elric of Melnibone when I was 15 years old. The brooding, outcast antihero seemed to be written for me. It was love at first page.
I've met Moorcock a few times over the years, and he gives the lie to that old cliche warning about meeting one's heroes. I've never heard anyone say a bad word about him. I doubt there's a bad word to be said.
He's had a rough year with some health issues, along with losing a few very close friends in a short span of time, but he still makes time to correspond with his readers almost daily over at his website (www.multiverse.org). Any writer who spends this much time corresponding with readers surely can't continue to find time to write! And yet . . . he somehow still keeps cranking out stories and novels. And if anyone thinks Moorcock's best writing days are behind him, they need to read The Vengeance of Rome - the final volume of the "Pyat Quartet," published in just the past few years and maybe the best of a series which, had he published nothing else, would make Michael Moorock a significant literary force. Or read "A Portrait in Ivory" - a very recent Elric short story that so successfuly captures the brooding melancholy of the original Elric stories that reading it nearly brought me to tears.
Thank you, Mike, for over 20 years of entertainment, enlightenment, astonishment, and inspiration . . . and for being one of the most gracious people I've ever met.