April Books 32) The Cornelius Quartet

[nwhyte]

32) The Cornelius Quartet: The Final Programme , A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak, by Michael Moorcock

Comments

[londonkds]

Since I've been in LJ, I've found the perfect analogy for the experience of reading the less linear bits of the Cornelius stories for explanation to people in fandom: it's like reading a load of different fanfic stories for a canon you don't know about.

[blue_condition]

Superb analogy - all these seemingly really important characters turn up and you've no bloody idea who they are, and then someone starts riffing on the themes of the characters and putting them into settings you don't understand... or characters are facets/foreshadowings/reimaginings of other ones elsewhere in canon...

Actually, picking up any strand of Moorcock's multiverse is like that!

[blue_condition]

I got the impression from somewhere (probably an interview somewhere about how rotten Moorcock thought the film of The Final Programme was) that Moorcock really didn't like DW - which is a pity because the Doctor's become almost the 'all purpose human being' that Jerry Cornelius became to the New Worlds group of writers...

[drasecretcampus]

For some reason I did do some head scratching around the idea of Cornelius as the answer to Pertwee era Doctor Who (or vice versa) (and I forget what the question was...)

New Worlds 10 (1976) contains a story in which an old time traveller arrives on an alien planet dominated by robots. I believe there was also a granddaughter. (My copy has this story ripped out by my brother who owned it prior to me; I appear to have lost my unvandalised copy). I wonder who Anna Ostrowska is/was?

Anna Ostrowska

[drasecretcampus]

I have looked in vain for any other reference to Anna. The story seemed to have been written by someone about 8 years old, so maybe someone's kid/grandkid?