I have a question for the big Sword and Sorcery fans out there. I wanted to read Elric of Melnibone as background reading for Sorcerer and Sword, since I haven't read much Sword and Sorcery, but I discoverd that it is out of print! There is a dizzying amount of Moorcock stuff on amazon.com, a lot of it overlapping and a lot of it out of print.
Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start, and where to go from there?
Thanks in advance, your advice is greatly appreciated.
PS I hope this post isn't out of line, since technically it isn't about RPG's. If it is, apologies.
White Wolf put out Elric: Song of the Black Sword several years ago, followed by Elric: The Stealer of Souls. Between the two of them you would have all of Moorcock's Elric stories. These should still be available in paperback through Amazon or Powell's bookstore or the like.
Since Moorcock revised these slightly for republication in the White Wolf collections, they represent his take on the series as of the 1990s. The differences between their form in these collections and in the DAW novels is very slight, so unless you want the stories in their absolutely original forms I would go with the two titles listed above.
I haven't read them in a while, but I remember them being good stuff. Much of them concern Elric's pawnlike manipulation by higher forces and his desire to be his own master, and you would have to be blind not to see the destination towards which the story is heading, but they contain some good writing and are certainly important in the way they aim to overturn many of the conventions established by Howard's worst imitators.
If you haven't read any Howard, I would recommend it. His stories offer some real pleasures and have more going on under the surface than people like DeCamp ever guessed.
Eric
Hello,
The most important thing about reading Elric stories is to recognize the order in which they were written.
Phase 1: the novels The Stealer of Souls (middle), The Dreaming City (beginning), and Stormbringer (ending). The DAW editions renamed The Dreaming City, calling it Elric of Melnibone; included The Stealer of Souls in the collection called The Weird of the White Wolf; and published the final one under its own name.
Phase 2: a bunch of fill-in material, giving Elric's pal Moonglum more time in the spotlight, adding the rather poor subplot of Myshella and Theleb K'aarna, and crossing over with the Corum, Jerry Cornelius, Dancers at the End of Time, Hawkmoon, and other Eternal Champion stories something fierce. The point at which this latter approach ceased being "about something" and graded into self-parody is left up to the reader.
The DAW books summarize both phases:
Elric of Melnibone: the "origin" story, one of the original few, although not the very-first written.
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate: all Eternal Champion crossovers.
The Weird of the White Wolf: includes the infamous The Stealer of Souls, as well as some other easly stuff like The Dead Gods' Book, plus some Eternal Champion crossover.
The Vanishing Tower has some Eternal Champion crossover, but is notable for truly grisly imagery - slam-bang adventure; the most straightforwardly "fantasy hacking" of the saga. Theleb K'aarna filler warning.
The Bane of the Black Sword: mostly setting up the details for the final novel, especially with Elric's lover Zarozinia, Tanelorn, and a lot of Law & Chaos talk. Still marred by the intolerable Theleb K'aarna who fails to be interesting even when being killed.
Stormbringer: balls-to-the-wall harsh fantasy, a great climax and taking no prisoners.
Phase 3: a 1990s Elric resurgence, including Fortress of the Pearl, that one about the Rose, and others. Frankly, I find most of them intolerable and confess I'm biased. Add to taste.
So, on a strictly personal basis, I recommend reading the DAW books Elric of Melnibone, The Weird of the White Wolf, and Stormbringer, as the basic spine of the saga. Everything else - and some of it is great stuff - can be thought of as adding muscle and nerves, or, unfortunately, wads of fat, or even more unfortunately, gangrenous spackle.
Best,
Ron
Quote from: Ron EdwardsEverything else - and some of it is great stuff - can be thought of as adding muscle and nerves, or, unfortunately, wads of fat, or even more unfortunately, gangrenous spackle.
Yowzers! I'm glad I asked for expert advice before jumping into that. I could have picked up the wrong thing first and never gotten anywhere. Actually, when I was like 15 I did read some Conan (I have no idea if it was by Howard) and Moorcock (Jewel in the Skull), and was pretty unimpressed, but I guess I probably picked up the wrong stuff, since I had no clue.
Anyway, thanks!
I'll note, in passing, not being aware of the historical matters that Ron cites, that I read the DAW novels in the order that DAW set them up to be read while I was in high school, and that I actually liked the Theleb K'aarna stuff and all the Color associated with it, as well as the Eternal Champion crossover stuff.
That said, the most Sorcerer-relevant stuff is in the "spine" of books that Ron mentions, the rest is Color that, unlike Ron, I enjoyed immensely for its own sake. You see, in cooking, fat adds flavor. ;-D
That said, there is one scene in the Elric books that I think is the most purely Sorcerer moment I've had the pleasure to read...
-- SPOILER WARNING, GRATUITOUS SPOILER SPACE BELOW ---
When Stormbringer kills the love of Elric's life... Oh, man, that's such a Sorcerer moment, possibly only topped by Elric's death and Stormbringer's little epitath for him...
I'm tempted to tell you to read Stormbringer first; the impression will be greatly heightened if you haven't encountered these ideas and characters before.
(There must be a handy term for "writing additional stories which spoil your appreciation of the first ones through abuse of the material" -- maybe we should call it Lucas-ization.)
Quote from: zhlubbIf you haven't read any Howard, I would recommend it. His stories offer some real pleasures and have more going on under the surface than people like DeCamp ever guessed.
I realize this is topic drift a bit, but I really want to recommend this recent Conan collection: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345461517/qid=1082410196/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7409443-1102246?v=glance&s=books. I picked it up recently and was very very pleased. It has 13 Conan stories within (all but one of Ron's 'must read' list and a couple from the 'darn good' list as well), plus early drafts of some of the work, Howard's essay on Hyborea, and some other goodies. Much recommended.
Hi,
Doyce, check out s&s lit: the return of REH (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9005) for some discussion about the new Conan book.
Best,
Ron
I agree with what Ron says about the series as a whole; for me the real delights are found in the DAW titles Elric of Melnibone, The Weird of the White Wolf, and Stormbringer.
Unless you really want to begin with the origin story first, I recommend starting with Weird of the White Wolf, especially book one which, just to add to the confusion, is titled "The Dreaming City." Most of the significant themes are established here, and a Sorcerer campaign could mine it for lots of useful inspiration.
Enjoy.
Eric
P.S. Not to derail the thread, but could you tell us, Ron, what you don't like about the Myshella material in Weird of the White Wolf?
Quote from: zhlubbP.S. Not to derail the thread, but could you tell us, Ron, what you don't like about the Myshella material in Weird of the White Wolf?
As far as I'm concerned, you can derail all you want. I got my question answered (and more besides!). I'm glad there have been other threads on Sword and Sorcery literature, it makes me not feel bad for posting a non-RPG thread. So as long as Ron doesn't mind chatting about Conan and Elric, I certainly don't.
Hiya,
Myshella's a relatively interesting character whose eventual fate plays a neat role in the final story. Theleb K'aarna, on the other hand, is a Ken doll who takes up space. He is the equivalent of "two too many car chases" in a movie.
I'm not sure how to articulate it beyond the point that his presence in the saga puts no pressure whatsoever on the crucial triangle-relationship of Elric, Stormbringer, and [pick one: Arioch, Moonglum, Cymoril, and to a lesser extent Zarozinia].
I think it's significant that Kirt (xiombarg) liked the Theleb K'aarna stuff back in high school. I consider almost any enjoyment of these stories "back in high school" to express power-issues of adolescence (in which the books indulge, greatly) rather than appreciation of their actual stories.
Eh, Sean?
Best,
Ron
Quote from: Ron EdwardsI think it's significant that Kirt (xiombarg) liked the Theleb K'aarna stuff back in high school. I consider almost any enjoyment of these stories "back in high school" to express power-issues of adolescence (in which the books indulge, greatly) rather than appreciation of their actual stories.
I dunno, Ron. I reread some of that stuff as recently as a couple of years ago, and I still appreciated in terms of Color. Perhaps I just have an arrested adolescence. ;-D
That said, I will note that the first book and the last book, which Ron singled out, are the ones I go back to in order to reread the most often. I just don't think the Theleb K'aarna stuff is by-definition pointless, tho perhaps less so for pure
Sorcerer purposes.
Power issues in adolescence?
I was at a punk rock show once back in San Francisco, this was about '91, where they had these japanese cartoon sex movies playing on big TV screens during the concert. The characters - buxom women and giant demons, among others - would battle each other by having sex, whereupon their private parts would glow brighter and brighter until one of the two entities engaged in sexual melee exploded. There was this little boy character who had like a 6 foot long black penis covered with red runes who seemed to be the nascent hero of the saga.
Probably some of you know what movie I'm talking about, which I can no longer recall, but the point I wanted to make about it here was just that part of what makes the Elric stories so attractive to so many young men (including many who never go back to fantasy again after they get laid for real) is that, well, Elric is this skinny nerd with a 6' long black penis covered with red runes named Stormbringer. He kicks ass on giant demons and on a high school quarterback named Yrkoon.
I write this neither to condemn the having or working through of such issues, nor to indicate that all people who like the Elric stories must secretly be nursing them, even in high school and before. (Though everyone has issues with agency of some kind, I would maintain.) But Elric, while in some ways an 'antihero' (as is commonly noted), is actually a much purer expression of adolescent power-fantasy than Conan and many others, because Elric is intrinsically powerless, just like the adolescent. He gets his power through magic (i.e. brains) and this whopper of a runesword he's got down in his scabbard.
I'm very tempted to go on at length here about the particular hinkinesses in my own configuration of male power-fantasy, but so as not to derail the thread I'll save it for next year's birthday forum.
As to where to go from those stories, that really depends on what you like. If you can tell us some non-S&S fiction you do like, that may help us to recommend some S&S fiction that would be more likely to float your boat. It does come in rather different flavors.
And to bring this perhaps more on-topic, I'll note that such phallic power issues make fine Sorcerer material, just as the Conan stories do.
Hello,
Sean, that was brilliantly expressed. In one essay by Moorcock, he writes that The Dreaming City (later re-titled The Stealer of Souls, not The Dreaming City which got re-titled Elric of Melnibone) is a blatantly pornographic story. Elric basically fucks Cymoril to death; the whole faceless Madonna-Whore thing is just reeking all over it. The setup novel (DAW: Elric of Melnibone) makes her a more interesting character, but when you read that story in isolation as the originally-written core of the saga, it's definitely the stroke-it king of fantasy fiction.
Also, you wrote,
QuoteI'm very tempted to go on at length here about the particular hinkinesses in my own configuration of male power-fantasy,
I figured you did that in
Character conversion (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8481), which is why I prompted you. If there's more, then whoo boy, I'm looking forward to the next Birthday already.
And as long as we're being fannish and pedantic (and hopefully critique-ful) of the Elric stories, I do hope everyone is mentally pronouncing Elric's homeland as having four syllables ...
The movie scenes you describe are almost certainly from one or more of the notorious Legend of the Overfiend movies, or at least from the genre. And yeah, Kirt, my-dick-as-demon and slut-babe-demon are consistent with Sorcerer play, and the rules seem made for it, certainly.
Best,
Ron
It's been fun to read what some of you see in the Elric stories, although I have to say that while I certainly recognize its appeal, especially to adolescent males, the Stud Powercock fantasy element of Elric was never the driving thing for me.
I see the real gripping stuff of the story (and hear I am talking very specifically about the story "The Dreaming City," the first book of
The Weird of the White Wolf) as coming in the chapter that follows Cymoril's death. The chapter begins with Elric mourning the loss of his love, but then it takes an abrupt turn. Moorcock writes:
QuoteElric looked back at Imrryr and suddenly a greater sadness overwhelmed him as a tower,
as delicate and as beautiful as fine lace, cracked and toppled with flames leaping about it.
He had shattered the last great monument to the earlier race--his own race. Men might have learned again, one day, to build strong, slender towers like those of Imrryr, but now the knowledge was dying with the thundering chaos of the fall of the Dreaming City and the fast-diminishing race of Melnibone.
This expression of regret from a character who has engineered his culture's doom, a culture for which he has previously demonstrated only contempt, really grabbed me as an adolescent.
I suppose that like the sex-power fantasy, my interest too is related to certain biographical realities of my own. Growing up in the 1970s amidst some of the ugliest racial conflict in Philadelphia's history (I can recall the cops engaging in gun battles with groups like MOVE, an organization that the city would later obliterate when the mayor agreed to let the police drop a bomb on the roof of their building), I confess that I was more than occasionally afflicted with a desire to see U.S. society--which I could only see then as racist and death-loving--consigned to the flames. That's where I suppose I could see myself in Elric. I felt like the society I was living in was, frankly, poisonous, that we were arrogant in our dealings with other nations, out of touch with the needs of the rest of the world and insulated from them in unhealthy ways by our wealth and power. Hell, I still feel that way.
But as a teenager, I was also drawn to the feelings of ambivalence that Elric experiences in this passage. Despite his deep hatred for many of the things Imrryr represents, Elric clearly recognizes the loss that accompanies its passing.
I am sure that during the 1960s this sort of thing was much stronger for British youth of a clearly or even vaguely leftist orientation. After all, Britain had an empire that once spanned the globe, but even if you were a middle class educated Marxist who loathed the whole rotten apple you couldn't help but admire some of its achievements. So at least my lefty British friends say.
Anyway, enough biographical sharing for me. This was what made the stories so intriguing to me and it is probably this element that I would want to mine for a Sorcerer game.
Sorry to go on at such length.
Eric
Eric, that's great stuff. I buy it in full.
I also like to consider the Elric stories in the context of glam rock. There's a hell of a lot of Iggy, Bowie, and Glitter in Elric, in terms of appearance and all kinds of world-weary, arty thematic stuff. You can see it in lots of Moorcock stuff like The Time of the Hawklords (heavily influenced by MM's own tenure as a musician) and most especially in the Jerry Cornelius stories.
Best,
Ron
Ron,
I totally see that. Did I mention that Bowie, Iggy, Transformer-era Lou Reed, and, of course, VU were my favorite perormers during this time? I don't think I was conscious of the convergence of these aesthetics at the time I read the stories, but I can see exactly what you mean in retrospect. One could have a grand old time reading them to the accompaniment of Bowie's "Hunky Dory," especially the song "Oh You Pretty Things."
Oh, and by the way, when I asked about why you didn't care for the Myshella material in Weird I was actually confusing her with Shaarilla, the wingless woman of Myyrrhn from the "While the Gods Laugh" section of the book. My bad.
Cheers,
Eric
I know that this thread is pretty much over, but I just stumbled on it and felt like responding, even if the response just ends up in the Dead God's book. I want to quibble with the "adolescent sex-power fantasy" reading of Elric that was proposed here. I'm not denying that you could read it that way, but do so is kind of too narrowly circumscribing the idea of power fantasies. Actually, to read "power fantasy" as "sex-power fantasy" is itself a kind of adolescent bias; that is, reading everything as being about sex.
Now granted that I haven't reread the stories in quite a few years, but I did read them all several hundred times as younger chap. So I may be forgetting some details, but I think that I have the general ideas pretty well to hand. And it seems to me that Elric is principally about wrestling with questions of power, rather than being a power fantasy" per se. This itself is great adolescent material. The whole question underlying the stories is not only "who has the power?" but also "will you use you power"? They are all about the ambivalence of power, in the way that adolescence is about the ambivalence of maturity. Let me just look a bit at what became _Elric of Melnibone_ in this light.
Elric is the ruler of the most powerful nation in the world. Yet that Empire is sadly sagging, attenuated by its own successes, increasingly powerless due to its previous power. Elric is a reflection of that: he is, himself, physically powerless and knows it and has attempted to make up for it with knowledge-as-power. But that knowledge-power has made him question the exercise of power thus rendering him powerless because of his power, just like Melnibone (ambivalent).
Yrkoon and the old guard urge him to use this power to reclaim the Empire's status, but he resists. He doesn't even want to fight the invading humans, but does so anyway. He gets booted off his ship and nearly dies. He saves himself by calling upon the power he has long resisted. Even this is an ambivalent act, since in the Elric stories "powerful" sorcerers don't seem to have any actual personal power, but rather the ability to barter/harness someone else's power. With Straasha's help he lives and returns to the Ruby Throne. Now sort of high on power, he acts as Yrkoon would have him do and is a badass. Except that he stops himself and doesn't kill Yrkoon immediately (ambivalent again).
Yrkoon rapes Cymoril (in the old sense of the word, but you Freudians do what you will) and Elric is forced to confront power again. To fight Yrkoon he must call upon greater power and summons Arioch, binding himself to the Lord of the Seven Darks. This is a great bit because of the power-ambivalence: Elric demonstrates himself to be the most powerful sorcerer of the age by doing this, but sacrifices power by accepting Arioch's patronage. Arioch here is essentially pure power; power without the constraints of morality or even logic. He is exactly what Elric most fears.
Elric gives chase after summoning the Ship That Sails On Land and Sea, which is another power struggle, this between Straasha and Grome. This detail could be seen as pure Color, but it isn't: it's part of the theme. Elric rescues Cymoril (a powerful, heroic thing to do) only to find that he is powerless to wake her up. Instead he can only chase after Yrkoon, which, for what it is worth, is a rather bathetic turn of events. In the Otherworld (I can't recall if it has a name, although the village there does), he is forced to slaughter a bunch of sad, beast-men, displaying a power to kill which he does not enjoy. This, of course, a repeated throughout he series and is one of the ways in which he really is an anti-Conan.
And so we get to the final confrontation in the very womb-like cave of the swords. Elric enters to find Yrkoon holding Mournblade and exalting in the feeling of power. Elric has a choice and he makes it: he literally grasps power and enjoys it. And yet (once more), he holds back at the last moment and doesn't kill Yrkoon. They return to Imryrr and Elric decided to leave the throne and wander the world as a (powerless) traveller and makes Yrkoon regent. That ending seemed so pleasant to me the first time I read it, but once you have read the rest of the stories, you realize that this is the Elric Saga in a nutshell: Elric has power, but doesn't want to use it, and that decision dooms everybody.
I'm not saying that sex doesn't figure into questions of power; of course it does. And there is some heavy sexual imagery in the series: the fight between Elric and Yrkoon in the pink, pulsing cave where each of them keeps shouting out the name of his "blade" as he thrusts. Okay; got it. But I am saying that limiting it to sex is missing the real point.
Incidentally, I don't think Theleb Ka'arna is pointless. He is pointed because he is Elric's shadow: he seems to be everything that Elric ought to be, a powerful, nasty, semi-human sorcerer who cavorts with demons. Elric rivalry forces him to pursue greater power; rather than being ambivalent, he is zealous. But the more he pursues power, the further it recedes from him and the more pathetic he becomes. He's an object lesson for Elric and his lack of strong personality seems appropriate to me.
But that's just my two cents.
Dr. Samsara (love the handle),
That's an interesting, nuanced discussion of the Elric tales. I would agree with much of what you say. I think, however, that you're missing the point of the earlier discussion, which was not so much "what, in the final analysis, are these stories about?", but "what do (certain) people read into them and get out of them?" Follow the way it emerged out of the discussion between Kirt, Ron, and I and I think you'll see that.
The sex-fantasy reading is there, and it's one reason (I would maintain) these books are relatively more popular with adolescent boys, or at least a certain type of adolescent boy, than are many other fantasy cycles. But for a reading to be there it doesn't have to be definitive; and even if your reading was entirely correct, I don't think it's that difficult to see the sex-fantasy reading as a natural oversimplification of it for many readers.
In other words, I don't think you're up against any reductive Freudians here. On the other hand, I think you've made a fine contribution to the discussion despite that, so no harm done.
Best,
Sean
Quote from: SeanPower issues in adolescence?
Probably some of you know what movie I'm talking about, which I can no longer recall, but the point I wanted to make about it here was just that part of what makes the Elric stories so attractive to so many young men (including many who never go back to fantasy again after they get laid for real) is that, well, Elric is this skinny nerd with a 6' long black penis covered with red runes named Stormbringer. He kicks ass on giant demons and on a high school quarterback named Yrkoon.
Don't mean to tilt at windmills. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying—it sounded to me as if you were saying young guys respond to the phallic-fantasy part (and implicitly miss the rest), rather than that the phallic fantasy is one part of what they respond to (and perhaps the part that lodges most clearly in mind). So I was just trying to say that IMHO adolescents respond to all the power issues; I sure as Chardos did.
And while your point about Elric as the superior power-fantasy in relation to Conan is excellently observed, I think the limits of that should be pointed to as well: Elric hates his magic penis. It would have been easy to make Elric the S&S Capt. Marvel: one day a skinny, brainy geek; the next day a big stud with the help of his magic thingy. That's a power-fantasy. But Elric both loves and loathes his power and that's why the stories aren't really so much power-fantasy as wrestling with power-issues. If you bear Capt. Marvel in mind, Elric starts off a kid with his peers taunting him to grow up and do something manly. He resists and resists. Whenever he asserts his mature status (power display), he immediately feels awful about it and tries to run away. That's why Tanelorn is so amazingly dull: trying to go back to childhood is really boring once you've been an adult. It sounds nice and peaceful, but it just doesn't work.
Now I'm not saying that I was consciously aware of any of this when I first read the stories at age 12 (inspired by the entry in _Deities & Demigods_. Anyone else encounter Moorcock that way? Jeff Dee drew cool pictures, although Moonglum was totally wrong). I'm not sure that I even got all the sexual stuff then either: Elric and his codependent-lover-sword enter the ecstasy of battle and Stormbringer starts moaning. But I think that I felt the implications. I wondered why Elric hated Stormbringer and yet I kind of got it too.
That reminds me (sheepishly) that I sort of forgot to include Stormbringer in that analysis. But really the power issues of a thing that sucks men's souls and gives their strength to you is maybe too obvious to go into.
Cheers all.
Quote from: The Fiendish Dr. Samsara
Elric hates his magic penis.
I think it's been worth following this thread just to get to this sentence.
Hehe. Actually, that is funnier than I intended it to be.
(off topic)
DannyK mentioned coining the word "Lucasization" for the addition of new canonical material that detracts from the existing body of work.
Well, Danny, I have taken the liberty of doing exactly that. But fear not, I gave the credit to you.
http://www.langmaker.com/db/eng_l_index.htm
NOTE - that I just submitted it yesterday and it usually takes at least a week, often much longer, for the single person responsible for updating the Langmaker site to add new entries, which I'm sure those behind the upkeep of the Forge will understand. So if you look and it's not there yet, give it a few days and check again.
If you click on the name of the submitter of any entry, it will take you to the By-Submitter-Name index, where you can see all the words that yours truly, as well as myriad others, have added to our wonderful language.
enjoi ^_^