Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

The story exemplified many things the New World's writers believed in. In an earlier era and written by
another writer, there would have been far too much made of the time machine. It would have been a
central plot element, the "science" to justify the "fiction". However in Moorcock's hands it becomes
almost unimportant, simply a McGuffin to get the hero from A. to B. (There is some rather obvious
symbolism which makes it clear that it is also a surrogate womb and when Glogaur arrives in the past he
is being re-born). The novel's real concerns are elsewhere and it is much stronger as a result of the
change in the traditional emphasis.
Moorcock seems to like unusual time machines -- he has used a bicycle, a speedboat, mysterious
tunnels, a hangman's noose, and many other outré devices as time machines. They all seem to work
quite nicely thank you.
Behold the Man was followed by a sequel called Breakfast in the Ruin which is an examination of
moral themes exemplified by a series of stories involving Karl Glogaur in agonising decisions in many
different troubled eras. He starts out an innocent and ends up completely corrupt. Interspersed with
these episodes are vignettes called What Would You Do which propose insoluble life and death
problems to the reader. The book is Moorcock's most depressing and the introduction reads:
Michael Moorcock died of lung cancer, aged 31, in Birmingham last year. The where-abouts of Karl
Glogaur are presently unknown.
Breakfast in the Ruins, NEL 1972
It is signed "James Colvin" (one of Moorcock's pseudonyms from the New World's days).
The book is a prototype for the Pyat novels, a guided tour of the bad times of the world from the Paris
commune through Auschwitz, Kenya and the Mau Mau, Vietnam, and on into the future. In it Moorcock
confronted his own mortality through Glogaur. For once he wasn't playing with it as he had in the
Cornelius books and the Elric fantasies. For once it was real.
One of the many games that Moorcock plays is to re-use characters and situations in many of his
novels. Characters are always popping up in other books (sometimes after they have died in an earlier
work) without explanation. Death is no obstacle, as Moorcock himself has remarked, and if the character
fits, the character will be used. Moorcock fans delight in following these twists and turns. All the Jerry
Cornelius novels have a party about half way through and the guest lists of these parties are
enormously funny to the well-read Moorcock aficionado. The guests are characters from his own (and
other people's) books, other SF writers, personal friends, and characters from books he hasn't written
yet.
Moorcock's fascination with his characters is demonstrated to great comedic effect in The Chinese
Agent. Arthur Hodgkiss (alias Jewellery Jules, master gem thief) is all set to steal the crown jewels.
However at the tower he is mistaken for the Chinese agent of the title and who is there to pick up the
secret plans of Operation Glass. British Intelligence put their top man on to the job -- suave, ladykilling
Jerry Cornell (yes, him again) and the book turns into total farce. It is the only Moorcock novel ever to
have made me laugh out loud. It feels somewhat dated now -- very sixties -- but still it overflows with
comic invention and wit and has in it a character even more outrageous and revolting than Jerry
Cornelius' mum -- Jerry Cornell's Uncle Edmond:
[Uncle Edmond] led him down a damp, evil-smelling passage and into his room. It was full of
newspaper-wrapped parcels that gave off a horrible stench. Nobody knew what Uncle Edmond kept
in the parcels. Nobody ever tried to find out.
Jerry reeled, wanting to lean against something, but was repelled by everything that offered itself as
a surface.
Uncle Edmond sat down in a battered rocking chair beside his bed. The bed seemed to shift slightly
as if it already had an occupant. Uncle Edmond stared at the bed and then picked up an old walking