Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

falls in love with Amelia Underwood, a time-traveller from 1896 who is briefly stranded at the End of
Time. The story moves backwards and forwards between the End of Time and Victorian England. H.G.
Wells appears (Jherek borrows his time machine) as do other famous real and surreal people.
The novels combine the comedy of manners with science fiction melodrama and much of the wit comes
from this odd juxtaposition. Exaggerated images and changeable landscapes contrast with the proper
love interest between Amelia Underwood and Jherek. He is a child (the decadent society at the End of
Time seems never to have grown up) and he has a child's delight in novelty. Like a child he is easily bored
and his enthusiasms wane. Amelia is the soul of rectitude, very conscious of her obligations and duty;
concepts that are all but meaningless to Jherek. The misunderstandings these contrasts generate are
central to the plot. Moorcock takes a huge delight in exploring them and the pace never flags.
Graham Greene considered his books to be made up of "novels" and "entertainments" and made a sharp
and clear distinction between them (though he made no judgement as to the worth of either). Some of
the same division can be seen in Michael Moorcock's work. If the Pyat novels are Moorcock's
masterpiece novels, the End of Time stories are his masterpiece entertainments (which, of course, does
not detract from their worth as novels).
Perhaps Moorcock's silliest book was a novel he never actually wrote. The Time of the Hawklords
was published as by Michael Moorcock and Michael Butterworth. Moorcock supplied only the general idea
and Butterworth wrote the book. As I recall (it is many years since I read it, and I have no wish to reread
it), someone has planted a device that sings Julie Andrews songs in the centre of the earth.
Because the songs are beaming out all the time, the Earth's population is slowly going mad. Only the
rock music of Hawkwind can counteract the deadly effect of the Julie Andrews songs, and guns are built
with miniature Hawkwind tapes in them. Everybody carries these guns and whenever they suspect
someone is being overcome by Julie Andrews, they draw their gun and blast the person with heavy metal
rock. Do you wonder I don't want to read it again? It was originally announced as the first of a trilogy. A
second book was published (Queen of Deliria by Michael Butterworth) but no third novel ever
appeared, and I am not surprised.
What characterises Michael Moorcock? There is no easy answer because he is no easy writer. Despite
his often expressed disdain for the medium, he continues to write SF and Fantasy. And yet his major
works are moving further and further away from the genre. The Pyat novels and singletons such as
Mother London are only peripherally connected with the field. (Despite this they all contain elements of
fantasy; though perhaps it might better be called ‘magic realism' in the Gabriel García Márquez mould).
He is a commercial writer (the early years of fast, voluminous production taught him his craft) and he
makes a good living at it. But there is more to him than this. He is very aware of the art of his craft (if I
may be permitted such an inelegant phrase) and it is important to him, as witnessed by his constant
experimentation with form and content, with text and subtext. Every new book is a new experience with
something new to say:
And so each venture is a new beginning,
A raid on the inarticulate ...
T. S. Eliot Four Quartets
To me this is the major attraction of Michael Moorcock -- he is a versatile writer and every new book is a
new exploration. He never stands still.
In the end, though, you can always depend on Michael Moorcock for a sense of humour and a good
joke. He once edited a collection of stories by authors such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling
etc. It was called, if memory serves, Before Armageddon. Moorcock once donated a copy of this
book to an auction at a British SF convention. It was quite a rare book. It was autographed -- by Jules
Verne, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling...