question for the critic

[kard]

dear Mr. Moorcock,

because i still donآ´t own a copy of your Wizardry and Wild Romance, i ask here if you are familiar with the works of Paula Volsky and Christopher Stasheff (whose opus seems to be similar to yours since the 1960آ´s ).

cheers,
kard

[Ant]

W&WR mentions neither of them.

Apart from the general fantasy and planetary romance settings, I can't seen many similarities between Mike's and Stasheff's opera...

But Volsky seems to have a nicely hard edge to some of her fantasy... Sorcerer's Lady for instance... but not Relian Kru.

Ciao,
Ant

[Michael Moorcock]

I know the names but I'm not familiar with their work. As I've said before, with apologies to the good writers I'm sure are out there, I haven't really read very much heroic fantasy since I researched the first edition of Wizardry and Wild Romance and there I did my best, but couldn't possibly have read everything. Pretty much all the fantasy/science fantasy I HAVE read is in the books I've reviewed, mostly for The Guardian. I read and loved Iron Council by China Mieville, but that's about it lately. I'm also a fan of Steve Aylett's work, which is very hard to classify. One of the reasons I decided to stop writing fantasy novels is that I have a feeling there's so much good stuff out there I probably couldn't improve on the best that's now available.

[Ant]

China Miأ©ville seems to be one of Mike's favourite contemporary fantasists... apart from the comment above, look at his introduction to Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen.

Other writers he cites there include:

• Clark Ashton Smith *
  Jack Vance *
  M. John Harrison *
  Leigh Brackett
  William Hope Hodgson
  Lord Dunsany
  H. P. Lovecraft *
  Paul Di Fillipo
  Storm Constantine *
  Mary Gentle *
  Kim Newman *
  Mervyn Peake *
  David Britton
  Edward Whittenmore
  John Cowper Powys
  Rhys Hughes
  Andrew Sinclair (?)
  Robert Irwin *

... plus a couple of others who I (shamefully) couldn't identify from the references.

I have read - and enjoyed - books by half (*) of these! I'd partiularly recommend CAS, Vance, MJH, and Gentle.

Gr.,
Ant

[Anonymous]

to get this back to the active topics :D