Clovis Marca and the Beks?

[David Mosley]

In resarching the forthcoming Moorcockopedia entry on The Shores of Death I've come across the following exchange from the old Q&A:

Mike, Much as I enjoy your work, I find the recent trend of changing character names in the reissues a little jarring. Old favourite characters like Shakey Mo Collier, Clovis Marca, Alan Powys, Renark Asquiol, etc, seem odd when they suddenly turn into Beks. Is this an artistic choice, or merely a marketing one? Thanks, Mike Davey

I don't make many marketing choices! Since the characters are being used often to link one theme with another I've been trying to introduce a bit more coherence into the overall sequence, which means sometimes taking a prototype character and turning them into a more developed version. I'm sorry it upsets you, but I was trying to produce a series for readers who might be reading for the first time and these changes, in consultation with John Davey, seemed a good idea. I didn't think it was far removed from my usual methods, anyway! All best, Mike

[link expired]

I'm guessing that Clovis Marca was 'Bek-tified' for the Roads Between the Worlds omnibus from White Wolf, which never appeared in the UK? If so, could someone tell me by what name Clovis Marca is known in that edition please? Were any other revisions made to The Shores of Death (not counting the complete re-write from the original NW serialisation) that we know of?

Cheers,
David

[Michael Moorcock]

I don't think any other revisions were made and the UK Penguin edition, as far as I recall, kept the Clovis Marca name. I don't have any copies, of course, to hand here.

[David Mosley]

Thanks Mike. I've established from a review on Amazon.com that Marca is renamed 'Clovis Becker' in the White Wolf edition, so that clears up that question.

Elsewhere you've said that one of the characters in the story was based on Mervyn Peake - or a version of him at least. Would I be correct in thinking that that would the artist Alodios? If so, do you recall what it was about Peake that led you to cast him in that way? (Or should we just wait for the Peake memoir to come out? :)).

Cheers,
David

[Marca]

There are interesting variations between the revised UK and US editions of the EC series. In A Dead Singer, for example, in the Earl Aubec volume Shakey Mo is still Shakey Mo in the UK but is Mo Beck in the White Wolf edition.

It may be a bit disconcerting for some of us older readers but newer ones wouldn't know any different. Has this kind of revision has been done by any other authors?

[Talisant]

Parallaxadaisical in the best sense of the non-word. First time I read the re-do on...Jade Man's Eyes I think, it gave me a plesant attack of vertigo.

Cabell revised a quite a bit, but nothing in the nature of or to the degree that Mr. M does. Can't lay my hand on it just now, but there is a book tracing the changes to The Cream of the Jest that is pretty interesting.

[David Mosley]

A M'pedia entry on The Shores of Death (the novel version at any rate) is now online at http://www.multiverse.org/modules.ph...content&tid=42, where it also joins the first entry in the 'Stormbringer' novellas: Dead God's Homecoming (http://www.multiverse.org/modules.ph...content&tid=41).

(As always, errors, omissions and corrections to the usual address please. :))

Hope to have an entry for the New Worlds version of Shores up before too long, as well as the next Elric novella, Black Sword's Brothers, although I need to prepare my 'MRG' report on Shores first of course (check out Tanelorn in a short while for that hopefully). I half-expect to be throughly sick of The Shores of Death by the time I'm through with all this writing. :P

[Shadowheart]

It may be a bit disconcerting for some of us older readers but newer ones wouldn't know any different.

New readers who get the new versions, at least. I'm quite a new reader, but the name change came as a surprise to me as well. I've got some of the White Wolf omnibuses, but tried to spare them in favour of the second hand paperbacks my bookstore raids turn up. Ah well, the definitive Moorcock reading experience is a hopeless quest anyway.

[Marca]

Ah well, the definitive Moorcock reading experience is a hopeless quest anyway.

I have an old Interlinear Bible that lists the variations between the Authorized and Revised versions on separate lines in the text, even down to the slightest changes in punctuation, and this was years before the dawn of Information Technology. In the 21st Century, is it too much to hope that one day we might have an Interlinear Moorcock, listing textual variations? :)

[Shadowheart]

I suppose there's a chance of technology advancing to such a point (though I'm not sure the human mind will be able to encompass it)... however, I'm sure that when we have one Interlinear Moorcock we'll inevitable get multiple versions of it, published under alternate titles and collected in a number of different series each with a subtly different recommended reading order.

[Michael Moorcock]

I think Balzac did a fair bit of revising. I'm not sure if it's worth tracking down these variants most of the time, though. Generally, all I've done is change names to fit into the 'family' which I really only started writing about in the late 70s/early 80s.