Rating: 
Summary: Chilling, timely
Review: Ballard and Moorcock between them seem to have an uncanny sense of the psychic future and the Cornelius Quartet, in the context of recent terrible events in New York and Washington, will offer a lot more clues to the reasons (if 'reason' is the appropriate word) than the sayings of Nostradamus.
These are deeply serious books, often couched in outrageous comedy, rather like Moorcock's later Colonel Pyat holocaust books and his recent King of the City. They bear considerable re-reading and are structured so that they can be dipped into. But they build with extraordinary relentlessness to a picture of the world in which international terrorism is virtually a way of life. These inspired the Watchman and Sandman stories of Moore and Gaiman and the whole cyberpunk movement, but in some ways they are more pointed and profound than anything which came after them.
The speech by 'General Westmoreland' -- a transcription of a real speech from the time of Vietnam -- in which the word 'Europe' is substituted throughout for 'Vietnam' has a terrible resemblance to some of less moderate language coming out of the American heartland.
Rating:
Summary: In my own top ten
Review: Funny, relentless, a real understanding of the international corporate world long before other people started talking about
it. Attacks on all kinds of imperialism, but not, REALLY NOT,
politically correct. Moorcock doesn't just offend conservative bigots. He gets orthodox liberals pretty mad sometimes, too.
These books don't date. Slowly, we're catching up with them,
though, and discovering what depth as well as range they have.
This is a great edition and I'm recommending it to everyone.
Imagine Lenny Bruce with the cool literary control of Evelyn Waugh and you'll get close to just how good Moorcock is.
Rating: 
Summary: Hours of boredom---Minutes of brilliance
Review: I bought this book due to the rave reviews I had seen. I was largely disappointed. At times the writing is brilliant, but most of the time Moorcock is just coasting. I'm not objecting to the largely idiotic plots, that is part of the charm in fact, it's just that they really don't ever go anywhere. I think this is the kind of book that probably seemed wonderful when you were 17 and stoned half the time. It does not, however, age very well. I kept coming back to these stories over a six month time span, but never could get more than mildly involved with them. I enjoy experimental writing and stretching the limits of credulity, but these stories just pick at the fringes.
Rating:
Summary: Stunningly good
Review: I found this one of the most amazing books I have ever read. After the first one, which is fairly straightforward though written with a sardonic humor, they get better and better, with more and more information adding to your first impression, rather like a good movie by Lynch, say. Don't expect anything like you've read before, even if you've read other Michael Moorcock titles. The first one deals with Jerry Cornelius's quest for revenge and the microfilm which contains the information to make the 'final program' of the title -- a computer program which will put the sum of human knowledge into a single, self-reproducing human being. The second one, A Cure for Cancer, changes pace and style and has direct reference to the Vietnam War, set in a London which has been taken over by American 'military advisors', who are occupying Europe. Here Jerry also visits America and meets Indians, black power activists and so on in his search for his sister and for the black box which enables people both to change identity and travel through the multiverse, through multiple versions of our own realities, all of which bear satirical or ironic reference to the world we know. By The English Assassin Jerry is in a coffin, living dead, being traded between his enemies and friends across a Europe embroiled in civil war which prefigures what has since happened in Yugoslavia, Russia and elsewhere. The style and the substance of the books matures and deepens as you go, but also the characters become more complex and interesting. We meet Bishop Beesley and his
daughter, Miss Brunner, the Thatcher-like character, Major Nye, the embodiment of idealistic imperialism and Colonel Pyat, whose story is continued in Moorcock holocaust series beginning with
Byzantium Endures. References to both American and European history, especially imperial expansion, abound, but there are some wonderfully funny and dramatic scenes. Here you can see how much has been borrowed for whole series of comic books, movies and other novels, including Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright series and Grant Morrison's Invisibles series, along with a lot of alternative history series, such as Harry Turtledove's. But Moorcock is also a literary writer, so there is always much more going on. By the time we get to the resolving volume The English Assassin, the books are making more and more sense on more and more levels.
This is probably the richest and most mature of the books and Moorcock manages a heart-rending Christmas resolution which has the same mixture of melancholy and merriment you find in the best Dickens. At last you start to understand why literary critics have likened Moorcock to a modern Dickens. Also, you realise that everything you have read up to this point can be interpreted in a TOTALLY different light. Don't expect anything like the regular sci-fi tale, however good. This is more like Pynchon or
DeLillo and can only be fully appreciated if you accept it as a literary novel, rather than the popular adventure novel it sometimes pretends to be! A genuine masterpiece and deserving of every praise it has received. I remain stunned and deeply
impressed. And I thought it wasn't possible to feel like this
from a novel any more. I'm now reading King of the City, which
is a weird kind of development from this. I'm looking forward to finding a copy of Mother London, which I'm told is even better!
Rating:
Summary: Stunningly good
Review: I found this one of the most amazing books I have ever read. After the first one, which is fairly straightforward though written with a sardonic humor, they get better and better, with more and more information adding to your first impression, rather like a good movie by Lynch, say. Don't expect anything like you've read before, even if you've read other Michael Moorcock titles. The first one deals with Jerry Cornelius's quest for revenge and the microfilm which contains the information to make the 'final program' of the title -- a computer program which will put the sum of human knowledge into a single, self-reproducing human being. The second one, A Cure for Cancer, changes pace and style and has direct reference to the Vietnam War, set in a London which has been taken over by American 'military advisors', who are occupying Europe. Here Jerry also visits America and meets Indians, black power activists and so on in his search for his sister and for the black box which enables people both to change identity and travel through the multiverse, through multiple versions of our own realities, all of which bear satirical or ironic reference to the world we know. By The English Assassin Jerry is in a coffin, living dead, being traded between his enemies and friends across a Europe embroiled in civil war which prefigures what has since happened in Yugoslavia, Russia and elsewhere. The style and the substance of the books matures and deepens as you go, but also the characters become more complex and interesting. We meet Bishop Beesley and his
daughter, Miss Brunner, the Thatcher-like character, Major Nye, the embodiment of idealistic imperialism and Colonel Pyat, whose story is continued in Moorcock holocaust series beginning with
Byzantium Endures. References to both American and European history, especially imperial expansion, abound, but there are some wonderfully funny and dramatic scenes. Here you can see how much has been borrowed for whole series of comic books, movies and other novels, including Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright series and Grant Morrison's Invisibles series, along with a lot of alternative history series, such as Harry Turtledove's. But Moorcock is also a literary writer, so there is always much more going on. By the time we get to the resolving volume The English Assassin, the books are making more and more sense on more and more levels.
This is probably the richest and most mature of the books and Moorcock manages a heart-rending Christmas resolution which has the same mixture of melancholy and merriment you find in the best Dickens. At last you start to understand why literary critics have likened Moorcock to a modern Dickens. Also, you realise that everything you have read up to this point can be interpreted in a TOTALLY different light. Don't expect anything like the regular sci-fi tale, however good. This is more like Pynchon or
DeLillo and can only be fully appreciated if you accept it as a literary novel, rather than the popular adventure novel it sometimes pretends to be! A genuine masterpiece and deserving of every praise it has received. I remain stunned and deeply
impressed. And I thought it wasn't possible to feel like this
from a novel any more. I'm now reading King of the City, which
is a weird kind of development from this. I'm looking forward to finding a copy of Mother London, which I'm told is even better!
Rating: 
Summary: Darned if I get the point here
Review: I've read Moorcock before and usually like his writing, but I'll be darned if I can 'get' Jerry Cornelius. Between stories, he seems to morph into a completely different person who happens to have the same name. The stories aren't great, although it very obvious that they were written in the 60s and defined a trippy lifestyle. Nah, pass. I read 3 of the 4 stories in this book already and was ready to give up by the end of the first. I was just too stubborn to stop...
Rating:
Summary: The Big Well
Review: It's amazing how many people have drunk from Moorcock's well. Cornelius created a revolution both in literary fiction and graphic novels. It was crucial in the way cyberpunk developed and it's obvious in the surreal adventures of Steve Aylett's
Beerlight denizens, which lacks Moorcock's substance but looks to rival him one day. This is a far more complex and profound series than anything that's followed it so far, though Ingo Schulze, the young German writer, looks as if he could give Moorcock a run for his money one day. This is muscular stuff! It is by no means conventional in its attitudes. Moorcock is a literary anarchist -- but a classicist, too, so these stories have complex, sturdy structure. He's like Borges writing contemporary Stevenson (his favorite British writer) but with an irony, a wild sense of fun, a genuine prescience which none can touch. Moorcock's wit, his cunning shaping of his narratives, is all his own. He's a master. Very satisfying
reading. Take the plunge. Let him lead you down twisting branches to places you've never thought of going to before and let him stimulate your mind, because this has a way of being utterly contemporary -- as in The Nature of the Catastrophe -- with the same issues being discussed, the same trouble spots under examination. Get aboard Moorcock's Mobeus Strip Express, the wildest roller coaster in the universe!
Rating:
Summary: Here we go again
Review: It's been argued that these books were an angry/funny response to the Vietnam War and certainly the second story A Cure For Cancer refers a lot to Vietnam. What is particularly interesting about it, however, is how it refers to the PRESENT
situation. The Administration's rationales for going into Vietnam and the military's rationales for staying there are here transported to Europe. And that's no doubt what makes the books so relevant to the immediate situation we have at the moment with Europe refusing America's rationales for going to war and the Administration reacting with an aggressive, bullying tone. The ways in which imperial adventuring are cloaked in the language of 'saving the natives' are clearly shown here. Moorcock takes the experience of British imperialism and equates it with American imperialism. He does it all, of course, with irony and black humor which gets more and more sophisticated as the series continue. The Final Program is the weakest of the books, though it parodies 60s slang rather than parroting it, and has subtleties rarely found in US fiction of the day. These books were of their time and half a century AHEAD of their time and the way in which Moorcock reveals the underbelly of his society as well as the
postures of his main character are brilliant. Unquestionably, some of the very best experimental and influential fiction of our time! Recommended at every level -- fun, funny, fantastic and literary. I would also recommend Moorcock's very latest Cornelius novella, Firing the Cathedral, with its introduction by Alan Moore.
Rating:
Summary: Here we go again
Review: It's been argued that these books were an angry/funny response to the Vietnam War and certainly the second story A Cure For Cancer refers a lot to Vietnam. What is particularly interesting about it, however, is how it refers to the PRESENT
situation. The Administration's rationales for going into Vietnam and the military's rationales for staying there are here transported to Europe. And that's no doubt what makes the books so relevant to the immediate situation we have at the moment with Europe refusing America's rationales for going to war and the Administration reacting with an aggressive, bullying tone. The ways in which imperial adventuring are cloaked in the language of 'saving the natives' are clearly shown here. Moorcock takes the experience of British imperialism and equates it with American imperialism. He does it all, of course, with irony and black humor which gets more and more sophisticated as the series continue. The Final Program is the weakest of the books, though it parodies 60s slang rather than parroting it, and has subtleties rarely found in US fiction of the day. These books were of their time and half a century AHEAD of their time and the way in which Moorcock reveals the underbelly of his society as well as the
postures of his main character are brilliant. Unquestionably, some of the very best experimental and influential fiction of our time! Recommended at every level -- fun, funny, fantastic and literary. I would also recommend Moorcock's very latest Cornelius novella, Firing the Cathedral, with its introduction by Alan Moore.
Rating:
Summary: This book bent my little head
Review: Its back in print! The original ever so fashionable Jerry Corenius is back. Having lost the paperback to the ravages of time, the elements, and avid reading I can't describe how tickled I am to have it back on my bookshelf. The same illustrations and newspaper clippings as well as the history of Cornelius are here. Everything you remembered.
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