Old Mars

One of the most prolific, popular, and controversial figures in modern letters, Michael Moorcock has been a major shaping force in the development of science fiction and fantasy, as both author and editor, for more than thirty years. As editor, Moorcock helped to usher in the “New Wave” revolution in SF in the middle 1960s by taking over the genteel but elderly and somewhat tired British SF magazine New Worlds and coaxing it into a bizarre new life. Moorcock transformed New Worlds into a fierce and daring outlaw publication that was at the very heart of the British New Wave movement, and Moorcock himself—for his role as chief creator of the either much admired or much loathed “Jerry Cornelius” stories, in addition to his roles as editor, polemicist, literary theorist, and mentor to most of the period’s most prominent writers—became one of the most controversial figures of that turbulent era. New Worlds died in the early seventies, after having been ringingly denounced in the Houses of Parliament and banned from distribution by the huge British bookstore and newsstand chain W H Smith, but Moorcock himself has never been out of public view for long. His series of “Elric” novels—elegant and elegantly perverse “Sword & Sorcery” at its most distinctive, and far too numerous to individually list here—are wildly popular, and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same time, Moorcock’s other work, both in and out of the genre, such as Gloriana, Behold the Man, An Alien Heat, The End of All Songs, and Mother London, have established him as one of the most respected and critically acclaimed writers of our day. He has won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Guardian Fiction Award. His other books include (among many others), the novels The War Hound and the World’s Pain, Byzantium Endures, The Laughter of Carthage, Jerusalem Commands, The Land Leviathan, and The Warlord of the Air, as well as the collection Lunching with the Antichrist, an autobiographical study, Letters from Hollywood, and a critical study of fantasy literature, Wizardry and Wild Romance. His most recent books include London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction and The Whispering Swarm, the first volume in the new Sanctuary of the White Friars series. After spending most of his life in London, Moorcock moved to a small town in Texas several years back, where he now lives and works.

Moorcock is no stranger to Mars, having visited there with a series of novels, written under the name of Edward P. Bradbury, that sent a swashbuckling Earthman to an ancient, habitable Mars: Warriors of Mars, Blades of Mars, and Barbarians of Mars. Now he takes us back to Mars in the company of a notorious outlaw on the run for his life, deadly pursuit hot on his heels, who blunders into a situation where he’s forced to race against time to save the entire planet from being destroyed, with only a few short hours left on the clock …