Today in pulp... "It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white." This is how we are introduced to Michael Moorcock's anti-hero Elric of Melniboné.
Elric, also known as The Albino Emperor, Elric Kinslayer and the Pale Prince of Ruins is the 428th emperor of Melniboné, and the last. A sickly sorcerer sustained by enchanted herbs, he is a brooder and an outsider to his people.
Elric is the sole heir to the Ruby Throne of Melniboné, after his mother died in childbirth. Like Hamlet he is a prince who studied the world and questions his role within it. He is also a moral person, which makes his people think of him as weak.
Elric's story is both a 'voyage and return' narrative of his travels amongst humans and a 'killing the monster' tale of his struggles against his cousin Yyrkoon and indeed his own role as an Eternal Champion.
Elric is set in the Michael Moorcock multiverse: a series of different versions of Earth at various times. Law and Chaos battle in each one, and an Eternal Champion must strive - often unwillingly - to maintain the balance between them.
To aid his role as Eternal Champion - and to provide his sickly body with strength - Elric wields the runesword Stormbringer: a sentient weapon that feeds on souls. However he must feed it souls whenever he draws it - a curse that causes him bitter grief.
Elric first appeared in Science Fantasy magazine in 1961, featuring in five novelettes. Four novellas followed, with the last one "Doomed Lord's Passing" published in 1964.
A number of other Elric stories were published in the 1960s and 70s, filling in gaps between the novellas. Collections of the original stories were also published by DAW, Lancer Books, Mayflower and Quartet.
The next original novel, "Elric of Melniboné" was published in 1972 as a a prequel to the earlier stories explaining how he came to possess Stormbringer...
...but it was another 17 years before the next Elric novel "The Fortress Of The Pearl" was published in 1989. Moorcock published further original Elric novels in the early 2000s.
Many influences on Moorcock's Elric saga have been cited, including Poul Anderson and Fletcher Pratt. But in the end Elric is unique to Michael Moorcock and his fictional multiverse.
Elric is a hugely complex character; not quite a tragic hero, not quite an anti-hero. Moorcock's concise style in describing him in his world adds to the sense that an elegant but intense narrative is being offered to the reader.
The world of Elric is also rich and complex, but not unfamiliar. The saga has been described as anti-Tolkein, unredemptive and Norse inspired. There is something in all of those assertions.
There are many excellent Elric graphic novels and role-playing games, so you can enjoy the world of Melniboné and the struggle for (and against) the Ruby Throne however you wish.
I don't think you have to start reading Elric in canonical order to enjoy it: I started with The Weird Of The White Wolf and worked backwards. That's the joy of a well constructed saga, you understand what you have missed from what you are already reading.
That's it for my look at Elric of Melniboné today. I hope I've whetted your appetite to read (or re-read) Michael Moorcock's epic tale.
More stories another time...
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What with you being so busy and everythign you may not have visited your local library in a while.
So come with me on a virtual library tour, courtesy of stock photography, to see what we do for a living...
The enquiries desk is normally your first stop in a library, and this is where you will meet The Angry Librarian!
Why is she angry? Because people keep asking her stupid questions!
"Are you open?"
"Do you have a toilet?"
"That chair's wobbly!"
"Why isn't it available in audiobook?"
"Someone else is on the computer and that's not fair!"
Today in pulp I look at the original white stripes: the world of dazzle camoflague!
Traditional pattern camoflague had been used by the British Royal Navy to break up a ship's outline for some time. But in 1917 artist Norman Wilkinson presented the Admiralty with a different idea - camoflague that confused enemy rangefinders.
Dazzle - known in the US as Razzle Dazzle - would use high contrast colours in irregular patterns to make it difficult for enemy gunners to calculate a ship's range and bearing. This would (hopefully) lead to them taking up a poor firing position when they attacked.
Friendship is universal. So are human-eating alien lizards in sunglasses. At least that's what we thought in 1983, thanks to one blockbuster TV mini-series.
This is the story of V...
Writer Kenneth Johnson had a strong background in TV drama and sci-fi, having worked on The Incredible Hulk and The Six Million Dollar Man. In 1976 he created The Bionic Woman series.
But his next project would be more political...
Johnson was interested in Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here, a story about how fascism might take hold in America. He worked up a modern retelling of the story - called Storm Warning - and pitched the idea to NBC as a mini-series.
Abraham Van Helsing may be the most famous of the early occult detectives, but there were many others who appeared in Victorian and Edwardian literature.
Today I look back at some of the early supernatural sleuths who helped to define a genre that is still going strong today…
Occult detectives explore paranormal mysteries, sometimes by using spiritual skills. They could be normal detectives investigating the occult, occultists who use the dark arts to solve crime, or detectives with supernatural abilities such as clairvoyance.
Occult detectives began in the mid-19th century: Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) had set the template for detective fiction, whilst spiritualism and paranormal research also began to interest the public. Séances and Ouija boards were familiar tropes for Victorian readers.
In the shadowy corners of the shortwave spectrum lurk the Numbers Stations: strange radio broadcasts of mysterious blocks of numbers in creepy monotone voices!
It's actually an old form of spycraft which is still in use today. Let's take a listen...
A Numbers Station is a type of one-way voice link for sending information to spies in foreign countries. Operating on Short Wave radio bands they transmit a secret code of spoken numbers.
Use of Numbers Stations peaked during the Cold War, but some are still operating today.
Numbers Stations are operated by various national intelligence agencies. At set times on a pre-arranged frequency a musical tone is played, followed by a speech synthesised voice reading out blocks of numbers. To most listeners it sounds both creepy and meaningless.
Today in pulp I revisit a mystery of the recent past: did ‘John Titor’ really travel back in time from 2038 to the year 2000 to warn us about an apocalyptic future? And why was he so keen on getting his hands on a 1975 IBM 5100 computer?
Let’s find out...
In 1998, US radio talk-show host Art Bell read out a fax from a man claiming to be from the future. Two years later the same man, calling himself Time_Traveler_0, left similar messages on the Time Travel Instutute’s internet forum.
They told a strange tale…
“Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975.”
For the next two years Time_Traveler_0, now calling himself John Titor, would leave many similar messages on internet forums.