Michael John Moorcock was born on 18 December 1939 and is an English writer, particularly of science fiction and fantasy, who has published a number of well-received literary novels as well as comic thrillers, graphic novels and non-fiction.
44 Facts About Michael Moorcock
2.
Michael Moorcock has worked as an editor and is a successful musician.
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Michael Moorcock is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melnibone, which were a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and '70s.
4.
Michael Moorcock was born in London in December 1939, and the landscape of London, particularly the area of Notting Hill Gate and Ladbroke Grove, is an important influence in some of his fiction.
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Michael Moorcock has mentioned The Mastermind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St Nicholas by Edwin Lester Arnold as the first three non-juvenile books that he read before beginning primary school.
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Michael Moorcock is the former husband of Jill Riches, who later married Robert Calvert.
7.
Michael Moorcock illustrated some of Moorcock's books, including covers, among them the dustjacket for the first edition of Gloriana.
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Michael Moorcock was an early member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of eight heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s and led by Lin Carter, selected by fantasy credentials alone.
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Michael Moorcock is the subject of four book-length works, a monograph and an interview, by Colin Greenland.
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Michael Moorcock followed this with Michael Moorcock: Death is No Obstacle, a book-length interview about technique, in 1992.
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Michael Moorcock spends half of the year in Texas, the other half in Paris.
12.
Besides using fiction to explore his politics, Michael Moorcock engages in non-violent political activism.
13.
Michael Moorcock began writing while he was still at school, contributing to a magazine he entitled Outlaw's Own from 1950 on.
14.
In 1957, at the age of 17, Michael Moorcock became editor of Tarzan Adventures, which had published at least a dozen of his own "Sojan the Swordsman" stories during that year and the next.
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Michael Moorcock makes much use of the initials "JC"; these are the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula Award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ.
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Michael Moorcock talks about much of his writing in Death Is No Obstacle with Colin Greenland, which is a book-length transcription of interviews with Michael Moorcock about the techniques in his writing.
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In 2008 Michael Moorcock was named by a critics' panel in The Times as one of the fifty best British novelists since 1945.
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Since the 1980s, Michael Moorcock has written longer, more literary "mainstream" novels, such as Mother London and Byzantium Endures, but he continued to revisit characters from his earlier works, such as Elric.
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Michael Moorcock's best-selling works have been the "Elric of Melnibone" stories.
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Michael Moorcock refused to resign the options, usually when they seemed to drift too far off course.
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Michael Moorcock criticised works such as The Lord of the Rings for their "Merry England" point of view, equating Tolkien's novel to Winnie-the-Pooh in his essay Epic Pooh.
22.
Michael Moorcock has allowed other writers to create stories in his fictional Jerry Cornelius universe.
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Michael Moorcock is a friend and fan of comic book writer Alan Moore and allowed Moore the use of his own character, Michael Kane of Old Mars, mentioned in Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II.
24.
Michael Moorcock abandoned a memoir about his friends Mervyn Peake and Maeve Gilmore because he felt it was too personal.
25.
Michael Moorcock wrote prose and verse for The Sunday Books first publication in French to accompany a set of unpublished Peake drawings.
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In November 2009, Michael Moorcock announced that he would be writing a Doctor Who novel for BBC Books in 2010, one of the few occasions when he has written stories set in other people's "shared universes".
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In 2016 Michael Moorcock published the first novel in what he terms a literary experiment blending memoir and fantasy, The Whispering Swarm.
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The first of an audiobook series of unabridged Elric novels, with new work read by Michael Moorcock, began appearing from AudioRealms; however, Audio Realms is no longer in business.
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Michael Moorcock's story had dealt with releasing the unconscious and although referencing William Burroughs had no specific illicit drug meaning.
30.
In 2019, Michael Moorcock announced the completion of the album, and it was released 11 October 2019, on Cleopatra Records.
31.
Michael Moorcock collaborated with the British rock band Hawkwind on many occasions: the Hawkwind track "The Black Corridor", for example, included verbatim quotes from Michael Moorcock's novel of the same name, and he worked with the band on their album Warrior on the Edge of Time, for which he earned a gold disc.
32.
Michael Moorcock wrote the lyrics to "Sonic Attack", a Sci-Fi satire of the public information broadcast, that was part of Hawkwind's Space Ritual set.
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Michael Moorcock appeared on stage with the band on many occasions, including the Black Sword tour.
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Michael Moorcock's contributions were removed from the original release of the Live Chronicles album, recorded on this tour, for legal reasons, but have subsequently appeared on some double-CD versions.
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Michael Moorcock can be seen performing on the DVD version of Chronicle of the Black Sword.
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Michael Moorcock collaborated with former Hawkwind frontman and resident poet, Robert Calvert, on Calvert's albums Lucky Leif and the Longships and Hype, playing guitar and banjo and singing background vocals with his wife Linda.
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Michael Moorcock contributed vocals and harmonica to the Spirits Burning albums An Alien Heat and The Hollow Lands.
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Michael Moorcock plays harmonica on three songs on the 2021 Spirits Burning album Evolution Ritual.
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Michael Moorcock appeared on five tracks on the Spirits Burning CD Alien Injection, released in 2008.
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Michael Moorcock is credited with singing lead vocals and playing glockenspiel, guitar and mandolin.
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Michael Moorcock is currently writing songs for Alan Davey and other old-time collaborators.
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Michael Moorcock has received great recognition for his career contributions as well as for particular works.
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Michael Moorcock is a Parisian member of the London College of Pataphysicians.
44.
Michael Moorcock was "Co-Guest of Honor" at the 1976 World Fantasy Convention in New York City and one Guest of Honor at the 1997 55th World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio, Texas.