Elric Of Melniboné - The Elric Saga Volume 1

Rune Messiah

Elric Of Melniboné
The Elric Saga Volume 1
by Michael Moorcock
Saga Press
ISBN: 9781534445680

And so I revisit one of my teenage writing heroes, the incomparable Michael Moorcock, in a series of hefty tomes published by Saga Press which, while not claiming to cover absolutely every story that Moorcock has included his Elric character in (that way lies madness), does its best to assemble, in chronological order, the bulk of the stories, revised at various points by Moorcock to get a greater continuity, since the first of the short stories, The Dreaming City was published in Science Fantasy Issue 47 in 1961. Now there’s a reader’s guide to the series in the back of the book which goes over the difficulty of attempting such a task, where the stories were written haphazardly and revisited, starting in this one with the prequel novel from which this first collection takes its title (which would, I concur, definitely be the place to start).

So, and keeping in mind some of these collected ‘novels’ are made from different short stories originally published in a different order and retitled, this collection collects together Elric Of Melniboné, The Fortress And The Pearl, The Sailor On The Seas Of Fate and The Weird Of The White Wolf.

Now Elric was one of my favourite of Moorcock’s characters (along with Jerry Cornelius and Dorian Hawkmoon) but, of course (and this is where it gets extra complicated), Moorcock created a whole multiverse out of his stories and many, perhaps even all, of his characters are manifestations of each other in their specific plane of existence. So for example Elric, Erekosé, Dorian Hawkmoon and Corum Jhaelen Irsei are all manifestations, in different ‘phase shifts’, of Moorcock’s The Eternal Champion... but if they are then, so too are Jerry Cornelius, Jherek Carnelian and a whole bunch of others. Although nearly all of these characters are, puzzlingly, mostly out of print in this country for some reason or another at time of writing... which is a poor showing for one of the country’s greatest sci-fi and fantasy writers.

All this kind of makes it hard to recommend this series of Elric collections as a jumping on point but, I do have to really because I’ve never found myself able to find a true reading order through this author’s works. Let’s just say then, that the more of Moorcock’s characters you are familiar with, the more rich will be your appreciation of the novels when little overlaps or references to other realms of existence are made manifest in each heroes saga (as they do here). For example, one might want to make oneself familiar with the first Jerry Cornelius novel, The Final Programme (my review of the excellent movie adaptation of the same name can be found here) before reading The Singing Citadel, which is collected here in the final book in this collection, as the first story in The Weird Of The White Wolf. Or maybe not... since each is as much a different reflection of the other, it has to be said.

Anyway, forget all that and just enjoy a great hero written as a counterpart (and possibly antidote) to the much loved Conan stories of Robert E. Howard. Elric is an albino king of the dreaming city known as Imryyr, who questions the cruelty of his people and, due to some personal tragedy (and a really stupid decision on his part when he takes back the throne from his evil cousin), wanders the world seeking out the ways of the rest of the cultures which make up The Young Kingdoms (forged of chaos, as we find in what is slotted in as a kind of opening flashback in The Weird Of The White Wolf, in this particular tome).

When he is king of his land and being one of the last few beings who is a master of the sorcerous arts, he keeps his strength up through a regular intake of herbs but, due to the rocky path towards his ultimate destiny, he has now at his side, the black rune sword Stormbringer (brother of similar sword Mournblade), a weapon forged in chaos and which steals the souls of all it slays and feeds the energy back into the wielder, in this case Elric. However, the blade seems to have it’s own consciousness and, singing its way through battle, will also guide and control Elric’s hand, sometimes deliberately slaying people that Elric does not intend to kill... such as a very important character in Elric’s life (just as Jerry Cornelius similarly, accidentally killed, with his needle gun, the multidimensional manifestation of that character, his own sister, in The Final Programme... Catherine Cornelius, as played by Sarah Douglas in the movie version).

As all Moorcock’s fantasy fiction, the book is full of colourful scenarios, steeped in surrealism and laced with a bleak and ironic melancholy which are the chief traits of the doom laden Elric himself. In the final tome collected here, he meets his more regular companion Moonglum, after he abandons another friend and ally after he has more or less wiped Imrryr and its inhabitant from the face of the Earth, when the dregs of the survivors wake their dragons and slaughter the crews of the ships of his allies.

And Moorcock’s often quotable prose is irresistible and quite often addictive as you read through Elric’s adventures, with such marvellous lines as, “And there are times, Prince Elric, I’ll admit, when a decent piece of steel has a certain advantage over a neatly turned phrase!” And, of course, full of interesting ideas... Elric’s cruel race has a choir of slaves surgically altered so that each can sing only one note perfectly, for example.

Plus the odd surprise such as, when attacked by a hideous demon thing, it’s one sorrowful utterance of “Frank.”, which means nothing to Elric, is a signal to readers that this was a multiversal manifestation of Jerry Cornelius’ brother Frank, in this plane. Another welcome surprise being in the first story in the collected tome, The Sailor On The Seas Of Fate, when Elric, Erekosë, Hawkmoon and Corum team up (quite literally in one sequence, where their bodies metamorphosise into a combined, black demonic entity) to stop the multiverse from ending. And of course, the wrangling of that encounter... since this is the second time Elric and Corum have met from Corum’s point of view but, not from Elric’s, who counts this as his first meeting (not that he can remember this adventure when it’s done, anyway)... is as deftly handled as it could be.

So for all it’s complexities and references, I would still heartily recommend the Saga Press edition of Elric Of Melniboné - The Elric Saga Volume 1 as a great place to start off and familiarise yourself with Moorcock’s mercurial multiverse, for sure. I now have four books of their ‘trilogy’ by Saga Press (see how complicated it’s become again already, four out of three, due to Moorcock releasing a new Elric tome just last year) and so I will report back on those when I get back to them.