Moorcock, Michael

(British, 1939– )

Moorcock is a hugely prolific and popular author of science fiction novels. He first came to prominence in the 1960s as the editor of the New Worlds magazine whose work was much influenced by the psychedelic drug-oriented culture of the period, and which published, among others, Brian Aldiss and J. G. Ballard. Moorcock wrote a number of books in which Jerry Cornelius is the anti-hero, a free-wheeling, often scatological character who lives a highly coloured life. This series began with The Final Programme in 1968. Moorcock's later work is slightly less over-heated but characterized by richly comic writing which satirizes contemporary society through time travel into versions of Britain in the past and future. He has often written about London in various decades and under various kinds of threat, most successfully in Mother London (1988).

Terry Pratchett, Ray Bradbury, Christopher Priest. See SCIENCE FICTION  LM