Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [134]
“And I must seek knowledge in the lands I find marked upon my map,” said Elric. “I must learn and I must carry what I learn back to Melniboné at the end of a year. I wish that Cymoril had accompanied me, but I understand her reluctance.”
“You will go back?” Rackhir said. “When a year is over?”
“She will draw me back!” Elric laughed. “My only fear is that I will weaken and return before my quest is finished.”
“I should like to come with you,” said Rackhir, “for I have traveled in most lands and would be as good a guide as I was in the netherworld. But I am sworn to find Tanelorn, for all I know it does not really exist.”
“I hope that you find it, Warrior Priest of Phum,” said Elric.
“I shall never be that again,” said Rackhir. Then his eyes widened a little. “Why, look—your ship!”
And Elric looked and saw the ship that had once been called The Ship Which Sails Over Land and Sea, and he saw that slowly it was sinking. King Straasha was taking it back.
“The elementals are friends, at least,” he said. “But I fear their power wanes as the power of Melniboné wanes. For all that we of the Dragon Isle are considered evil by the folk of the Young Kingdoms, we share much in common with the spirits of air, earth, fire and water.”
Rackhir said, as the masts of the ship disappeared beneath the waves: “I envy you those friends, Elric. You may trust them.”
“Aye.”
Rackhir looked at the runesword hanging on Elric’s hip. “But you would be wise to trust nothing else,” he added.
Elric laughed. “Fear not for me, Rackhir, for I am my own master—for a year at least. And I am master of this sword now!”
The sword seemed to stir at his side and he took firm hold of its grip and slapped Rackhir on the back and he laughed and shook his white hair so that it drifted in the air and he lifted his strange, red eyes to the sky and he said:
“I shall be a new man when I return to Melniboné.”
ASPECTS OF FANTASY (1)
This is the first of a series of fascinating and absorbing articles in which Michael Moorcock will diagnose the various aspects of many famous writers and their works as applied to the fantasy field as a whole.
—John Carnell, SCIENCE FANTASY No. 61, October 1963
ASPECTS OF FANTASY
(1963)
1. INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS “FANTASY fiction”? It is, of course, a broad field but, on the other hand, fairly easy to define. It is fiction which deals in the fantastic, in what is outside of ordinary human experience.
It contains many sub-categories of which science fiction is one; it is written on many levels by writers of varying ability who use it for a great number of purposes. Today it ranges from the ill-written ghouloperas published in poor-quality paperbacks to the well-written extravaganzas of Peake, Tolkien and others.
A more interesting question, and one which I hope partially to answer in these articles, is why is fantasy? Why is it written, why is it read, what is its appeal?
H. P. Lovecraft, that well-known describer of the indescribable, says in his book Marginalia:
Modern Science has, in the end, proved an enemy to art and pleasure; for by revealing to us the whole sordid and prosaic basis of our thoughts, motives, and acts, it has stripped the world of glamour, wonder, and all those illusions of heroism, nobility, and sacrifice which used to sound so impressive when romantically treated. Indeed, it is not too much to say that psychological discovery, and chemical, physical, and psychological research have largely destroyed the element of emotion among informed and sophisticated people by resolving it into its component parts . . .
That I disagree with this judgment will be obvious, for I believe that dissection of the fantasy story into its component parts does not detract from the story but rather adds a new dimension to it—a dimension which, to me, is far more interesting