Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [0]
Title Page
Dedication
All the stories in The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer…
Foreword by Alan Moore
Introduction
AT THE BEGINNING
Putting a Tag on It
THE STEALER OF SOULS
The Dreaming City
While the Gods Laugh
The Stealer of Souls
Kings in Darkness (with James Cawthorn)
The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams (originally titled The Flame Bringers)
MISSION TO ASNO!
ORIGINS
Early artwork associated with Elric’s first appearances in magazines and books
STORMBRINGER
Dead God’s Homecoming
Black Sword’s Brothers
Sad Giant’s Shield
Doomed Lord’s Passing
LETTERS AND MISCELLANY
Elric
The Secret Life of Elric of Melniboné
Final Judgement (by Alan Forrest)
The Zenith Letter (by Anthony Skene)
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Illustrator
Also by Michael Moorcock
Praise for Michael Moorcock and the Elric Series
Copyright
To the memory of E. J. Carnell,
who originally asked for these stories,
and for Betsy Mitchell and John Davey,
who created this edition
All the stories in The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer first appeared in Science Fantasy magazine from June 1961 to April 1964.
“Putting a Tag on It” first appeared in Amra, vol. 2, no. 15, edited by George Scithers, May 1961.
“Mission to Asno!” first appeared in Tarzan Adventures, vol. 7, no. 25, September 1957.
“Elric” first appeared in Niekas, no. 8, edited by Ed Meskys, March 1964.
“The Secret Life of Elric of Melniboné” first appeared in Camber, no. 14, edited by Alan Dodd, June 1964.
“Final Judgement” (under a different title), by Alan Forrest, first appeared in New Worlds, no. 147, February 1965.
“The Zenith Letter,” 1924, first appeared in Monsieur Zenith the Albino, by Anthony Skene, Savoy Books, 2001.
Cover artwork for Sexton Blake Library, 3rd series, no. 49, by Eric Parker, June 1943.
Cover artwork for Science Fantasy magazine by Brian Lewis, no. 47, June 1961, and James Cawthorn, nos. 55 and 63, October 1962 and February 1964.
“The Age of the Young Kingdoms” map, by James Cawthorn, 1962, first appeared in The Fantastic Swordsmen, edited by L. Sprague de Camp, Pyramid Books, 1967.
Stormbringer cover artwork by James Cawthorn, Herbert Jenkins, 1965.
James Cawthorn’s “The Adventures of Sojan” illustration first appeared in Tarzan Adventures, vol. 7, no. 25, September 1957.
FOREWORD
THE RETURN OF THE THIN WHITE DUKE
by Alan Moore
I remember Melniboné. Not the empire, obviously, but its aftermath, its debris: mangled scraps of silver filigree from brooch or breastplate, tatters of checked silk accumulating in the gutters of the Tottenham Court Road. Exquisite and depraved, Melnibonéan culture had been shattered by a grand catastrophe before recorded history began—probably some time during the mid-1940s—but its shards and relics and survivors were still evident in London’s tangled streets as late as 1968. You could still find reasonably priced bronze effigies of Arioch amongst the stalls on Portobello Road, and when I interviewed Dave Brock of Hawkwind for the English music paper Sounds in 1981 he showed me the black runesword fragment he’d been using as a plectrum since the band’s first album. Though the cruel and glorious civilization of Melniboné was by then vanished as if it had never been, its flavours and its atmospheres endured, a perfume lingering for decades in the basements and back alleys of the capital. Even the empire’s laid-off gods and demons were effectively absorbed into the ordinary British social structure; its Law Lords rapidly became a cornerstone of the judicial system while its Chaos Lords went, for the most part, into industry or government. Former Melnibonéan Lord of Chaos Sir Giles Pyaray, for instance, currently occupies a seat at the Department of Trade and Industry, while his company Pyaray Holdings has been recently awarded major contracts as a part of the ongoing reconstruction of Iraq.
Despite Melniboné’s pervasive influence, however, you will find few public figures ready to acknowledge their huge