Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [11]
Over the years, in Elric’s translations into French, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Albanian, Serbian, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Russian and so on, many variant maps have been published, and I thought it would be of some interest to readers of this edition if I included the occasional map of Elric’s world, beginning with Cawthorn’s first-ever map. As Elric explored more and more of the world of the Young Kingdoms, Jim was able to add an increasing amount of information. We intend to publish further maps in subsequent volumes.
To give something of the flavour of the time in which the stories were published, we have reprinted the introductory material Carnell attached to them when they appeared for the first time. There are no “early drafts,” I fear, since all the stories were first draft and the only carbon copies were given away to various charity auctions soon after they were published. I have no idea who owns these manuscripts. In a subsequent volume, however, I shall be publishing Elric’s first appearance in the guise of Jerry Cornelius.
It is still a little strange for me to accept that Elric has become part of the pantheon of epic fantasy. I suppose I hoped for something of the sort when I was sixteen or thereabouts, but my ambitions changed. Or so I thought. I have been extraordinarily lucky in doing pretty much all I ever dreamed of doing as a teenager. Indeed, various ambitions came together in the late 1980s when Hawkwind, the band with which I frequently performed, staged a rock version of The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer, put out as The Chronicle of the Black Sword, complete with a mime troupe enacting the story. I also had a great time collaborating with Eric Bloom on Blue Öyster Cult’s version of “Black Blade,” which I first performed in a different form with my own band the Deep Fix at Dingwalls in the late 1970s.
It seems Elric will, like the Eternal Champion he is, keep coming back in various incarnations, but this version is without doubt my favourite and probably the last I shall produce. I must thank Betsy Mitchell for her commitment to this project. And finally I thank my friend John Picacio who, by coincidence, began his professional illustrating career with my Behold the Man and followed it with a representation of Elric in Tales from the Texas Woods. If you are familiar with Elric, I trust you enjoy revisiting him in this present form. If you are new to him, I hope you find him good, rather dangerous company.
Michael Moorcock
Rue Amélie, Paris/Lost Pines, Texas
October/December 2006
AT THE BEGINNING
I’m inclined to forget how many contributions I made to fanzines between, say, 1955 and 1965. I continued to contribute to them while I was editor of Tarzan Adventures and even wrote the odd letter while I was editing New Worlds. One of the finest of these fanzines was AMRA, essentially a serious magazine for that handful of people then interested in fantasy fiction and specifically—thus the title—the work of Robert E. Howard. Run by an enthusiast, George Scithers, who is still involved in enthusiast publishing (most recently Weird Tales) to this day. By the evidence of my approach, I must suppose that Fritz Leiber had not yet taken part in the correspondence and had therefore not come up with the terms “sword and sorcery” or “heroic fantasy.” Actually, I still prefer my own suggestion. I would not include the Peake books in that list anymore, and there are a few others I would mention if writing the piece today. It was probably written in the middle of 1960. I reprint it here because, with my “Aspects of Fantasy” essays, which became Wizardry and Wild Romance, it immediately precedes the Elric stories and gives some idea of the atmosphere in which “The Dreaming City” was published, at a time when supernatural