Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [0]
Winner of the Nebula and World Fantasy awards
August Derleth Fantasy Award
British Fantasy Award
Guardian Fiction Prize
Prix Utopiales
Bram Stoker Award
John W. Campbell Award
SFWA Grand Master
Member, Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
“Moorcock’s writing is top-notch.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Moorcock is a throwback to such outsized 19th-century novelistic talents as Dickens and Tolstoy.”
—Locus
“No one … is doing more to break down the artificial divisions that have grown up in novel writing—realism, surrealism, science fiction, historical fiction, social satire, the poetic novel—than Michael Moorcock.”
—Angus Wilson
“He is the master storyteller of our time.”
—Angela Carter, author of Nights at the Circus
PM PRESS OUTSPOKEN AUTHORS SERIES
1. The Left Left Behind
Terry Bisson
2. The Lucky Strike
Kim Stanley Robinson
3. The Underbelly
Gary Phillips
4. Mammoths of the Great Plains
Eleanor Arnason
5. Modem Times 2.0
Michael Moorcock
6. The Wild Girls
Ursula Le Guin
Michael Moorcock © 2011
This edition © 2011 PM Press
“My Londons” was originally published in a slightly different form in The Financial Times (London), June 26, 2009.
An earlier version of Modem Times appeared in the second volume of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, edited by George Mann. (Solaris, 2008)
Series Editor: Terry Bisson
Assistant Editor: Allan Kausch
ISBN: 978-1-60486-308-6
LCCN: 2010927786
PM Press
P.O. Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
PMPress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper.
Cover: John Yates/Stealworks.com
Inside design: Josh MacPhee/Justseeds.org
CONTENTS
Modem Times 2.0
“My Londons”
“Get the Music Right”
Outspoken Interview with Michael Moorcock
Bibliography
About the Author
MODEM TIMES 2.0
A JERRY CORNELIUS STORY
MINIATURE phones you carry in your pocket and that use satellite tracking technology to pinpoint your location to just a few centimeters; itty-bitty tags that supermarkets use to track their products; bus passes that simultaneously monitor your body temperature to find out how often you are having sex …
—James Harkin, New Statesman, January 15, 2007
Mother Goose: Youth, why despair?
The girl thou shalt obtain
This present shall her guardian’s sanction gain
The GOOSE appears
Nay doubt not, while she’s kindly used, she’ll lay
A golden egg on each succeeding day;
You served me—no reply—there lies your way.
—Harlequin and Mother Goose; or, The Golden Egg by Thos. Dibdin, 1st perf. Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, Dec. 29, 1806
LIVING OFF THE MARKET
1. A MYSTERY IN MOTLEY
GALKAYO, Somalia—Beyond clan rivalry and Islamic fervor, an entirely different motive is helping fuel the chaos in Somalia: profit. A whole class of opportunists—from squatter landlords to teenage gunmen for hire to vendors of out-of-date baby formula—have been feeding off the anarchy in Somalia for so long that they refuse to let go.
—New York Times, April 25, 2007
Madness has been the instigator of so much suffering and destruction in the world throughout the ages that it is vitally important to uncover its mechanisms.
—Publisher’s advertisement, Schizophrenia: The Bearded Lady Disease
THE SMELL OF PINE and blood and sweet mincemeat, cakes and pies and printing ink, a touch of ice in the air, a golden aura from shops and stalls. Apples and oranges; fresh fruit, chipolata sausages. “Come on, girls, get another turkey for a neighbour. Buy a ten-pounder, get another ten-pounder with it. Give me a fiver. Twenty-five pounds—give us a fiver, love. Come on, ladies, buy a pound and I’ll throw in another pound with it. Absolutely free.” Flash business as the hour comes round. No space in the cold room for all that meat. No cold room at all for that fruit and veg. The decorations and fancies have to be gone before the season changes. “Two boxes of crackers, love, look at these fancy paper plates. I’ll tell you what, I’ll throw in a tablecloth. Give us a quid for the lot. Give us a quid thank