Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [36]
I started out doing nine-to-five jobs—messenger for a shipping company at fifteen, “junior consultant” (office boy) for a firm of management consultants, and editorial jobs (Tarzan Adventures, Sexton Blake Library, Current Topics). I’ve never regretted it. I’d hate to do it again.
Ever heard of writer’s block? How do you deal with it? Or do you ever have to?
I’ve heard of it. Never really had it. My answer is to go into a different character, scene, etc. If you determine your scheme first, you usually know what’s supposed to go where and when. Structure informs plot elements. Get the “music” right, too: what you hear in your mind. I tried to talk about some of this in Death Is No Obstacle, the interview I did with Colin Greenland in the 1990s.
Where the hell is the Multiverse? Are there entrances? What about exits?
It’s everywhere. We’re in it. No way in. No way out. No centre and near-infinite centres. Just points of entrance through the Second Ether. I first mentioned it in “The Sundered Worlds” in SF Adventures, 1962. Black Holes, but I didn’t call them that. I don’t like too much explication generally, but I’ve done quite a bit in my Doctor Who novel due out in October 2010.
Have you had run-ins with censorship? Or is SF too far under the literary radar? (I liked your comment about Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “Why bother to burn books when you can make them disappear?”)
I’ve been censored in America more than anywhere else. First by Avon in The Final Programme (1967). The worst was by Random House in Byzantium Endures when they slashed a lot of the antisemitism from a book that is primarily about the Nazi Holocaust. NAL got nervous and made me change Reagan to Eagan in their version of The Warlord of the Air. Their lawyers got on it and did what lawyers do. Of course Byzantium isn’t SF and I didn’t regard the Cornelius stuff as SF, either.
Oh, and there’s a version of The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius which was very thoroughly censored, along with another book whose title I forget, by the publisher. America has a free speech clause in her Constitution, unlike Britain, but Americans tend to self-censor in ways not generally found in France and England.
What do you do for fun? (besides write …)
Due to my wounded foot, in recent years I’ve talked, eaten, and gone to movies (I live part of the time in Paris, where movies are worth going to).
Now that my foot’s better, I’ll add “walking” (though these days I’m more a flaneur than a fifteen-mile-hiker). I usedto enjoy mountain climbing a lot and “fell-driving,” in which you take a big, preferably high-powered sedan up onto what are commonly considered hiking trails.
I am especially proud of being one of the only three people to drive England’s Pennine Way in an on-road (2WD) vehicle. The other two were in the same car with me—Jon Trux and Bob Calvert. Hikers used to get outraged and curse us as we roared past.
RE: Your time with the band Hawkwind: You once spoke of what a pleasure it was to walk out on stage and see a whole crowd of people eagerly awaiting your appearance. Do you ever have that experience as a writer? Or is it the opposite?
I do love the stage. I’d have been a performer if I hadn’t been a writer. I love reading and signing sessions too. I like people. A solo reading is harder work than playing in a band because in a band you have your mates to cover your fluffs.
But when I’m writing, I want the nearest thing to a monk’s cell as possible. A friend once phoned when I was in the middle of a paragraph and I picked up the phone because I thought it might be Linda. “Bugger off!” I told him. “That’s no way to speak to a friend,” he said. “You can’t be a friend,” I said. “A friend wouldn’t be phoning me while I’m working.”
I hate people when I’m writing.
There is a subtheme of incest that runs through the JC (Jerry Cornelius) books. He is in love with his sister (before he kills her), and the deliciously strange Jherek Carnelian is in a romantic relationship with his mom. What gives?
Nothing much. I never had any siblings. Wish