urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:glauconreviews glaucon reviews the name kinda speaks for itself, no? glauconreviews 2007-12-12T08:12:47Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:glauconreviews:599 An Alien Heat - Michael Moorcock 2007-12-12T07:12:42Z 2007-12-12T08:12:47Z I would have liked to start this journal off with something a little newer, a little fancier, a little more recent.&nbsp; I'd also have preferred to have started it off with a first-time read rather than a re-read.&nbsp; Still, I guess a book set at the end of time is somehow appropriate to the apocalyptic times in which we live - ones which I feel fairly certain are not the End of History, but seem to me likely to give rise to at least the Lacuna of History before too much longer.<br /><br />Perhaps it's a good choice for another reason as well.<br /><br />I don't think I realized until today's re-read how formative an influence these End of Time books were on me.&nbsp; Truth be told, if I had to name the three works of fiction (yeah, two of them are technically "trilogies" but fuck that - they're effectively one big book) I read at an impressionable age (12-15) which had the greatest effect on the development of my personality, priorities, tastes, style, manner of speech, etc, I think it would be a pretty unequivocal decision:&nbsp; the End of Time books, Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus books (just the first three), and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.&nbsp; (They'd be closely, and equally unequivocally, followed by Crime and Punishment, the three volume collected plays of Jean Annouilh, and the Hitchhiker's Guide books.&nbsp; Is it any wonder I'm nuts?) <br /><br />A biker I used to know once said to me regarding Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:&nbsp; "yeah, there's a lot of bullshit in that book, but it sure taught me a lot about how to fix a motorcycle."<br /><br />Right.&nbsp; <br /><br />There may be...let's just say "is"...a lot of bullshit in each of my big three, but they had at least one good effect:&nbsp; they wiped away most of the&nbsp; ill effects of the small town homophobia, anti-drug hysteria, violence, and fear that I bathed in from about age 10 to 17.&nbsp; The End of Time books in particular featured all kinds of Wildean, perverted, puritanical, naive, cynical characters who faced adventures and trials and actually thought about them but made their decisions and assessments with a whimsical detached passion that I've tried as I hard as I could without tiring myself out too much to achieve most of the time.&nbsp; Best of all, they were (in words from a KMFDM line that jumps into my head a lot) eccentric and pretentious.&nbsp; But it wasn't the annoying kind of eccentric and pretentious that a lot of the other sci fi seems to evoke in adolescents.&nbsp; I didn't want to imitate these characters by throwing on a long scarf and offering people jelly babies, or by carrying a towel with me everywhere, or by joining the SCA.&nbsp; I *did* all of those things at one point or another in my teenage years, truth be told.&nbsp; Thank god these books came along and saved me from all of that.&nbsp; When I wanted to imitate *their* characters, I wanted to read poetry, make witticisms, throw really great parties with exquisitely clever themes, charm the pants (literally) off of girls, charm the pants (literally) off of boys, and design outrageous but entirely original outfits.&nbsp; They were Oscar Wilde with time travel, moping aliens, and power rings.&nbsp; <br /><br />Power rings, for fuck sake.&nbsp; And somehow they weren't dorky or campy.&nbsp; They were downright stylin' and that, friends, takes some doing.&nbsp; <br /><br />I find these books hold up in a way that much of Moorcock's other work fails to.&nbsp; Reading Elric or Hawkmoon or Corum leaves me reminded of why I liked them but fairly bored within a few pages.&nbsp; Yeah, I get it.&nbsp; You're an anti-hero and you're doomed.&nbsp; Bummer, man.&nbsp; At least you have that cool sword/jewel/hand.&nbsp; <br /><br />But this first of the three main End of Time books seems, if anything, more fresh, charming, and...well...relevant today than it did when I first read it 20-some years ago.&nbsp; And damn if it isn't funny as hell too...where "funny" means satiric, subtle, clever, and oh-so-very pretentious.<br /><br />&nbsp;