Jerry Cornelius: His Lives and His Times

by Michael Moorcock & ed. John Davey

Jerry Cornelius is an English assassin, physicist, rock star, and messiah to the Age of Science. Mainstay of the infamous and influential magazine NEW WORLDS and star of some of Moorcock's most celebrated novels, here are the short stories which made his name. Set in a shifting, fluid version of the counter-culture 1960s, the adventures of Jerry Cornelius were among the most prominent 'New Wave' SF books. Jerry Cornelius is one of the most remarkable and distinctive characters in Moorcock's work, and his time-travelling, trippy and bizarre adventures are must-reads.Contains a wide selection of Jerry Cornelius short stories, including THE NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE, THE ENTROPY CIRCUIT, THE DELHI DIVISION and many more.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy

416 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2014

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you were smart enough to have read the Quartet first, you'll find the general content of these stories VERY familiar. So familiar for me that I only enjoyed a couple of them. So familiar that I could probably write my own Jerry Cornelius short story now.

[Pavlo Tverdokhlib · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories about Jerry Cornelius. The stories range from the 60s to the 90s. If you liked "The Cornelius Quartet", this is more of the same. lots of absurdity, some philosophizing, some action, but a lot of the same seemingly disjointed stream of consciousness that made up the bulk of the Quartet, with a few flashes of "is there a big picture?"

Roughly, I'd divide the stories in 3 categories. The first, early stories have Jerry travel the world, doind things, driven by some strange logic. The second sub-set reads almost like a Saturday Morning Cartoon where Jerry Cornelius and the Time Centre Crew foil evil time-manipulators. Here, villains and heroes switch regularly, and lots of the cast of the Quartet makes appearances.

The third sub-set, set in roughly modern times, deals with some early 21st century themes and may get a bit preachy at points. But it also has the best story imho, "the Spencer Inheritance"

There are multiple points of interest here, including many generous nods to the Multiverse, a superb shout out to "Nomad of the Time Streams", as well as hints where Stross' ideas of computational demonology came from.

N.B.: I am aware that there aren't ALL of the Cornelius stories. I suspect the rest of them are packed away in the 3 volumes of "best short fiction" that also make up parts of the Collection, but which I have not purchased (yet)

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've heard a lot of good things about Moorcock, so this collection of stories about time-shifting counterculture assassin Jerry Cornelius was disappointing. The later stories - essentially opportunities for Moorcock to make a series of banal political points via embarrassingly bad satire - are mostly awful. The earlier, dreamlike stories spell things out less, and partly as a result they're more fun. They're a series of abstractly connected vignettes in which Cornelius travels the world, has nonsensical conversations with cartoonish characters, and occasionally kills someone for reasons that are never fully explained. I wouldn't necessarily recommend these earlier stories either, but Moorcock does certainly succeed in creating a distinctively dreamlike, acid-laced atmosphere, so that's something.

[7thTrooper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ja, jag måste erkänna mig besegrad. Det första jag kommer att tänka på är Ballard och Burroughs, närmare bestämt bådas experiment med icke-linjär kronologi och transgressiva teman i "The Atrocity Exhibition" och Nova-trilogin. Tyvärr har inte Moorcock, hur mycket jag än respekterar honom inte samma skicklighet med bildspråk eller tematiken för att det skall funka med dessa vinjetter. Men problemet ligger nog mera hos mig och min envishet med att läsa den pärm till pärm när det förmodligen tjänar mer till att ta dem en och en. För det finns bra grejer med, Moorcock är ju trots allt inte en klåpare. Den skall ges en chans till, när jag läst romanerna, men för stunden är jag less.