What do you think?
Rate this book
New Worlds Quarterly #4
In this, the fourth issue of the distinguished quarterly New Worlds, Michael Moorcock has brought together new works by some of the most exciting science fiction talents to be found on both sides of the Atlantic
- GenresScience Fiction
223 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 7, 1972
1 person is currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Michael Moorcock
1,209 books3,750 followersMichael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels.
Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.
During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.
Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.
During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 22, 2024
Can I recommend a scifi anthology with just a single story? "The Exploration of Space" by Barrington Bayley is the most transcendentally compelling concept-heavy metamodernist new wave SF I've ever encountered so far about the fundamentals of space discussed within the context of chess and opium. Yep, it's awesome, also because of these:
Motion is "under a more generalised concept he called 'transformation', a much larger class of phenomenon. Thus there were spaces where to go was to come, where to approach was to recede, where to say goodbye was to say hello."
Space shaped like a tree "split itself up into branches not all of which had any possible communication or influence with one another, even though they might all communicate with some common branch."
Time "can be revisited by retracing one's steps... *every past event is recoverable*, and hence *all possible histories communicate*."
Single vs extended causality "where every process or project reaches completion and no tendency is ever interrupted. As realising of amibitions is automatic 'any effort to succeed' is quite redundant... The struggle and drama of life consists not of trying to actualise intentions but of the struggle to form intentions in the first place."
Physical matter, "besides the innumerable spaces that form a receptacle for matter, there are also... where matter, instead of being atomic, is continuous and identical with the space it occupies, motion being accomplished by a process of compression and attenuation."
Centre of gravity wherein "singleness is what signifies a complete object in our world... a thing comes into its own when it is *one*... In the space next above us in the scale completeness attaches to the number *two*. Two-ness is ideal, and singleness is incomplete in the same way that a fraction or a part is incomplete in our world... other worlds model themselves on Three, Four, Five, and so on up the scale of integers to infinity... negative integers... every possible fraction, or irrational numbers, on imaginary numbers, and on groups, sets and series... The only true symmetrical, non-centred, relativistic space-time... is one giving equal weight to all numbers."
Motion is "under a more generalised concept he called 'transformation', a much larger class of phenomenon. Thus there were spaces where to go was to come, where to approach was to recede, where to say goodbye was to say hello."
Space shaped like a tree "split itself up into branches not all of which had any possible communication or influence with one another, even though they might all communicate with some common branch."
Time "can be revisited by retracing one's steps... *every past event is recoverable*, and hence *all possible histories communicate*."
Single vs extended causality "where every process or project reaches completion and no tendency is ever interrupted. As realising of amibitions is automatic 'any effort to succeed' is quite redundant... The struggle and drama of life consists not of trying to actualise intentions but of the struggle to form intentions in the first place."
Physical matter, "besides the innumerable spaces that form a receptacle for matter, there are also... where matter, instead of being atomic, is continuous and identical with the space it occupies, motion being accomplished by a process of compression and attenuation."
Centre of gravity wherein "singleness is what signifies a complete object in our world... a thing comes into its own when it is *one*... In the space next above us in the scale completeness attaches to the number *two*. Two-ness is ideal, and singleness is incomplete in the same way that a fraction or a part is incomplete in our world... other worlds model themselves on Three, Four, Five, and so on up the scale of integers to infinity... negative integers... every possible fraction, or irrational numbers, on imaginary numbers, and on groups, sets and series... The only true symmetrical, non-centred, relativistic space-time... is one giving equal weight to all numbers."
Displaying 1 of 1 review