My Experiences in the Third World War and Other Stories

by Michael Moorcock

The first part of Gollancz's definitive collection of Moorcock's short fiction, this selection features some of his finest work. From 'The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius' to 'The Cairene Purse', the stories here are incredibly varied in their style, execution and subject matter.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

305 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Michael 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.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I think about Michael Moorcock many things cross my mind. Legend, trailblazer, and prolific. He is one of the few writers who has literally changed the speculative fiction landscape with their work. The anti-Tolkien (as he was termed), a revolutionary who challenged and changed literary conventions whose work to this day remains telling and incredibly fascinating. When I heard that Hachette was rereleasing all of his best work in new editions I was over the moon. I am the proud owner of battered books that chronicle the adventures of his antihero Elric, but I never really explored any of his other work. So I was delighted to have the opportunity to dive into this book, and in doing so I rediscovered my love for short stories and realised just how diverse and talented a writer Moorcock really is.

My Experiences in the Third World War and Other Stories is a cracking anthology filled with mind blowing concepts and rollicking tales that stunned me. Moorcock defies all literary barriers and pushes boundaries with every story and novella in this collection. I adored the novella The Cairene Purse and how it took me to a post oil Egypt in the future and explored the relationship between materialism, faith, and alien abduction. I was also blown away by The Frozen Cardinal, a bizarre yet vivid tale of a Cardinal found frozen in a block of ice on top of a mountain. The Deep Fix was an entertaining tale of drug experimentation and another world, and The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius introduced me to a world of weird investigation and alternate history. The chapters that make up My Experiences in the Third World War were also brilliant, blending a mix of alternative history alongside themes of war and religion. It was strange yet incredibly compelling reading, especially when Angkor Wat was hit with a nuclear weapon.

What was stunning to me in reading this anthology was how rich and original each novella and story was. Moorcock arguably paved the way for thousands of writers who have followed in his steps, and he laid the foundations for a lot of modern speculative fiction with his work. I can see, upon reading this boo, his heavy influence on many modern day authors whose work that I love and cherish. His ideas, characterisation, and execution are amazing, and I was floored by how undated his work still is. His characters and protagonists are all interesting, strange, and unique, and I found myself shocked by some of the revelations and twists as each story unravelled at breakneck speed. I struggle to think of any other writer's whose work still remains as telling as Moorcock's decades after being published.

All in all this first volume of Moorcock's best short stories is an amazing collection of riveting, weird, and fascinating tales. If you haven't read any of Moorcock's then I suggest you snap to and get a hold of a copy of this book. It serves as a wonderful introduction to his shorter works, and is a cracking read that will keep you enthralled late into the night.

5 out of 5 stars.

A review copy was provided

[Steven Poore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ranging across time and space, of course, this collects together some of Moorcock's work as "James Colvin" alongside more mature and quite oblique stuff that doesn't always obviously hangs its hat on a genre-specific peg.
The Third World War stories are kind of sordid and dull? Sorry, but they don't do much for me. The majority of the Colvin tales are blunt pseudo-psychology lectures, with The Mountain maybe the best of them (although The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius shows where Lavie Tidhar got it from).
The proper gold is in The Cairene Purse and The Frozen Cardinal. These are the ones where Moorcock sticks the landing, with haunted and fractured characters lost in events they can barely comprehend.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up mainly for the group of four connected, alternate universe third world war stories. Those four stories are strangely ethereal yet depressing with that regular Moorcock theme of characters being pulled around by an unpleasant destiny and not struggling too much against it. Almost all of the other eight unrelated stories in this collection are also well worth spending time on so that was a bonus.

[Pavlo Tverdokhlib · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I am to find one common theme running through the works in this collection, it'd be "the things humans are capable of in extreme circumstances". Throughout the stories in this book, Moorcock demonstrates alternatively, the very best, and the very worst of the human nature, as his characters face a variety of apocalyptic scenarios, including several "last men on Earth" -type situations. Majority of these are short enough for the setting to be roughly sketched out and the plot is central to the story. The one exception here is , which describes a world that survived a catastrophe, and, being a relatively longer work, it spend a lot of time establishing its setting- the ramshackle Aswan in Egypt, as the narrator pursues his lost sister, slowly unfolding the plot. The nature of the changes in the world is never stated outright, but it can be inferred from casual mentions of severe rationing of fuel and travel.
Overall, the book is somewhat reminiscent thematically of earlier sci-fi volumes of the collection, such as Travelling to Utopia and Moorcock's Multiverse , so anoyone who's enjoyed those should find something to like here.

[Tracy Meszaros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains the brilliant gems “Crossing to Cambodia” and “the Pleasure Gardens of Felipe Sagittarius “. Some other stories are as brilliant, obviously precursors for just about every urban magical realism narrative being produced today, but sounding early and naive.