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Jerry Cornelius—Michael Moorcock’s fictional audacious assassin, rockstar, chronospy, and possible Messiah—is featured in the first of two stories in this fifth installment of the Outspoken Author series. Previously unpublished, the first story is an odyssey through time from London in the 1960s to America during the years following Barack Obama's presidency. The second piece is a political, confrontational, comical, nonfiction tale in the style of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell. An interview with the author rounds out this biting, satirical, sci-fi collection.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

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About the author

Michael Moorcock

1,209 books3,751 followers
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.

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5 stars
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32 (21%)
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52 (35%)
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29 (19%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
Profile Image for Nate D.
1,659 reviews1,257 followers
November 8, 2015
Spazzy multiverse-hopping vignettes intercut with the native aburdism of the latest news to create a patchwork satiric portrait of the present as brushing up against the hopes and apocalypses of the late 60s. It's attached by character to Moorcock's almost equally spazzy old Jerry Cornelius novels, but rather snappy and entertaining, nonetheless, and actually rather better prosed than the precursors that Moorcock wouldn't allow himself more than 3 day to blast out of the typewriter during his peak productivity. Actually, the longer interview that shares the volume was perhaps the better part, just for bits of context like the 3-day-novel notion above. (He thought anything more would be a waste of effort, and actually his writing is often much better than a lot of similarly rapid sci-fi contemporaries, so perhaps he wasn't so off the mark. But honestly I haven't yet dared dip into the really relentlessly pulpy-looking ones.
13 reviews
May 4, 2012


I loved the interview, reading the stories were difficult this time around. Jerry just didn't transmit well.
Profile Image for Gökhan .
423 reviews8 followers
May 1, 2020
Uyarı: Michael Moorcock'la tanışmak için çok yanlış bir seçim olur. Elric serisiyle tanışmıştım Moorcock ile. Çok ilgi çekici bir karakter ve evren yaratmasına rağmen , dağınık üslubu ile serinin kitaplarına devam edemeden kopmuştum. Bu kitapta bu dağınıklığın zirvesi var. Gerçi ana karakterin olduğu seriyi okuyanlar için bir anlam ifade edebilir ama o seri olmadan tam bir saçmalama gibi olmuş. Tanınmış bir bilimkurgu yazarı olunca böyle uçarılıklar yapabiliyorsunuz ve kitap olarak basılabiliyor :) Başı ve sonu olmadığı için hikayeler diyemeyeceğimiz fragmanları okumak bir süre sonra " ne yapıyorum ben" diye kendinizi sorgulamaya neden oluyor. Ben de öyle yaptım ve kitabın bir noktasından sonra fragmanların başlarındaki, 2000lerin başlarındaki dergilerden alınmış kısımları okudum sadece. Kitabın sonundaki röportajında, Tolkien'ı "okunamayacak yazar" olarak nitelemesi ile de Moorcock benim için bitmiş oldu :) Ayrıntı Yayınlarının bu kitabı seriye niye aldığını da anlayamadım.
Profile Image for Joyce Reynolds-Ward.
Author 82 books39 followers
July 24, 2016
Michael Moorcock writing a Jerry Cornelius novella. Plus "My Londons," an essay about growing up in London during/post WWII, and an interview.

What's not to like?

Well worth the read.
Profile Image for Richard Thompson.
2,962 reviews167 followers
July 12, 2022
Many years ago, I think in the 1970s, I read another Michael Moorcock book, Behold The Man. I remember it as being good. This one wasn't. Maybe to appreciate this you need to have read other Jerry Cornelius books and to be a registered member of the Moorcock fan club, but somehow I don't think that would have been enough for me. This book is a collection of loosely connected vignettes featuring Cornelius and his cronies as they bounce through time doing God knows what. When I was in high school I wrote a story like that. It was bad. I threw it away. Mr. Moorcock should have done the same.
Profile Image for Zen de Zen.
7 reviews
April 22, 2019
Konu; yok
Karakter; belirsiz birileri
Zaman; değişik zamanlara sıçramalar
Valla ben yok anlamak
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Hamid Babayev.
Author 11 books43 followers
September 18, 2019
Bilirəm, kitab oxucuların sevməyəcəyi bir kitabdı, çünki alışdığınız heç nə yoxdu burda. Amma bu Moorcockdu və ona aşiqsinizsə, bu zülmü çəkməyə də rqzı olmalısınız. Mən sevdim, razı qaldım.
Profile Image for Alex Sarll.
7,075 reviews363 followers
Read
July 14, 2015
Ah, Jerry Cornelius. Moorcock has always admitted he's as much a technique as a character, but sadly even that technique is starting to look a bit like a tic. Where once the casual time-slips, amorality and paradoxes conveyed a vertiginous sense of upheaval (what does it mean to be a Spirit of the Age in an age that's constantly collapsing?), now one gets the feel that - like his mate Iain Sinclair - Moorcock can do this stuff in his sleep. Which said, there are still plenty of arresting images in there, and at least it's acknowledged within the text that a character who was once all about Now has become remarkably nostalgic in his ageless old age.
This volume also contains a bibliography, a memoir of the London youth Moorcock has already mined extensively here and elsewhere, and an interview by Terry Bisson. The latter confirms what had long been rumoured - most of Moorcock's early fantasies were written in three days apiece, and several never got read back by anyone before they were printed. It also has one heartbreaking section where he talks about how people in Texas can end up poor and hungry in a way that just doesn't happen in Britain. Thank goodness we've become less of a welfare culture since then, eh?
6 reviews
January 2, 2018
I am not sure what to say about this. It is definitely MM's style and I enjoyed it. I was actually looking forward to reading The Cornelius Chronicles again and decided to go for this instead.

At first it was like reading samples and snippets of his work. I loved that it was a retrospective story often set around Christmas in London, England but also roamed freely about the globe. As I read it over the Christmas holiday and finished it on Christmas Day just before sleeping, I felt very sentimental at times.

The book is poignant while using a minimalist style. I know MM writes with meaning and isn't just randomly typing out words, so I often asked myself what it is that he meant by this or that passage. This made me introspective but also sent me down various alleys of inquiry that were very thought provoking.

Profile Image for Tucker.
Author 29 books225 followers
October 19, 2014
I do not know what "happened" in this book, but the author captured a zeitgeist.
"The monsters created from this mass, born of shed blood and human fright, bestrode the ruins of our sanctuaries and savored our fear like connoisseurs: Here is the Belsen ’44; taste the subtle flavors of a Kent State ’68 or the nutty sweetness of an Abu Ghraib ’05, the amusing lightness of a Madrid ’04, a London ’06. What good years they were! Perfect condition. These New York ‘01s are so much more full-bodied than the Belfast ’98s. The monsters sit at table, relishing their feast. They stink of satiation. Their farts expel the sucked-dry husks of human souls: Judge Dredd, Lord Horror, Stuporman."

After the end of the novel, the book includes a good interview with the author.
Profile Image for Amanda.
616 reviews9 followers
December 31, 2020
The title story is a near-incomprehensible nostalgia-infected tale of Jerry Cornelius in the early 21st century. Fortunately Moorcock's essay on growing up in London and the interview at the end are both top-notch.
Profile Image for Ross Lockhart.
Author 27 books216 followers
February 22, 2011
An engaging mix of a Jerry Cornelius novella, a short essay, and Terry Bisson's interview with Michael Moorcock. Well-packaged, thought-provoking, and highly entertaining.
Profile Image for Eamonn Murphy.
Author 33 books10 followers
June 23, 2022
This odd little book from PM Press has three items within: 'Modem Times 2.0' is a Jerry Cornelius themed ride of virtuoso verbiage; 'My Londons' is a short essay about the various places in London Moorcock inhabited in the dim and distant past; 'Get the Music Right' is an interview with the writer by Terry Bisson.

I refer to 'Modem Times 2.0' as a themed ride of virtuoso verbiage because I can't really call it a story, even though it is subtitled 'A Jerry Cornelius Story'. In page long bursts of prose with subtitles such as 'The Wanton of Argos', 'Ecce Rumpo' and 'Guns is Guns' Jerry encounters various characters in various places around the globe and holds lively conversations with them. He seems to be in search of something, his past perhaps. The conversations are usually interesting, sometimes witty and frequently political in nature. Thatcher, Blair and Bush get a bashing. Each section is preceded by a quote from a newspaper or magazine, like the chapter headings in 'Stranger in a Strange Land' though they were fictional and Moorcock's appear to be real. It was kind of fun but it wasn't a story or if it was, I didn't get it.

'My Londons' did not especially appeal to me since I don't live in the capital and have little interest in it. Londoners, like Parisians and New Yorkers, I think, believe that their hometown is the greatest place on Earth and that everyone else in the Universe is simply jealous that they were not born there. Everyone else in the Universe has a different point of view but arguing with them is useless. There is a short story by Gordon R. Dickson entitled 'Lulungomeena' which nicely sums up the correct attitude. Moorcock might know of it because it was published in Galaxy magazine, about the only American SF magazine of the 1950's he found at all readable, according to the interview.

In the interview he says all the usual things he says in interviews about the New Wave, American SF, Tolkien, his own work, and so forth. When a major artist has been around a long time and been interviewed so often you can hardly expect him to say anything startling. McCartney has his Beatles stories down pat long since. Moorcock's views on things have not changed noticeably. The interview is interesting, as ever, because he is an articulate man with a vivid past to chat about, but it's nothing new to old fans like me.

'Modem Times 2.0' is a lively rant and the other two parts are not without interest. A good buy for fans of the great man, and I am one, but it might leave others cold or baffled.


Profile Image for Barış.
1 review1 follower
August 7, 2019
(Türkçesi aşagıda)
The book contains sections of M.Moorcock's works published in different media. If you have not read the author before and do not know his work I do not recommend reading this book. Because these sections are sometimes cut from such places that the characters do not finish the speech, suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a 4-character half-page story, because you are not fully familiar with the characters and their behaviors, they up in the air and the next half-page story this time 5 different characters talking different things in different places ends without reaching a conclusion.

This book offers a nostalgia for the people who follow the author in time. Finally, there is an interview with the author about 30 pages long. The book also contains many items from old and new London.Someone like me who is not very familiar with London will not be able to imagine the popular shops and streets of its time. If I were a publisher, I would write on the cover of the book: "Those who do not read at least 4-5 works of the author are not recommended to read the book."


Kitap M.Moorcock'un farklı yayın organlarına çıkardığı eserlerinden kesitler içeriyor. Eğer yazarı daha önce okumadıysanız ve eserlerini bilmiyorsanız bu kitabı okumanızı tavsiye etmem. Çünkü bu kesitler bazen öyle yerlerden kesilmişler ki karakterler konuşmasını bitirmiyor, birden 4 karakterli yarım sayfalık bir hikayenin ortasında buluyorsunuz kendinizi, karakterlere tam aşina olmadığınız için de davranışları ve yaptıkları havada kalıyor ve bir sonraki yarım sayfalık hikayede bu sefer 5 farklı karakter farklı yerde farklı şeyler konuşarak bir sonuca ulaşmadan olmadan bitiyor. Konu bütünlüğü yok, zaten bu basımda da bu amaçlanmamış.

Bu kitap yazarı zamanında bilen takip eden insanlar için bir nostalji sunuyor okurlarına. Sonunda da 30 sayfalık yazarla ilgili bir röportaj yer alıyor. Ayrıca kitap eski ve yeni Londra'dan birçok öge içeriyor. Londra'ya çok aşina olmayan benim gibi biri zamanında popüler olmuş işletmeler sokakları kafasında canlandıramayacaktır. Yayınevinin yerinde olsaydım kitabın kapağına "Yazarın en az 4-5 eserini okumayanların kitabı okuması tavsiye edilmez" yazardım.
Profile Image for Daniel.
2,795 reviews45 followers
January 28, 2022
This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.5 of 5

In the 1970's I was a huge fan of Michael Moorcock, specifically his Elric series, but anything he wrote was gold in my hands. I have been reading a little Moorcock lately and was very happy to get a look at this.
This book is part of the PM Outspoken Authors series. I've read and reviewed a couple of these now. Each one seems to have a short story or novelette, followed by an essay or non-fiction article, and then an interview with the author. This is no exception.

The story, "Modem Times 2.0" features Jerry Cornelius, an urban adventurer who is part of Moorcock's greater Eternal Champion concept. The story is a time-hopping adventure as it spans the post-Obama presidency era in the United States to London in the 1960's.

The story was 'okay' at best. It feels dated. Even though Jerry Cornelius is living in the modern world he's still carrying around his 60's/70's attitudes.

The essay "My Londons" has Moorcock reminiscing about his life and experiences in London from the 1940s to the 1990s. This was by far my favorite part of this book. We get a good look at the beginnings of the new wave movement of sci-fi/fantasy as Moorcock was not only there, but likely one of the founders of the movement. Moorcock's easy narrative storytelling style works wondrously here.

The interview conducted by Terry Bison expands on what Moorcock tells us in his essay and was quite informative.

I've generally enjoyed the PM Outspoken Authors series - at least those books that I've read, but then I've selected to read only those authors whose works I know I enjoy. This volume isn't earth-shattering in any way, but fans of Moorcock should enjoy hearing more about his early days, both personally and professionally.

Looking for a good book? Modem Times 2.0 by Michael Moorcock is a small volume featuring a short story, an essay, and an interview with sci-fi author Michael Moorcock. Fans of his work will appreciate this. Those new to Moorcock's writing may want to start with one of his better known works.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.
39 reviews1 follower
October 29, 2019
İşte İnsan'dan sonra okuduğum 2. Michael Moorcock eseri. Kitap, Jerry Cornelius'un kılıktan kılığa girip çoklu evrenlerde yaşadığı olayları anlatıyor anlatmasına ama fazla bir şey anlamadım. Öyküler bitince ne okudum az önce gibi tepkiler verebiliyorsunuz. 3-4 bölümde hoşuma giden yerler oldu. Öykülerin sonunda yazarın Londralarım adlı yaşadığı yerden bahsettiği bir bölüm ve bu seriyi hazırlayan Terry Bisson'un yazarla yaptığı söyleşi var. Ayrıca İsmail Yamanol'un önsözü de çok açıklayıcı olmuş. Kitabı ve içeriği biraz anlatarak zaten kafası karışacak okurları aydınlatmış. Bölüm başlarındaki açıklamalar ve altındaki bazı dergilerden paylaşılmış yazılar konu hakkında bilgi veriyor. Okurken onlara dikkat edin.
Profile Image for David H..
2,511 reviews26 followers
March 13, 2020
This special collection from the Outspoken Authors series has a single novella, along with an essay and an interview with the author.

I couldn't finish the novella, "Modem Times 2.0," featuring his hero Jerry Cornelius. It doesn't help that I don't think I ever read any of the Cornelius stories, but I read the first 40% and got literally nothing out of it. Was there a story at all in there?

Instead, I turned my attention to the essay and interview, which were far more interesting and intelligible.
Profile Image for Jon.
1,337 reviews10 followers
December 13, 2021
Haven't read any of Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories, so maybe that's working against me. At any rate, I couldn't quite follow what was going on in "Modem Times 2.0," and it took up over half the book. Essays were good.
Profile Image for Annarella.
14.2k reviews167 followers
June 6, 2023
I liked the interview but I didn't like the stories that seemed out of context and hard to follow.
For Moorcock fan only
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Profile Image for Tomasz.
948 reviews38 followers
March 17, 2024
The title novella (not quite the right word for it, but "item" would be even worse, wouldn't it) is a glorious bit of madness, and the rest of what's on offer doesn't disappoint, either. Good stuff altogether, great job by Terry Bisson in selecting the authors and unleashing them on the public.
Profile Image for Sefa.
260 reviews3 followers
November 11, 2018
hiç bir şey anlamayıp acayip sıkıldığım bir kaç kitap arasında, üst sıralara yerleşti.
Profile Image for Doruk Önal.
27 reviews2 followers
December 22, 2018
Okurken o kadar zorlandım ki! Anlamak zor, olay örgüsü yok, karmakarışık bir kitap. Sonunda bir de röportaj var yazarla. O kısmı okumadım açıkçası. Öneremiyorum...
Profile Image for Ersin.
42 reviews5 followers
November 8, 2019
Ayrıntı yayınlarının bk dizisi ile ilgili herhangi bir umudum kalmadı.
Profile Image for Steve.
35 reviews3 followers
November 12, 2024
The Jerry Cornelius story was underwhelming (no surprise, didn't care much for the originals). Fortunately "My Londons" and the interview were far better and redeemed the book as a whole.
Profile Image for Amy.
782 reviews43 followers
April 12, 2025
I honestly had no idea what I read from start to finish. It was completely disjointed and I felt dumb trying to figure it out without any clue or ah ha moments.
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