Tribute to Michael Moorcock

Guest Blog by John Picacio on September 22 2008

(The following is the tribute delivered by John Picacio in honor of Michael Moorcock’s being named the 25th Grandmaster this past year. Originally published at his personal blog, re-printed here with permission by the author).

I had the honor of presenting a tribute speech for Michael Moorcock before he was officially named the 25th Grandmaster of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The phrase “With A Little Help From My Friends” definitely comes to mind. Many thanks to Neil Gaiman, Chris Roberson, Jeff Vandermeer, Jeffrey Ford, China Mieville, and Alan Moore for their contributions which were all composed from the heart within a few days of the ceremony. Here are my words and their words (minus all of my ad-libs), for those that weren’t there:

“When I first heard that I’d be here celebrating Mike’s Grandmaster Award, I was thrilled. And then came the horror...the realization that in the span of a few minutes, I’d have to do justice to one of the greatest writing careers we’ve ever known. Daunting, to say the least.

We can talk about Elric, one of the most popular creations in the history of fantasy, first published when Mike was barely 22 years old. We can talk about the Multiverse...Jerry Cornelius...the Eternal Champion...MOTHER LONDON...Hawkmoon...BEHOLD THE MAN...GLORIANA...THE CONDITION OF MUZAK...THE METATEMPORAL DETECTIVE. What about Mike’s legendary ability to craft classic novels in a mere weekend so he could pay his NEW WORLDS printing bills? How about a lifetime of awards heavy enough to crack a house foundation...a 1967 Nebula Award for BEHOLD THE MAN; his shelf full of British Fantasy Awards; the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; the World Fantasy Award; the Guardian Fiction Award; the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award; the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award; his 2002 induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame...we can do this all night long, can’t we? Michael Moorcock is, quite simply, a living legend. Period. And one who despises being called such, because he’s still vital, still rebellious, still questioning...still writing. He keeps going, which brings us to the present.

We’re here to celebrate Mike’s recognition amongst the Grandmasters of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Heinlein, Leiber, Clarke, Bradbury, Del Rey, Pohl, Knight...a few of the names inscribed up on SFWA’s Mount Olympus. Here’s the part that’ll make you dizzy though—many great writers are measured by what came before them, but Mike’s greatness continues to be measured by what has come after him. I’m not talking about his legendary Multiverse of characters and stories, but a multiverse of writers, artists, and creators worldwide that have either had their careers single-handedly launched by Mike, or been directly influenced by him at a primal level. That goes for many of you in this room, including myself, and I daresay, that includes some of tonight’s nominees and winners.

So here’s what we’re gonna do...in recent days, I contacted a few friends and a few heroes. I asked them for their brief thoughts on tonight’s occasion and I’m going to share a few of them with you right now.

Our first message is from the author of AMERICAN GODS, the 2002 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novel—Neil Gaiman.

Neil—“Mike Moorcock changed the inside of my head. I read STORMBRINGER when I was nine, and that was pretty much that. My pocket money went on Moorcock books—which were gloriously being issued and reissued back then—and I read them and took what I could from them. It’s not long until you have a multiverse in your twelve-year-old mind, and you learn that every hero is the Eternal Champion, and suddenly you’re puzzling over Jerry Cornelius stories, with your head going places it hasn’t gone before.

When people ask me about my influences, I tend to forget Mike, much in the way that people listing the things that were important to them growing up, fail to list the earth, the air, and sunlight. He taught me that high culture and low culture were simply points of view, and that what mattered was the writing. His influence as an editor still reverberates today. We’re lucky to have him.”

Our next contributor is an author, an editor, and a publisher—all award-winning, sometimes all in the same day. He’s a Sidewise Award winner and one-half of MonkeyBrain Books—Chris Roberson.

Chris—“I was never quite the same after discovering the novels of Michael Moorcock in my suburban high school library. Elric, Cornelius, Bastable, and the rest of the multiversal gang expanded my brain into dimensions that I didn’t even know existed. I wasn’t the first to fall under his spell, and I won’t be the last. As writer and editor Moorcock has changed the nature of fantasy itself, expanding the definition of what fantastic literature is, and the uses to which it can be put. He is the brightest light in my own personal constellation of influences and inspirations, and I continue to labor in his shadow.”

Our next author has won two World Fantasy Awards and is the author of the brilliant CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN, as well as the proud co-editor of THE NEW WEIRD—Jeff Vandermeer.

Jeff—“Mike Moorcock is quite simply the most creative and most generous person I’ve ever met. It’s Mike I think of whenever I’m approached by a new writer for help with something, because he embodies the idea of ‘paying it forward’. He has also been an enormous influence in both the variety and the quality of his fiction, and his various editing projects. I admire his restless curiosity, his sense of humor, and his sense of perspective. It’s been one of the great pleasures and honors of my life to know him. If only he could break his addiction to squid...”

Three down, three to go. Our next author is a four-time World Fantasy Award winner; a 2004 Nebula Award winner for “The Empire of Ice Cream”; and his latest novel is called THE SHADOW YEAR—Jeffrey Ford.

Jeff—“Every time I read a new slice of Mike’s enormous fictional output, I’m inspired by the work’s variety of style and form; its unbounded freedom of expression; it’s ability to find the profound in pulp, and to dismantle the bureaucracy of literature with a capital L; its astute politics; and its cosmic sense of humor. His creative talent is truly a multi-verse. What’s impressed me even more than his fiction, though, is Mike himself—affable, generous, and an unerring failure to stand on ceremony. Right now, I can picture him rolling his eyes at my testimonial. Congratulations, Mike.”

Our next message is from an author who, much like Mike, is never shy about defending what he thinks is right. He’s a multiple Hugo Award nominee and the author of PERDIDO STREET STATION, a 2002 Nebula Award finalist—China Mieville.

China—“‘Grandmaster’ is inadequate. Moorcock is the monarchomach, the sensei of dissident fantasy. Mad skills, pirate prose, ninja critique. We deserve a lot, but we only just, on our best days, deserve him. Where there are rules he brings righteous chaos, for which all we can do is give our profound thanks, we who are fortunate enough to have our souls sucked out by his evil crooning typewriter forged from black metal, we who read sitting on the toppled idols he leaves behind, the rubble of genre left by his awesome paraliterary rampage, breakfasting gratefully among the ruins.”

And finally, we have a few words from an author beloved by every creator I know...as a fellow professional once said, ‘We all worship him as a god, but at the end of the day, he bows to Moorcock.’ The creator of WATCHMEN, V FOR VENDETTA, and THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN—Alan Moore.

Alan—“Michael Moorcock is a wonder of the world, a colossus of Brookgate straddling his ancient city in a sentence. He’s a literary zeppelin commander who has never lost his faith in, nor completely left, the underground; the ultimate outsider just by virtue of his altitude above the herd. He scattered universes, planted movements, sowed the seeds of all the authors who came after him, like dragon’s teeth. His intellect and his inventiveness are only equalled by his insight, by his great compassion. From the deadline-plagued pulp sweatshops of his origins to Mother London’s dizzy pinnacles, Moorcock is the Eternal Writer.”

Mike, you’ve more than earned this night. On behalf of myself and the legions of readers and creators that you’ve inspired, enlightened, and championed, we cheer you tonight and we cherish you forever. Our most rebellious, heart-felt thanks, and congratulations on becoming the 25th Grandmaster of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

JOHN PICACIO is an award winning illustrator who has created covers for works by Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman, Robert Silverberg, Charles de Lint, David Gemmel and many more. His illustrations have been selected numerous times for the SPECTRUM ANNUAL and in 2002 he received the International Horror Guild Award for Best Artist. In 2005, he received a Chesley Award for Best Paperback cover, was a finalist for the Hugo Award and won the World Fantasy Award.

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2009 Nebula Award Novel Nominees

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Love We Share Without Knowingby Christopher Barzak
Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman
The City & The Cityby China Miéville
Bone Shakerby Cherie Priest
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" ( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions.

About the Author

Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in High Country News, Salon.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. It has been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for a Nebula and four Hugo awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best sf short story of the year.

The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak

In this haunting, richly woven novel of modern life in Japan, the author of the acclaimed debut One for Sorrow explores the ties that bind humanity across the deepest divides. Here is a Murakamiesque jewel box of intertwined narratives in which the lives of several strangers are gently linked through love, loss, and fate.

On a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man’s life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives—and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village a disaffected American teenager stranded in a strange land discovers compassion after an encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo a girl named Love learns the deepest lessons about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong.

From the neon colors of Tokyo, with its game centers and karaoke bars, to the bamboo groves and hidden shrines of the countryside, these souls and others mingle, revealing a profound tale of connection—uncovering the love we share without knowing.

Exquisitely perceptive and deeply affecting, Barzak’s artful storytelling deftly illuminates the inner lives of those attempting to find—or lose—themselves in an often incomprehensible world.

About the Author

Christopher Barzak grew up in rural Ohio, went to university in a decaying post-industrial city in Ohio, and has lived in a Southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan, where he taught English in rural junior high and elementary schools. His stories have appeared in a many venues, including Nerve.com, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Strange Horizons, Salon Fantastique, Interfictions, Asimov’s, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. His first novel, One for Sorrow, was published by Bantam Books in Fall of 2007, and won the Crawford Award that same year. He is the co-editor (with Delia Sherman) of Interfictions 2, and has done Japanese-English translation on Kant: For Eternal Peace, a peace theory book published in Japan for Japanese teens. Currently he lives in Youngstown, Ohio, where he teaches writing at Youngstown State University.

Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman

Once, all power in the Vin Lands was held by the prince-mages, who alone could craft spellwines, and selfishly used them to increase their own wealth and influence. But their abuse of power caused a demigod to break the Vine, shattering the power of the mages. Now, fourteen centuries later, it is the humble Vinearts who hold the secret of crafting spells from wines, the source of magic, and they are prohibited from holding power.

But now rumors come of a new darkness rising in the vineyards. Strange, terrifying creatures, sudden plagues, and mysterious disappearances threaten the land. Only one Vineart senses the danger, and he has only one weapon to use against it: a young slave. His name is Jerzy, and his origins are unknown, even to him. Yet his uncanny sense of the Vinearts' craft offers a hint of greater magics within -- magics that his Master, the Vineart Malech, must cultivate and grow. But time is running out. If Malech cannot teach his new apprentice the secrets of the spellwines, and if Jerzy cannot master his own untapped powers, the Vin Lands shall surely be destroyed.

In Flesh and Fire, first in a spellbinding new trilogy, Laura Anne Gilman conjures a story as powerful as magic itself, as intoxicating as the finest of wines, and as timeless as the greatest legends ever told.

About the Author

Born in the late 1960’s in suburban New Jersey, Laura Anne endured only moderate trauma - and some good times - before escaping to Skidmore College. After graduation, given the choice between grad school and employment, the lure of a paycheck took her to NYC and a career in publishing, while working nights and weekends to get her writing career started. In 2004, she and corporate America decided they needed a break from each other. Her first original novel contract in-hand, Laura Anne became a full-time freelancer, and never looked back. She is the author of the Cosa Nostradamus books for Luna (the “Retrievers” and “Paranormal Scene Investigations” series), a YA trilogy for HarperCollins, and the forthcoming Vineart War books from Pocket, while continuing to write and sell short fiction. She also writes paranormal romances for Nocturne as Anna Leonard. Laura Anne is also an amateur chef, oenophile, and cat-servant. She lives in New York City, where she also runs d.y.m.k. productions.

The City & The City by China Miéville

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

About the Author

China Miéville is the author of King Rat; Perdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; and Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers. He lives and works in London.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

About the Author

Cherie Priest made her debut with the Eden Moore series of Southern Gothic ghost stories that began with Four and Twenty Blackbirds. She lives in Seattle, Washington, and keeps a popular blog at cmpriest.livejournal.com.

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Tasked with solving an impossible double murder, detective John Finch searches for the truth among the rubble of the once-mighty city of Ambergris. Under the rule of the mysterious gray caps, Ambergris is falling into anarchy. The remnants of a rebel force are demoralized and dispersed, their leader, the Lady in Blue, not seen for months. Partials—human traitors transformed by the gray caps—walk the streets brutalizing the city’s inhabitants. Finch’s partner Wyte, stricken with a fungal disease, is literally disintegrating. And strange forces are marshaling themselves against detective Finch even as he pursues his one clue: the elusive spymaster Ethan Bliss. How much time does Finch have before time itself runs out?

About the Author

Award-winning writer Jeff VanderMeer's final novel in his Ambergris Cycle, Finch, has just been published in the US, and will appear in the UK from Atlantic's Corvus imprint. His writer guide Booklife and associated Booklifenow website focus on sustainable creativity. With his wife, he recently edited the charity anthology Last Drink Bird Head. His short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Library of America's American Fantastic Tales, and several year's best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Washington Post Book World, Omnivoracious, The New York Times Book Review, the B&N Review, and many others. Murder by Death recently completed a CD soundtrack based on Finch./.

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