The first full-length novel in almost 10 years by the influential science-fiction author Michael Moorcock, which blends autobiography with fantasy to produce something the novelist hopes is entirely new, will be published in the UK this summer.
Moorcock’s The Whispering Swarm is set in London, after the second world war – a city “desperately trying to get back on its feet,” said publisher Gollancz, which has acquired the novel and two sequels for UK publication. It will see the author mix elements from his real life, such as his first job on Fleet Street and the beginnings of his interest in writing, with adventures in parallel universes “peopled with highwaywomen, musketeers and magicians,” said Gollancz.
Set for publication in July – with the sequels to come out over the next three years – it is Moorcock’s first major work since The Vengeance of Rome in 2006, although the prolific writer did slip in a Doctor Who novel in 2010, The Coming of the Terraphiles. The novelist said he “struggled a lot with this one”, because “I wanted to blend actual autobiography with supernatural fantasy and historical fiction to produce a kind of novel I hadn’t seen before”.
Marcus Gipps, commissioning editor at Gollancz, described The Whispering Swarm as “a delight, merging elements of Mike’s life with his traditional brilliant fantasy”.
“He’s the most influential fantasy writer alive, and this is one of his best,” said the editor. “We’ve been thrilled to republish 31 books of Mike’s remarkable backlist over the past few years. Now that Gollancz’s Michael Moorcock collection is complete, it’s brilliant to be publishing a dazzling, mercurial new series that will introduce new readers to the life and works of a legendary figure.”
Moorcock, 75, has won nearly every award going for his wide-ranging and expansive oeuvre, which includes over 70 novels and 160 short stories and novellas, taking the World Fantasy life achievement award in 1999. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2001, and named a SFWA grandmaster in 2007. Creator of characters including Elric, Corum, Jerry Cornelius and Hawkmoon, and named as an influence by writers including Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, he won the Guardian fiction prize for The Condition of Muzak in 1977, and was shortlisted for the 1988 Whitbread award, for Mother London.
Hari Kunzru, writing in the Guardian, described his The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy as “one of the great postwar English fantasies” and, in 2008, the Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
In his profile of the author, Kunzru said Moorcock writes “at a furious pace, weaving an ever more complex web of novels and stories, filled with associations, refractions and knowing references, a delightful maze for his fans and a source of perplexity for bibliographers”. But, Kunzru added, “this prolific, promiscuous output is perhaps one reason he’s not accorded the status he deserves in the postwar canon of English literature … Moorcock remains something of an outsider, regarded with trepidation (if he’s known at all) by a literary establishment that prefers clear blue water between literature and genre writing.”
