Skip to content

← Home

Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock (b. 1939, near London) — a British fantasy writer and rock musician, author of the "Chronicles of Hawkmoon" cycle in the techno-fantasy genre. In the cycle of seven novels about Duke Dorian Hawkmoon, the action takes place partly in Crimea — Simferopol, Kerch, the Black Sea, and the fictional "Ukrania" with the cult of the Mad God (an allusion to Stalinism). In the Ukrainian milieu, after the publication of translations, he acquired the joking nickname "Mykola Murko".

Overview

Michael Moorcock is one of the most influential British fantasy writers of the second half of the 20th century. Born in 1939 near London. Besides his literary activity, he is known as a rock musician (member of the band Hawkwind, and his own project Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix). Author of multi-volume fantasy cycles, among which the best known are the saga of the Eternal Champion (Elric of Melniboné) and the "Chronicles of Hawkmoon".

The "Chronicles of Hawkmoon" cycle (The History of the Runestaff) consists of seven novels written in the genre of techno-fantasy — a blend of classic fantasy (swords, castles, magic) with a science-fiction setting (a post-apocalyptic future after a nuclear war, psychotronic weapons). According to the assessment of the article's author Valerii Verkhovskyi ("Krymska svitlytsia", 2017, No. 40), the cycle was written as "not too serious", and by the end some reviewers recognized it as the author's self-parody.

Crimea in the "Chronicles of Hawkmoon" appears in a phantasmagoric, almost unrecognizable form, yet the toponyms and realities testify to the author's deliberate engagement with Crimean themes. In the novel "The Mad God's Amulet", the heroes travel through Simferopol (depicted as a port city), cross the Black Sea, find themselves near Kerch, and head toward "Ukrania" — a fictional country where the cult of the Mad God prevails (the ruler's surname Stalnikov — a transparent allusion to Stalinism).

Key Details / Subtopics

  • Biography: born in 1939 near London; a British fantasy writer and rock musician; in the Ukrainian readership — "Mykola Murko".
  • "Chronicles of Hawkmoon" cycle: seven novels in the techno-fantasy genre; the action takes place in a post-apocalyptic future after the "Tragic Millennium" (a nuclear war); the main hero is Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln.
  • Plot line: Hawkmoon is a captive of Granbretan; a "Black Stone" is implanted into his frontal bone — a control device that punishes disobedience with pain and transmits everything it sees to the enslavers; the hero sets out to abduct Isolde, daughter of Count Brass, but falls in love with her; a mysterious Knight in Black and Gold comes to the rescue.
  • Crimea in the novel "The Mad God's Amulet": the heroes arrive at the port of Simferopol aboard a sailing ship from Turkish Zonguldak; the captured pirate Coriantum hails from Kerch, where he signed on to the ship on March 11 — "the day of the horse by the Kerch calendar"; a voyage across the Black Sea near the Kerch Strait.
  • "Ukrania" and the Mad God: a fictional country the heroes travel toward via the "Pulsing Bridge" — an artifact of a vanished civilization built from beams of light; the Mad God is a man with the surname Stalnikov (an allusion to Stalinism) who rules with the help of psychotropic substances and psychotronic devices, turning his subjects into puppet bio-robots.
  • Genre specifics: techno-fantasy — a combination of barbarism and technology, exploring the dark facets of human nature through the means of a machine civilization; the author wrote the cycle as "not too serious", which grew into self-parody.
  • Crimea in the work: the Crimea depicted by the writer has very little in common with the real one — Simferopol is not a port city, the geography is conventional; this is rather a symbolic use of Crimean realities in a fantastic context.
  • Crimea in works of foreign literature: The day of the horse by the Kerch calendar — an article by Valerii Verkhovskyi in the newspaper "Krymska svitlytsia" (2017, No. 40), the main primary source on Moorcock and the "Chronicles of Hawkmoon".
  • Simferopol — the administrative center of Crimea, depicted in the novel as a port city.
  • Jules Verne and Crimea — another article in the "Crimea in works of foreign literature" section about the depiction of Crimea in foreign literature.
  • Beryl Bainbridge — an article in the same section about the British writer and the novel "Master Georgie" (the Crimean War).
  • Brian Garfield — an article in the same section about the American writer and the novel "The Kolchak Gold" with a Crimean plot.
  • Jasper Fforde — an article in the same section about the Welsh fantasy writer and the novel "The Eyre Affair" (2001) with an alternative Crimean War.
  • George Fraser — an article in the same section about the Scottish writer and the cycle about Harry Flashman (the Crimean War, escape from captivity).
  • Colleen McCullough — an article in the same section about the Australian writer and the depiction of Mithridates/Bosporus/Panticapaeum in "The Lords of Rome".
  • Louis Boussenard — an article in the same section about the French belletrist writer and the novel "The Zouaves of the Malakhov Mound" about the Crimean War.
  • Mark Twain — an article in the same section about the American writer who visited Crimea in 1867 and described his impressions in the book "The Innocents Abroad" (a best-seller of 1869).
  • Harold Lamb — an article in the same section about the American writer and the "Cossack cycle" about the Cossack Khlit (the Crimean Khanate, influence on Robert E. Howard).
  • Heinrich Böll — an article in the same section about the German Nobel Prize-winning writer and his Crimean frontline experience (1943).
  • Andrii Shchekun — editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Krymska svitlytsia", in which the article about Moorcock was published.