Remember recently I mentioned that Boing Boing was inviting questions from readers to put to one of the true giants of the science fiction and fantasy field, Michael Moorcock to mark the publication of very tasty The Best of Michael Moorcock by indy SF&F publisher Tachyon? Well the interview is now up on the Tachyon blog and anyone interested in SF&F -hell, anyone who appreciates one of the great writers of the last half century in any genre – should go and have a look. And then think about picking up the book (link via Boing Boing).
“Question: I really love the Moorcock multiverse. It took me a while to find out that Moorcock was a big influence of Moebius, Alan Moore, Hawkwind, Blue oyster cult and some of my other favorite authors, artists etc. I think Moorcocks parallel worlds and alternate realities were so believable that he influenced other writers and artists to bringing more dreamlike states of reality into the forefront of conscientiousness. True mind expanding and altering reading. My question is: What was your influence to create such a wide influential idea like the multiverse?
Moorcock: I honestly don’t know. I could say it was just a yearning for continuity. I came up with the idea of Elric, the Eternal Champion, the Multiverse all about the same time when I was around 21. In the late 50s and early 60s we were confronting the idea of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics a lot. Now this was faintly depressing — the heat death of the universe, the dissipation of everything and so on — so we were casting around both intellectually, spiritually and emotionally for some sort of counterbalance, something a bit more ‘positive’. The Big Bang Theory told us that the end of the universe was inevitable. In common with a few theoretical physicists we were hoping to find a contradiction to that inevitability.
And so, as much in a quest for a spiritual answer as a scientific one, a few of us began to inch towards the notion of the Multiverse. I also came up with a rough and ready notion of Black Holes. As it happens, I was the first person, as far as I know, to start giving names and imagery to these ideas — if you like, an optimistic model of the universe, allowing a sense of constant renewal. Put that together with a person representing humanity who is also constantly being renewed (if only to perish again) and you get a modern version of a regeneration myth! And that, I’m pretty sure, is why the idea caught on and became so popular. Also, on a cruder level, it allowed comic book writers to rationalise story threads which were getting increasingly over-complicated!”
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