A press release from Stephanie Pasvankias of PM Press:
London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction by Michael Moorcock, edited by Allan Kausch, with an introduction by Iain Sinclair. Published by PM Press. 408 pages, $23.95, hardcover. ISBN: 9781604864908.
Voted one of the best writers by the London Times< Michael Moorcock was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Prize. He has won almost all the major Science Fiction, Fantasy, and lifetime achievement awards including the "Howie," the Prix Utopiales, and the Stoker. Best known for his rule-breaking SF and Fantasy, including the classic Elric and Hawkmoon series, he is also the author of several graphic novels. In London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction, Michael Moorcock personally selects the best of his published, unpublished, and uncensored essays, articles, reviews, and opinions covering a wide range of subjects: books, films, politics, reminiscences of old friends, and attacks on new foes. Drawn from over fifty years of writing, including his most recent work from the pages of the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian along with obscure and now unobtainable sources, the pieces in London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction showcase Moorcock at his acerbic best. They include:
“London Peculiar,” an impassioned statement of Moorcock’s memories of wartime London and the architectural “improvements” wrought by the rebuilding of the city after World War Two.
A lengthy review of R. Crumb’s Genesis, previously unavailable in English, leads Moorcock to address nostalgia for the sixties.
“Michael Moorcock 1939-,” a succinct recounting of Moorcock’s exciting, eventful life. From his childhood, to the heady days of editing New Worlds in the swinging sixties, to his world travels in the following years, and up to the present day as a Texan elder statesman of letters, this essay sums up a lifetime of writing and adventurous living.
These, along with dozens more, make this a collection Moorcock fans won’t want to miss, and the perfect introduction for new readers, who will soon discover why Alan Moore (Watchmen) says: “Moorcock seizes the twenty-first century bull by its horns and wrestles it into submission with a Texan rodeo confidence.”
Born in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock now lives in Texas. A prolific and award-winning writer with more than eighty works of fiction and nonfiction to his name, he is the creator of Elric, Jerry Cornelius, and Colonel Pyat, amongst many other memorable characters. His nonfiction has appeared in the Spectator, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Los Angeles Times as well as many others.