Monday, July 09, 2007
You Need This: Michael Moorcock's The Metatemporal Detective
Lou Anders posts the exciting news of the forthcoming Michael Moorcock collection, The Metatemporal Detective.
Here's the book description, as Lou provides:
(And for those keeping score at home, this is actually the public's first glimpse of John Picacio's Elric, which we'll be seeing quite a bit more of when the Picacio-illustrated Del Rey edition of the first Elric stories is released.)
UPDATE: John has posted a larger version of the image, sans text, as well as a glimpse of the art he did for the spine. Damn, that's one nice looking book.
Here's the book description, as Lou provides:
Seaton Begg and his constant companion, pathologist Dr "Taffy" Sinclair, both head the secret British Home Office section of the Metatemporal Investigation Department--an organization whose function is understood only by the most high-ranking government people around the world--and a number of powerful criminals.The Seaton Begg stories are some of my favorites of all Moorcock's work, and for my money the best things he's done in ages. I've been looking forward to this collection for ages, and having read all but one of the stories in the collection (the original "The Flaneur of the Arcades d'Opera," which I'm dying to read), I can't recommend it highly enough. The Metatemporal Detective is due out in October, and is available for preorder.
Begg's cases cover a multitude of crimes in dozens of alternate worlds, generally where transport is run by electricity, where the internal combustion engine is unknown, and where giant airships are the chief form of international carrier. He investigates the murder of English Prime Minister "Lady Ratchet," the kidnapping of the king of a country taken over by a totalitarian regime, and the death of Geli Raubel, Adolf Hitler's mistress. Other adventures take him to a wild west where "the Masked Buckaroo" is tracking down a mysterious red-eyed Apache known as the White Wolf; to 1960s' Chicago where a girl has been killed in a sordid disco; and to an independent state of Texas controlled by neocon Christians with oily (and bloody) hands. He visits Paris, where he links up with his French colleagues of the Sûreté du Temps Perdu. In several cases the fanatical Adolf Hitler is his opponent, but his arch-enemy is the mysterious black sword wielding aristocrat known as Zenith the Albino, a drug-dependent, charismatic exile from a distant realm he once ruled.
In each story the Metatemporal Detectives' cases take them to worlds at once like and unlike our own, sometimes at odds with and sometimes in league with the beautiful adventuresses Mrs. Una Persson or Lady Rosie von Bek. At last Begg and Sinclair come face to face with their nemesis on the moonbeam roads which cross between the universes, where the great Eternal Balance itself is threatened with destruction and from which only the luckiest and most daring of metatemporal adventurers will return.
These fast-paced mysteries pay homage to Moorcock's many literary enthusiasms for authors as diverse as Clarence E. Mulford, Dashiell Hammett, Georges Simenon, and his boyhood hero, Sexton Blake.
(And for those keeping score at home, this is actually the public's first glimpse of John Picacio's Elric, which we'll be seeing quite a bit more of when the Picacio-illustrated Del Rey edition of the first Elric stories is released.)
UPDATE: John has posted a larger version of the image, sans text, as well as a glimpse of the art he did for the spine. Damn, that's one nice looking book.
Comments:
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Terrific -- My sweetie reviews mystery and SF (how can she get on the Solaris review list?), and was showing me the Pyr catalog just the day before you posted this. What's not to like: Sexton Begg (metatemporal investigator and model for Sherlock Holmes and Sexton Blake), multiversal doings, Una Persson and Rose von Bek! And John's cover is great.
# posted by 
:
7/11/07 3:44 PM
:
7/11/07 3:44 PM
...and the Albino, mustn't forget the Albino... They're so popular nowadays. Have you followed the "Rex Mundi" comic series, set in an alternate 1930s Kingdom of France with plenty of influence from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," working magic and general templar weirdness? It's got an albino assassin, tho definitely not Elricish.
# posted by :
7/11/07 3:48 PM
:
7/11/07 3:48 PM
Yep yep yep! (Though, to pick nits, Moorcock changed the name to Seaton Begg in the later stories, to differentiate the character from that of Sexton Blake, who is still under trademark by IPC, to avoid any possible legal entanglements. I can only assume that in the collection the older instances of "Sexton" will be replaced accordingly.)
I followed Rex Mundi for the first few years, but lost track of it after it moved to Dark Horse. I may wait for the series to wrap up and then read it all in one go.
As far as getting on the Pyr review list, you should contact their publicity person, Jill Maxick at jmaxick@prometheusbooks.com. If anyone can help, it'll be Jill!
I followed Rex Mundi for the first few years, but lost track of it after it moved to Dark Horse. I may wait for the series to wrap up and then read it all in one go.
As far as getting on the Pyr review list, you should contact their publicity person, Jill Maxick at jmaxick@prometheusbooks.com. If anyone can help, it'll be Jill!
My sweetie is already on the Pyr list. I was curious about Solaris for her sake.
# posted by :
7/11/07 3:58 PM
:
7/11/07 3:58 PM
Duh! I'm sorry, Stu, I completely misread your question. In that case, try sending a note to solaris@blpublishing.com asking to be added to their list. I can't imagine that wouldn't work.
Yeah, meant to type Seaton, but my fingers insisted on Sexton. *sigh*
Chris Roberson said...
Yep yep yep! (Though, to pick nits, Moorcock changed the name to Seaton Begg in the later stories, to differentiate the character from that of Sexton Blake, who is still under trademark by IPC, to avoid any possible legal entanglements. I can only assume that in the collection the older instances of "Sexton" will be replaced accordingly.)
Rex Mundi certainly went through a lot of changes of artist too. However, they have been good about collecting sequences as graphic novel compilations.
I followed Rex Mundi for the first few years, but lost track of it after it moved to Dark Horse. I may wait for the series to wrap up and then read it all in one go.
Chris Roberson said...
Yep yep yep! (Though, to pick nits, Moorcock changed the name to Seaton Begg in the later stories, to differentiate the character from that of Sexton Blake, who is still under trademark by IPC, to avoid any possible legal entanglements. I can only assume that in the collection the older instances of "Sexton" will be replaced accordingly.)
Rex Mundi certainly went through a lot of changes of artist too. However, they have been good about collecting sequences as graphic novel compilations.
I followed Rex Mundi for the first few years, but lost track of it after it moved to Dark Horse. I may wait for the series to wrap up and then read it all in one go.
# posted by :
7/11/07 4:10 PM
:
7/11/07 4:10 PM
wotcher, chris --
Actually Fleetway don't strictly own Sexton Blake but when I did my first Seaton Begg story for DC I thought it best to save DC any problems. Nobody's likely to sue me, but someone might see a milk cow in DC. This way, too, I could make my friend Iain Sinclair into my trademark. I own his name and appearance, according to the DC ownership details. He still owns his own soul, but I'm working on that.
Thanks for comments. Begg was never a direct version of Blake since, as many have pointed out before me, Blake wasn't really much of a character -- he was defined by the villains he fought. I worked on the series during its last years, when some attempt had been made to give him a personality, and a bit more of a sex life. The best ones were done by Jack Trevor Story (who wrote the novel on which Hitchcock rather faithfully based THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY) who turned them into comedy thrillers. I srote one Blake (CARIBBEAN CONFLICT with Jim Cawthorn) but the right-wing editor didn't like my pro-Castro take, even though this was before Castro had become a 'villain'. Though they weren't THAT close to Sexton Blake, I enjoyed doing these stories the more I went on with them and wanted to publish them with Lou, partly because Lou could guarantee a Picacio cover and I knew he liked the stories, which was another plus. I also like what he's done with Pyr. I love John's cover. It's a sort of anniversary. John illustrated Tales from the Texas Woods, which had one of these stories done specially for it. His Elric STEALER OF SOULS cover's going to be good, too. He's now painted the Albino in three different guises! He'll be getting sick of it soon...
Anyone interested in Blake can get a lot of information, stories, features and pictures from the Blakiana website which I think is juzt back on or is about to go back on. One of the best collections of Sexton Blake stories and one of the most knowledgeable Blake scholars around is our own Jess Nevins. Texas is indeed the centre of the multiverse.
Mike Moorcock
Actually Fleetway don't strictly own Sexton Blake but when I did my first Seaton Begg story for DC I thought it best to save DC any problems. Nobody's likely to sue me, but someone might see a milk cow in DC. This way, too, I could make my friend Iain Sinclair into my trademark. I own his name and appearance, according to the DC ownership details. He still owns his own soul, but I'm working on that.
Thanks for comments. Begg was never a direct version of Blake since, as many have pointed out before me, Blake wasn't really much of a character -- he was defined by the villains he fought. I worked on the series during its last years, when some attempt had been made to give him a personality, and a bit more of a sex life. The best ones were done by Jack Trevor Story (who wrote the novel on which Hitchcock rather faithfully based THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY) who turned them into comedy thrillers. I srote one Blake (CARIBBEAN CONFLICT with Jim Cawthorn) but the right-wing editor didn't like my pro-Castro take, even though this was before Castro had become a 'villain'. Though they weren't THAT close to Sexton Blake, I enjoyed doing these stories the more I went on with them and wanted to publish them with Lou, partly because Lou could guarantee a Picacio cover and I knew he liked the stories, which was another plus. I also like what he's done with Pyr. I love John's cover. It's a sort of anniversary. John illustrated Tales from the Texas Woods, which had one of these stories done specially for it. His Elric STEALER OF SOULS cover's going to be good, too. He's now painted the Albino in three different guises! He'll be getting sick of it soon...
Anyone interested in Blake can get a lot of information, stories, features and pictures from the Blakiana website which I think is juzt back on or is about to go back on. One of the best collections of Sexton Blake stories and one of the most knowledgeable Blake scholars around is our own Jess Nevins. Texas is indeed the centre of the multiverse.
Mike Moorcock
# posted by :
8/9/07 9:27 PM
:
8/9/07 9:27 PM
Thanks for the clarification, Mike. I saw a copy of the ARC for the collection in the hands of Peggy Hailey over the weekend, and was vastly jealous. Waiting forward even more eagerly than before to the book's release!
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