Michael Moorcock Quote
The moral point of The Eternal Champion is pretty simple but I think it is worth mentioning. Recently, in a radio interview, I was asked if my use of the forces of Law and Chaos was not, after all, merely another version of Tolkien's or Howard's Good and Evil. I replied emphatically--I use the ideas of Law and Chaos precisely because I am suspicious of simplistic notions of good and evil. In my multiverse, Law and Chaos are both legitimate ways of interpreting and defining experience. Ideally, the Cosmic Balance keeps both sides in equilibrium. By playing the Game of Time (or the Blood-Red Game as Asquiol calls it) the various participants maintain that equilibrium. When the scales tip too far towards Law we move toward rigid orthodoxy and social sterility, a form of decadence. When Chaos is uppermost we move too far towards undisciplined and destructive creativity.
The moral point of The Eternal Champion is pretty simple but I think it is worth mentioning. Recently, in a radio interview, I was asked if my use of the forces of Law and Chaos was not, after all, merely another version of Tolkien's or Howard's Good and Evil. I replied emphatically--I use the ideas of Law and Chaos precisely because I am suspicious of simplistic notions of good and evil. In my multiverse, Law and Chaos are both legitimate ways of interpreting and defining experience. Ideally, the Cosmic Balance keeps both sides in equilibrium. By playing the Game of Time (or the Blood-Red Game as Asquiol calls it) the various participants maintain that equilibrium. When the scales tip too far towards Law we move toward rigid orthodoxy and social sterility, a form of decadence. When Chaos is uppermost we move too far towards undisciplined and destructive creativity.
Related Quotes
About Michael Moorcock
As editor of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States, leading to the advent of cyberpunk. His publication of Bug Jack Barron (1969) by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament, some British MPs condemned the Arts Council of Great Britain for funding the magazine. He is also a recording musician; he has contributed to the music acts Hawkwind, Blue Öyster Cult, Robert Calvert and Spirits Burning, and to his own project, Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix.
In 2008, The Times named Moorcock in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".