Moorcock On Anderson And Moore

"One of the most influential fantasy novels I ever read"

-Michael Moorcock ON Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 2014), front cover.

 

"It has a wonderful, wild, manic originality, a driving story and a genuine feel of the grim realities informing the Anglo-Saxon myth and legend which few other fantasies possess. The inevitability of its drama, its dooms and its emotional conflicts made this one of the most influential fantasy novels I ever read"

-Michael Moorcock, IN op. cit., p. i.

The first sentence of the second quotation is repeated on the back cover.

Moorcock, a prolific fantasy writer, is able to gauge how influential The Broken Sword is. As a reader, I agree with the rest of his remarks.

"Alan Moore is one of the great visionaries of our age and Jerusalem is one of the great visionary books of our age. Jerusalem buzzes with life; it's a semiotic ocean of a book which makes Ulysses look like a primer. Vigorous, vulgar and wise, it's packed with a million observations and insights and some of the best writing on the planet. It's what we've been waiting for - the great British novel."

-Michael Moorcock ON Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016), back cover.

I have compared and contrasted Anderson and Moore more than once so it is appropriate to round up Moorcock's comments on The Broken Sword and Jerusalem. However, big fan of Alan Moore at his best though I am, I think that Moorcock grossly over-hypes Jerusalem.