Meeting Your Heroes

Monday 29th June

Discussion at the British Library about London with Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair.

I have been a Michael Moorcock fan since discovering the Hawkmoon books of the Eternal champion. I have been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series. Why oh why has there not been an great adaption of these books, so influential for a lot of science fiction. There has been chatter about it, but only Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's Book 2 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has come close.

Currently, working my way through London Orbital and fascinated by the area around Epsom, having a hospital for the mentally ill and how this can be 'lost'. So the grounds have been sold on for housing. Some thing to investigate and go to view. London surrounded by a chain of mad hospitals before the M25, but now threaded together by the tarmac link.

The evening was fantastic. I was sat on the front row. So they were sat about 3 or 4 meters away from me. It was like being part of a conversation as they chatted for hour. I had to hold myself back and wanting to comment to be part of the conversation.

It was a discussion on how all these layer of cultural reference could be picked up and used to create fiction. They felt the point really were the Beatles appearance and how the cultural elite had to give way. Lots of insults hurtled at Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim. They had a go at a lot of early sci-fi, as when MM became editor of New Worlds. How he went to buy a stack of America SF magazine and only found 2 or 3 stories he liked.

They had a diversion on how people picked up things to 'old' for them. Alan Moore mentioned the New Worlds magazine and how he could of become a stalker fan of MM when he was a teenager! AM gave an example of one his Swamp Thing stories which was pretty horrific and was one of the comics to have the Comics Code Authority stamp taken off because of the content. One of AM's fans came up to him and told him that the comic had been given to him by his Dad at the age of 8 for a coach journey gave him nightmares for a long time afterwards.

Having read a couple of New Worlds, I am not sure of the context. They talked about Williams Burroughs and his style, which I had come to via Philip Jose Farmer rewriting Tarzan by William rather than Edgar. Then I got a copy of the Nova Express and it definitely was beyond me at that point. A film of 'The Naked Lunch' was just plain weird.

So the question is should I give my daughter (12) a copy of 'From Hell' by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. I remember watching the Softly Softly team of Barlow and Watts discuss the Ripper investigation. This was where I found out about Duke of Clarence theory. Typically, when she found out about Jack the Ripper, she googled it and found the background. (Too clever by half at times).

MM talked about his friend J G Ballard and his writing in suburbia of Shepperton of how he would take the children to school (after his wife had died) and go back with a glass and bottle of whisky. Then just write and how it would words, ideas would float out, some would be good and some probably bad. Iain Sinclair chipped in here, pointing out that Shepperton was were the Martian had crossed the River Thames in HG Wells' War of the Worlds.

It is intriguing that MM was born in 1939 and how his attitude shaped the decade of the 1960's. As my father was born in 1930 and his distaste for the 1960's. Both my dad and MM, I think had a great time during the war as John Boorman did in his film of the period. This was set in South London where MM was born and I remember watching it with my mum; who at first hated it, but then changed her mind and told my sisters to go and see it. Seeing the world through a child's eyes and how different the world can appear.

This suggests there was a change and my parent were on the wrong side of the tide. My father was very anti 1960s, yet there was only 9 years that separate him and Michael Moorcock. I wonder how close were there childhoods?

I am looking for to reading Alan Moore's book, Jerusalem about the relationship of Northampton and London. The psycho-geographic links between the two. Moore talked about King John (who might or not been a bad king), Richard the Third and Cromwell. All people who create strong opinions with readers and historians. This is a text novel, so will prove intriguing of how he works.

Michael talked about Notting Hill and how he used it as a back drop for the Jerry Cornelius stories. Where he met another local who told him that under the old convent was a portal to another parallel world. Something that he, MM, had believed he had written about in one of his books, maybe Cure for Cancer?

It was a great evening and I got my copies of Mother London and The Entropy Tango signed by MM. He was very graceful through out the whole evening and I was very happy to have met him.