With his first full novel in almost ten years (not counting his Doctor Who book), Michael Moorcock - the most influential figure in modern fantasy and science fiction - returns to the city of his birth. London has always been a central character in Moorcock's work, from the high-literary fiction of MOTHER LONDON to the roof gardens of Jerry Cornelius. Now return to London just after the war, a city desperately trying to get back on its feet. And one young boy, Michael Moorcock, who is about to discover a world of magic and wonder.
Between his first tentative approaches to adulthood - a job on Fleet Street, the first stirrings of his interest in writing - and a chance encounter with a mysterious Carmelite Friar, we see a version of Moorcock's life that is simultaneously a biography and a story. Mixing elements of his real life with his adventures in a parallel London peopled with highwaywomen, musketeers and magicians, this is Moorcock at his dazzling, mercurial best.
About the Author
Michael Moorcock (1939-) Michael Moorcock is one of the most important figures in British SF and Fantasy literature. The author of many literary novels and stories in practically every genre, his novels have won and been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Whitbread and Guardian Fiction Prize. In 1999, he was given the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award; in 2001, he was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame; and in 2007, he was named a SFWA Grandmaster.
Michael Moorcock is also a musician who has performed since the seventies with his own band, the Deep Fix; and, as a member of the prog rock band, Hawkwind, won a gold disc.
His tenure as editor of New Worlds magazine in the sixties and seventies is seen as the high watermark of SF editorship in the UK, and was crucial in the development of the SF New Wave. Michael Moorcock's literary creations include Hawkmoon, Corum, Von Bek, Jerry Cornelius and, of course, his most famous character, Elric. He has been compared to, among others, Balzac, Dumas, Dickens, James Joyce, Ian Fleming, J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Although born in London, he now splits his time between homes in Texas and Paris.
Industry Reviews
displaying as it does the full spectrum of Moorcock's idiosyncratic qualities...fusing the literary approach of MOTHER LONDON with the generic fun of his earlier work * Literary Review *
Fizzes with idea and layers of meaning that transcend the comic-book plot. Bring on part two * The Times *
Whispering Swarm is fantastically entertaining...Welcome back Mr Moorcock; nobody else quite has your style * SFX *
inexhaustibly inventive...welcome back Michael * The Spectator *
Beautifully written and wonderfully descriptive * Sci-Fi Now *
[in THE WHISPERING SWARM] the capital becomes a character, much as it did in Moorcock's 1988 masterpiece MOTHER LONDON * The Financial Times *
a discursive book, with as many meditations of marriage, metaphysics, religion and science as there are rollicking sword fights * The Guardian *
merging autobiography and fantasy may not appeal to everyone...but I think it comes off because so much of a writer's life is conducted in his head and in books - his own, and other peoples...the whispering swarm is the contact internal murmuring made from books which demand to be made * The Sunday Telegraph *
Odd and compelling, rambling and intense, Moorcock guides us through the byways of his extraordinary mind and explores the sources of his fiction * The Daily Mail *
The resulting tale is enough to make you wish all writers would garland their memoirs with highway men and cavaliers and roundheads * The Observer *
