Introduction from Moorcock's Book of Martyrs

It could be argued that one of the main themes of nineteen-century fiction had to do with the attempt of the individual to find personal freedom in what we should today call a repressive society, whereas in the Western democracies the problem of many contemporary people, the heirs to the great radical and libertarian movements of the early years of this century, is how we should use our freedom. Like writers who will invent alternative repressions in order to continue writing in a traditional mode, some will give up that freedom rather than face the problem - identifying with any sort of orthodoxy, whether political, religious, or quasi-religious, to demand a denial of their individuality. Ironically others will lose their freedom by allowing themselves to be used as totem figures by those who see them as personifications of the free spirit they themselves yearn to be: the fate of many artists who become public figures only to be, in different ways, destroyed by the very public which worships them. Self-consciousness, which makes actors of us all, turns the innocent Fool into the self-destructive Demon.

The greater the public attention one receives, the harder it is to retain a clear image of one's own identity. Although Glogaeur in Behold the Man has a deep-seated need to have the truth of the gospels affirmed, he is manipulated, right from the moment that he meets John the Baptist, into becoming the messiah that people need.

My Cornelius stories are, amongst other things, about the search of the free spirit for an individual morality not at odds with the demands of society, for to make a virtue of alienation (in the Byronic manner) is to lose perspective quite as easily as if one make a virtue of orthodoxy (in the Kipling manner). Orthodoxy ,of course, forces the individual into the Byronic pose; aggressive men can make 'hard' women; hysterical authorities can peaceful demonstrations into riots. Repressive authority creates violence. Chaos against Law - a balance must be struck between the two. My stories are generally about people who seek that balance. From Elric, through my few actual sf novels, through the entire Eternal Champion cycle, to Jerry Cornelius, the heroes and heroines - Fools all - try to find equilibrium between what they believe and what the world wishes them to accept, and those who fail (in my earlier works at least) often die as a result of their failure. The Cornelius family survives to seek again because, like m,e, it is essensially optimistic. I believe that eventually we shall all find a way to be ourselves while serving the needs of our society: A time will come when the orthodox shall learn to tolerate unorthodox and vice versa in what is no more, I suppose, than an ideal liberal democracy.

Some of the 'martyrs' of these stories are primarily people who seek to impose a private vision on the world and who suffer accordingly. Some of them (there is at least one obvious example) end up creating an orthodoxy quite as extreme as anything they have attempted to overthrow. Both Karl Glogaeur and Max File (Webmaster Note: Max File was changed to Max von Bek in the Millennium edition of Flux) attempt to create a new reality. Both succeed (though in the Case of 'Flux' - rewritten at the request of a magazine editor when I was young - the theme is somewhat simplified) and both pay a price for that success. Another simpler theme to be found in several of these stories is that of the individual without much natural aggression who is crushed by an intolerant world. The only fully fledged fantasy story here, The Greater Conqueror makes use almost wholly of metaphor and symbolism to carry its theme - it is the nature of the form - but none the less Alexander can be seen as an individual manipulated and destroyed by the demands of a powerful public will.

Inevitably confused by self and society, self and environment, the modern individual finds it increasingly difficult to discover a satisfactory borderline between the demands of the society and the demands of instinct. There are no easily isolated evils. So far as their specific conclusions are concerned the great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century radicals have been proved at very least unsophisticated. Too many visionary idealists have died in this century because their private visions have been judged incompatible with the terrifying orthodoxies they have helped establish. Too many people seem unable to make any other response to the suffering and brutality of the world than that of violent political action or a falling back on such maxims as 'To thine own self be true'. My response, of course, is to write books and, in the act of writing, to hope to discover at least a few clues which will help solve the dilemma; to encourage a little more tolerance between those who are of an orthodox disposition and those who are not, for society, it seems to me, can make good use of both temperaments. The world probably has need of saints and sinners - but I look forward to the day when it will no longer need martyrs of any persuasion.

Michael Moorcock