"10 - Elric at the End of Time 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

traordinarily sceptical of the supernatural. I have
always conceived my fantastic stories simply as thatЧ
fantastic stories, escapist entertainment which hopes
to give some pleasure to the reader. Any profundi-
ties in those romances are a tribute to the one who
discovers them rather than to me. For a long while
the exaggerated reaction of some readers to my fan-
tasies caused me to try to dismiss them altogether.
However, I should like to say that I denigrate nei-
ther the stories nor their readers, though I do prefer
my comedies to my melodramas and personally would
put a greater value on books such as Gloriana, The
Condition of Muzak, Byzantium Endures or The Brothel
in Rosenstrasse. I've always had a happy facility for
fantasy and I suppose it's common enough for some-
one to make less of something which comes easily to
them.

Some of the non-fiction pieces about Elric and Co.
which were in the original Sojan selection edited by
Dave Britton are still here, for whatever interest they
provide. I have Dave Britton and Mike Butterworth
to thank for many things, not least their willingness
to sift through long-forgotten piles of paper and find
manuscripts and tear-sheets (The Golden Barge would
never have been published had it not been for their

retaining a copy of the manuscript which I had
thought permanently lost) and I should also like to
recognise, once again, Ted Carnell's encouragement
as the editor of my first Elric stories, Peter Ledeboer's
kindness as the publisher who originally commis-
sioned the title story as a vehicle for Rodney Mat-
thew's illustrations, the present publishers Alison
Peacock, Simon Scott and Nick Webb of NEL and
the encouragement, inspiration and friendship of
many people, amongst them Jim Cawthorn, Eric
Bentcliffe, Ron Bennett, Alan Dodd, Arthur Thom-
son and Ethel Lindsay who have known me since,
as an enthusiastic and, I'm sure, sometimes irritating
fifteen-year-old, I first began to write the Sojan stories.

Michael Moorcock,
Fulham Road
July 1983

ELRIC

Elric at the End of Time