The Cornelius Chronicles by Michael Moorcock
The Cornelius Chronicles is a series of novels and short stories by Michael Moorcock, centered around the character Jerry Cornelius, a soldier of fortune navigating a surreal, sometimes dystopian world. The series begins with "The Final Programme," where Jerry, along with his brilliant collaborator Miss Brunner, embarks on a journey that culminates in the creation of a new, hermaphroditic being. This work is characterized by traditional science-fiction elements and an exploration of existential themes.
Subsequent stories, such as "A Cure for Cancer" and "The English Assassin," expand on Jerry's adventures, showcasing a darker tone and complex relationships, particularly with his sister Catherine. The overarching narrative reflects the entropic decay of society, paralleling Jerry's own struggles in a rapidly changing world. The later volumes, including "The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume II" and "Volume III," intertwine multiple characters and plotlines, incorporating anarchistic themes and historical contexts, while maintaining a continuous narrative thread.
Through various genres and storytelling techniques, including picaresque and surrealism, Moorcock's works challenge traditional narratives and engage readers in a multifaceted exploration of identity, love, and societal decay.
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The Cornelius Chronicles
First published:The Cornelius Chronicles (1977), comprising The Final Programme (1968), A Cure for Cancer (1971), The English Assassin (1972), and The Condition of Muzak (1977); The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume II (1986), comprising The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius (1976) and The Entropy Tango: A Comic Romance (1981); and The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume III (1987), comprising The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century (1976) and “The Alchemist’s Question” (1984)
Type of work: Collected works
Type of plot: Science fiction—alternate history
Time of work: 1960-1975, with time travel to other periods
Locale: Earth
The Plot
The Final Programme, first published in New Worlds magazine in 1965-1966, centers on the adventures in time of soldier of fortune Jerry Cornelius, his collaborator Miss Brunner, his shifty brother Frank, and his beloved sister Catherine. The novel is easy to read, linearly plotted, and full of traditional science-fiction elements. It tells the story of the clash between Jerry and Miss Brunner, a computer technician of enormous powers. Eventually the two get their computers and super-science formulas together in a womblike cave, where they merge themselves into a new hermaphrodite Messiah, destroyer/devourer of the world.
A Cure for Cancer, an “unconventional structure” according to Michael Moorcock himself, is a darker version of The Final Programme. Jerry reappears in 1970 as a black man with white hair who vampirizes those about him. In pursuit of his beloved sister Catherine, he goes to a strange Amerika and battles the loathsome Bishop Beesley who, together with Miss Brunner, metaphorically represents Moorcock’s idea of officialdom and life-denying orderliness. In contrast, Jerry and his cohorts represent a search for aesthetic harmony and love.
Many of the characters from the first two novels reappear in The English Assassin, in which Jerry’s story broadens and deepens. Retreating from the city and the 1970’s, Jerry spends most of the novel in a coffin as a turn-of-the-century romance of the British Empire at its hectic Jubilee peak flows around him. New characters appear, the two most important of whom are Una Persson, a stage singer, dancer, revolutionary, and lover to both Jerry and Catherine, and Mrs. Cornelius, a greedy, vulgar, sly, savage, indomitable, and wise Cockney survivor from an earlier twentieth century. Entropic decay of the British Empire becomes a mirror of Jerry’s decay in dehumanized London as the 1960’s turn into the sour 1970’s. The novel ends as a destroyer shells an English village while Jerry, in his Pierrot suit, and Catherine sail away for Normandy in their yacht Teddy Bear.
In The Condition of Muzak, Jerry’s story is retold from his earlier lives as phases in a harlequinade. Jerry as Harlequin (really Pierrot, the Weeper) tries to dominate the show to reach stable bliss with Columbine, his sister Catherine. Framing this mythic story is a realistic story of Jerry as a daydreaming rock musician spaced out on drugs, living in a slum flat in the Ladbroke Grove area of London. Jerry, Catherine, and Una Persson team up in a stage act and have sex together. Mother Cornelius dies, and the story ends with Jerry on his way to tell his pregnant sister of the fact.
No enclave or style is secure against time. All things aspire toward the condition of Muzak even as entropy rots all things. Jerry endures to tell readers how to live in the decaying cities of the world.
The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume II (1986) is made up of eleven short stories published in New Worlds and other magazines between 1969 and 1974. The stories were published as The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius (1976) and the novel The Entropy Tango: A Comic Romance (1981). Moorcock directs that the stories are to be read as one continuous narrative, which opens with Jerry as a Cuban guerrilla riding an albino horse out of Time Centre into China to kill General Way Hahng with a vibragun. The narrative closes as entropic degeneration sets in, with Jerry returning to London to bed Miss Brunner, visit his mother and sister, dope up, and shoot up a post office with his friend Mo. A series of similar fantastic adventures lies between. In the novel’s final story, “The Entropy Circuit,” Jerry meets Miss Brunner, Captain Maxwell, and his brother Frank in Rome and ends up shooting the pope.
The Entropy Tango centers on Una Persson’s adventures with anarchist Batko Makhno. It is 1948, and anarchy is spreading around the world. The novel concludes with anarchists blowing up Golden Gate Bridge, Una blinded when Fisherman’s Wharf explodes, and Makhno captured and electrocuted in Oregon, having become a martyr on six continents.
The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume III (1987) is made up of the novel The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century (1976) and the story “The Alchemist’s Question” (1984). The former, drawn from Miss Persson’s unpublished memoirs and written in an eighteenth century picaresque style, follows Una and Catherine from their bed outside time back into the twentieth century. Una experiences outcomes of the Bolshevik Revolution while Catherine explores orgasm with a variety of partners. Finally, weary of their travels, the two women return for cucumber sandwiches and tea. “The Alchemist’s Question,” the final episode in the career of the English Assassin, brings all the Cornelius characters together on the world stage for a “curtain call” conclusion to the series.