Moorcock's determination to remain himself, warts and all, means that he hasn't dumped his old, rough self (the way Rushdie did with Grimus, for
instance, or Ballard did with Wind From Nowhere) and so you get the lot -- the teenager's squibs done for newspapers and pulp magazines -- and the literary subtleties of 'Third World War' and others. Most of Moorcock's literary fiction is collected in books like London Bone, but this is well worth it just for the gorgeous pulp fantasy stories alone. His story about Alexander, The Greater Conqueror, was done for an existing magazine cover. It reminds us of the author's profound interest in history and philosophy -- and what a damned good S&S Opera he could produce from his earliest years. Moorcock is one of our greatest national treasures and the media no longer seems to notice just how good he is -- and how good he's been for forty years or more! More complex and inventive than Tolkien, at his best he rises to consistent flights of language which are amongst the finest in modern English fiction. You might not see exactly why Ackroyd rates him so highly from this, but you will get a notion of why Angela Carter called him 'the master storyteller of our time'.