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Book Home  Books Information Jerry Cornelius
Jerry Cornelius
One of Michael Moorcock's most popular fictional creations
was Jerry Cornelius, a kind of hip secret agent of ambiguous and occasionally
polymorphous sexuality; the same characters featured in each of several
Cornelius books, but the individual books had little connection with
one another, as a variation of the multiverse theme. The first Jerry
Cornelius book, The Final Programme was made into a feature film starring
Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre.
The series draws plot elements from Moorcock's Elric
series, as well as the Commedia dell'arte. Moorcock hints in many
places that Cornelius may be an aspect of the Eternal Champion. Characters
from the Cornelius novels show up in much of Moorcock's other fiction:
for example, Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series has a character
called Jherek Carnelian; Una Persson appears in the Dancers series,
the Oswald Bastable books, and possibly as Oona in the latest Elric
books; and Colonel Pyat has his own non-SF series of books by Moorcock,
beginning with Byzantium Endures. The location of Notting Hill in
London features promimently.
Moorcock encouraged other authors and artists to create
works about Jerry Cornelius, in a sort of early open source attempt
at open brand sharing. One example is Norman Spinrad's The Last Hurrah
of the Golden Horde; another is Mœbius's The Airtight Garage.
The Nature of the Catastrophe, a collection of Jerry Cornelius stories,
was published in 1971. It includes works by Moorcock himself, James
Sallis, Brian Aldiss, Langdon Jones, M. John Harrison, Alex Krislov
and Maxim Jakubowski.
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