Lancer Books brought out a two-volume set of Elric stories in 1967. By the time the second novella saw print the readership had made up their minds: they loved Elric! Playing on the theme of the Ultimate Outsider, Moorcock’s protagonist wasn’t even human in the strictest sense. Readers had never seen anything quite like the albino prince before and initially weren’t sure what to make of him. To save us all, a young man from England arrived on the scene in the rather unlikely place of the pages of John Carnell’s Science Fantasy. Michael Moorcock wrote stories about a character that, without his soul-drinking sword, was too weak to raise himself off the couch.

Somewhere along the way the writers (with the exception of the redoubtable Fritz Leiber) had forgotten all about the sorcery part of the equation, leaving the basic plot being the lumbering oaf facing off against the frail but far smarter and more powerful sorcerer, who in some act of hubris would manage to screw everything up and wind up with his head in a bag. In any event, after thirty years of Thongors, Elaks, Kyriks, Duars, Donters, Braks, Whacks, Thugs and Thwacks, readers were sick of it. He spawned lots of imitators, lots and lots of imitators… Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria is generally credited with starting the boom in heroic fantasy that began in the late 1920s and has been with us ever since.

ELRIC OF MELNIBONE: Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 w/rights to future volumes through us at published price.

Elric of melnibone books