Moorock's Corum gets audio dramatization

[The Lensman]

Good news for fans of Michael Moorcock's "Corum", Graphic Audio just released a full cast audio dramatization of "The Knight Of Swords", with "The Queen Of Swords" coming June 13 and "The King Of Swords" June 29.

http://www.graphicaudio.net/catalogsearch/result/?q=corum

Corum was always my favorite incarnation of the Champion Eternal, and The Swords Trilogy my favorite series. Oddly, I don't remember being quite as fond of the second trilogy, but perhaps I just need to re-read it, as I haven't read either in a long time. But there was something just awesome about The Swords Trilogy. When First Comics released the adaptation of "The Knight Of Swords" with art by pre-Hellboy Mike Mignola, it was pretty much damn near how I imagined it. Still some of my favorite Mignola artwork to this day.

It'll be cool to hear Jhary-A-Conel in "Queen Of The Swords" and to hear Elric and Erekose in "King Of The Swords"!
Here's hoping that more of the Champion Eternal cycle gets the audio treatment since it doesn't look like we'll be getting on screen adaptations of them any time soon.

 

[Vorpal_Blade]

This is pretty cool. I have long been a fan of Moorcock's Eternal Champion Cycle.

 

[The Lensman]

Yeah, I stumbled across the news somehow and was pleasantly surprised that not only were they doing them, but the entire trilogy was coming out over the span of a month. There's a Flying J truck stop near me that sells Graphic Audio, and they have what look like some fairly recent ones (Sanderson's "Way Of Kings" or whatever it's called being the most notable that I'm aware of) but sadly, they did not have "The Knight Of Swords".

Looks like I'll have to order it since I don't know of anyone else who carries Graphic Audio in store.

 

[Vorpal_Blade]

It will probably be worth the money. it's' a great story.

 

[Set Harth]

#TeamHawkmoon

 

[The Lensman]

#TeamHawkmoon

HAWKMOON?!?!

I kid

Man, it's weird to think I haven't read these books in, oh I don't know......maybe twenty years? The Champion Eternal Cycle was my favorite fantasy series of all time, I spent a lot of time hunting down any books I could find by Moocock that featured characters named in the Champions various dreams.

I loved the hell out of those books, so I wonder how I'd see them today?

By the by, all of my copies are from the 60's, 70's (my favorite era) or the 80's.
I recall in the 90's they came out with the omnibus edition with some minor editorial changes, anybody recall what the most drastic change was? Seemed like several characters were retconned into being Von Beks. Also, what's the general consensus on the last five or so Elric books.....the ones written this century? For whatever reason, I've just never been able to pick them up...which would blow my younger self's mind.

 

[Set Harth]

By the by, all of my copies are from the 60's, 70's (my favorite era) or the 80's.

All of the ones I still have ( with one exception ) are from the 80s... in many cases the covers have utterly deteriorated piece by piece and have ultimately fallen off.

One of my Elric books is missing, you can even see the place it should go. Then again, it was probably the least memorable one. I think some others were lost in a fire.

I recall in the 90's they came out with the omnibus edition with some minor editorial changes, anybody recall what the most drastic change was? Seemed like several characters were retconned into being Von Beks.

I only have one of those... the Hawkmoon one! At the time I got it, it was the only way I could find the fourth book. It's an appealing format and it makes me wish I had picked up more of them.

Also, what's the general consensus on the last five or so Elric books.....the ones written this century? For whatever reason, I've just never been able to pick them up...which would blow my younger self's mind.

I haven't gone there either. And I totally get what you're saying about your younger self. At the height of my Elric fandom the very notion - that in the future more Elric books would come out and I wouldn't even read them - would have been more or less inconceivable. But I found The Revenge of the Rose to be kind of a hard slog and I couldn't even finish The Fortress of the Pearl. ( It was the same way with Tim Zahn's Star Wars books. Once upon a time I was the biggest Thrawn fan out there but Survivor's Quest was terrible and I just got over it and didn't give a crap anymore. )

The last "new" Moorcock book I tried to read was Fabulous Harbors back in the late 1990s and I hated it.

 

[The Lensman]

So I managed to pick up "The Knight Of The Swords" at a truck stop while traveling a week ago, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It is strange hearing Corum speak with, to my ears, an Irish-esque, accent. Though given all the names in the book, I shouldn't be surprised. Hearing the first part of the book up until he is dropped off at Moidels Mount was just....man. It's one thing to read it, another to hear. Well done!

Really want "The Queen Of The Swords" now, as it features Jhary-A-Conel, one of my favorite creations. Although I'm really, really looking forward to Elric and Erekose in the last book.
I found several Champion Eternal audiobooks on YouTube and gave them a listen....mainly Sailor On The Sea Of Fate and A Quest For Tanelorn. Probably my favorite story due not only to the presence of Corum, Hawkmoon and Erekose, but because we got to see that adventure from two perspectives.It's probably why the other team up in the Vanishing Tower is my second favorite story.

However that mysterious ship sailing on a dark and misty limbo sea, the dream like atmosphere aboard her, and the conversations between the incarnations of the Champions are some of my favorite chapters ever and elevate it over the other team up. It was interesting, on the audiobooks, to hear the pronunciations of the names. On "The Quest For Tanelorn" the guy proncounces "Corum" as "Cor-ROOM". In the full cast version, it's pretty much how it's spelled, which is how I've always pronounced it.

The "Quest For Tanelorn" guy also pronounces "Jhary-A-Conel" as "Zjary-AHkaNel" and uses a sort of Londo Mollari-esque accent when doing his voice. I've always pronounced Jhary's name as "Jar-ee-Uh-Conel" with no real emphasis on any syllable.

I did learn how to say Erekose's name though. I had always pronounced it as "E-Wreck-O's", so it was strange to hear it's correct pronunciation of "Air-eh-kose-say". It's been a great blast returning to the series of books I've probably read the most, even if it's just a quick glimpse. It's making me want to re-read them, which sucks because I just started a chronological read through of, what looks like to me, all "canon" Middle Earth stories as I've grown to love that universe over the last few years.

However there's something appealing about reading those smaller Champion Eternal books where they don't waste time, as many modern authors do, trying to "out Tolkien" Tolkien in the world building department. There's just something to be said for a story that gets to the goddamn point.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Wait, there were later Elric books? I'm not quite sure how to pick up where Stormbringer left off or are they set earlier in the chronology?

 

[Set Harth]

They are set earlier in the chronology.

Then there are the even more recent ones, which take place ( as I understand it ) during Elric's captivity at the hands of Jagreen Lern in Stormbringer.

 

[The Lensman]

Wait, there were later Elric books? I'm not quite sure how to pick up where Stormbringer left off or are they set earlier in the chronology?

They're set earlier in the chronology, something having to do with "dreamtime" or something similar. From Moorcock: "He learns his magical craft through a series of dreams, taking decades in the dream time but only a single night in his real time."

This allows him to add in an unlimited amount of stories.

Then there are the even more recent ones, which take place ( as I understand it ) during Elric's captivity at the hands of Jagreen Lern in Stormbringer.

I wasn't aware of that. I may research that to see which story it is.....not sure if it'll be enough to compel me to buy the newer books though.


Jumping back to Corum, I always wondered if the Hand Of Kwll and the Eye Of Rhynn wasn't a sly nod to Asquiol and Renark of "The Blood Red Game" aka "The Sundered Worlds".

Asquiol = Kwll
Renark = Rhynn

It's been so long since I've read "The Blood Red Game", but I thought both guys ended up with super powers or evolved upwards or something. I figured the two friends must've disagreed about something in their god state. I know the Corum series calls them "brothers", but it might just be one of those things that's mis-remembered with time.

IIRC, Renark was later retconned into being a von Bek, and one of the characters in ""The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius" was retconned as well.

 

[The Lensman]

The King Of The Swords has been released!

 

[Peak]

And I see that they will continue the series after the trilogy with "The Bull and the Spear"... Hopefully they continue with Elric/Hawkmoon and so on in the future. Just for a laugh I would like to see them tackle the Cornelius-books, though.... That may be the only way for me to understand them.

Moorcock & Sanderson are the two authors I currently buy directly when they are released from GA.

 

[The Lensman]

And I see that they will continue the series after the trilogy with "The Bull and the Spear"... Hopefully they continue with Elric/Hawkmoon and so on in the future. Just for a laugh I would like to see them tackle the Cornelius-books, though.... That may be the only way for me to understand them.

Moorcock & Sanderson are the two authors I currently buy directly when they are released from GA.

Awesome news! I was hoping they were going to do the second trilogy! I'd love it if they did full series on Hawkmoon, Elric and Erekose as well. I do wonder if there are any rights issues with Elric though. Every once in a while I hear some vague rumblings of an Elric film and I can't recall if anyone has the rights, or if it's just Moorcock saying "if there's a film, it needs to be done right" and I'm confusing things.


So for those that have read all the Champion Eternal books, what order do you typically read them? I've read the books about four or five times through, and the order was usually pretty much the order I got them. Once I had acquired pretty much every fiction tale Moorcock had written, I typically read them, if I recall correctly, something like this:

The Eternal Champion (Erekose)
some of the stand alone stories
The Elric series
a couple more stand alone stories
Phoenix In Obsidian (Erekose)
The Corum series
more stand alone stories
The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell (Erekose)
The Hawkmoon series (who's second trilogy originally ended the Champion Eternal saga)
The Von Bek stories
The Dragon In The Sword (Erekose and the new end to the saga)

Even before I acquired a lot of the stand alone stories, I tended to spread Erekose's stories out in between the other series in order to make it feel like he had experienced a lot by the time we get to the end of the whole thing. Of the four primary incarnations of the Champion, his series has the least amount of tales and is where it all begins, and with Dragon In The Sword, where it seems to end, though I guess you could still place that story before Quest For Tanelorn, since the ending there seems pretty final.

As for Jerry Cornelius, yeah....don't think I ever made it through all the books.

How are the Sanderson adaptations? I had thought of picking up The Way Of Kings....but there are like, 5 cd sets (each with 5-7 cds) just for the first book alone! I think the plan was for 10 books, so if they adapt them all in similar fashion, you'd end up with 50 or so sets! That's a pretty big investment in both time and money.

 

[Peak]

Yeah, the Sanderson-books are long and it's expensive, but on the other hand there is a lot of work going into these books (with all the actors, music and so on) and I feel that I can afford it. If anyone wants to listen to them but have a tight budget, the "normal" (narrated) version is quite good too. I originally found Sanderson when I heard that he would finish Wheel of Time and I "found" Graphic Audios Elantris somewhere just to see what he was like and I've been a fan of BS and GA ever since. (this was before they had the international store, and it was a pain to buy stuff from them because they only catetered to the US)

I originally read Elric and Hawkmoon when they were translated into Swedish, and bought all of the "Eternal Champion"-omnibuses once upon a time (and the "Cornelius"-books, but I still don't understand what's happening in most of them.. ) so I read them in that order (not the one here, I think it was Orion that did the one I read (UK edition, I guess) and von Bek was the first book, if I remember correctly.

Still haven't read the newer Elric-books and the books that wasn't in the Eternal Champion-series. I know that another company relased the two first Elric-books in audio (which I bought as CD) and promised a third one that never materialized. For some reason very few Moorcock-books have been released as audio books. That's the reason I hope that Grapic Audio will continue with at least the main Eternal Champion-books (and more if possible).