What isn't so obvious about The Sundered Worlds, which is admittedly a bit rough, is how many things it actually predicted which are now at the leading edge of scientific exploration. Moorcock predicted BLACK HOLES in this book, long before the scientists identified them. Rough and ready Quantum Mechanics! He predicted the physical idea of the MULTIVERSE, which is currently being examined and described in magazines like Scientific American and Nature and which has been used as a convenient plot device by sf writers, script writers and comix writers ever since! The Eternal Champion and The Sundered Worlds are almost the crude templates from which an enormous amount of imaginative fiction -- and scientific ideas -- have developed! These days, Moorcock is taken for granted, but anyone who writes fantasy or science fiction is likely to be using an idea which he first proposed. I'm an old academic technophile who years ago picked The Sundered Worlds up in a garish pulp format, thought the writing was a little crude, but was astonished at the intellect revealed. These ideas preceded most scientific speculation, let alone the scientific realities! It is maybe ironic that those 'New Wave' writers like Ellison, Ballard and Disch, for instance, have actually made far more accurate predictions than the vaunted technical sf writers like Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov. You need more than an engineering degree to get a real instinct for the world of tomorrow! Metaphysics, astrophysics and advanced physics move closer and closer together. Like Clarke, Moorcock has an almost Biblical sense of Creation (and a Creator, even) and shares Oppenheimer's almost mystical grasp of physics -- but it is a pretty good grasp of physics and his rapid absorption of Chaos math has made his speculative work increasingly coherent and constantly stimulating. Why he sits so awkwardly across the genres is that even in his fantasy stories Moorcock is advancing real ideas, examining real problems, considering real possibilities. This is a book anyone interested in the growth of the fantasy and science fiction genres should make essential reading.
