I don’t quite know what to make of this. ‘Stories’ is the first-person account of a magazine editor reflecting on his friendship with a writer named Rex Fisch, who has recently committed suicide. The idea of telling stories in both fiction and real life runs through this piece, and Moorcock is doing something of this himself here — his narrator is named ‘Mike’ and apparently modelled on himself, whilst Rex Fisch and the other characters are apparently fictional. I’ve no idea how far Moorcock has fictionalised his own life in the story — and therein lies the difficulty I had connecting with it.

The portrait of the characters’ lives and relationships is interesting enough; but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to know more about Moorcock’s life (and, perhaps, his work) to really appreciate this story. That’s why I’ve ended up feeling ambivalent about it.

Rating: ***

Elsewhere
‘Moorcock’s Miscellany’ website