The Cornelius Quartet
cover from the first edition
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| Author | Michael Moorcock |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Cornelius Chronicles |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Jerry Cornelius |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Publisher | Avon Books |
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Publication date
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1977 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 974 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 3893119 |
| 823/.9/14 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.M8185 Cq 1977 PR6063.O59 |
The Cornelius Quartet is the collective name for the Jerry Cornelius novels by Michael Moorcock, although the first one-volume edition was entitled The Cornelius Chronicles. It is composed of The Final Programme, A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin and The Condition of Muzak. The collection has remained continuously in print for 30 years.
The four novels are set in an ever shifting, yet always fashionable, alternate "multiverse" of anarchist revolutionaries and English popart turmoil. They chart the adventures of a wide range of recurring characters, notably Jerry Cornelius and his sister Catherine, Una Persson and Colonel Pyat. The books are neither straight science fiction or pure fantasy, Moorcock himself commented "Much of my work borrowed from the iconography and vocabulary of science fiction in the 1960s but I would not, for instance, classify the Jerry Cornelius tetralogy as a genre work".
The Complete Review said that it comprised "an arc of Jerry Cornelius-adventures, from the (fairly) straightforward action-adventure of the first, The Final Programme, to the metaphysical summa of The Condition of Muzak." It observes that "Cornelius is a superhero, but a flawed one. He is indestructible and yet has weaknesses. He is both a former Jesuit and a physicist. Party-animal and solitary soul. By the end of the tetralogy he is a messiah – yet another role he is not ideally suited for."
Reviewing the 974-page volume, Matthew Wolf-Meyer noted its influence on a host of contemporary artists in music and literature, writing that :
Moorcock wrote "A note on the Jerry Cornelius Tetralogy" in 1976 in which he outlined the 'disciplined logic' which underpinned the work as a unified whole.
In an interview for "The Zone" science fiction magazine, Moorcock later commented that the stories in the Cornelius saga were "more criticism and commentary on their times than they were celebration, I knew there wasn't enough hard political infrastructure to make the sentiment come true. I said while it was happening that I knew it was a Golden Age. I sensed it couldn't last."
The collection was first published as "The Cornelius Chronicles" in 1977 by Avon Books and a revised version under this name appeared in 1979 with an introduction by John Clute. It first appeared under the title of "The Cornelius Quartet" in 1993 in Britain and 2001 in the United States. It was published as "Les Aventures de Jerry Cornelius" in France. The current American edition was published by Four Walls Eight Windows in June 2001.
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Wikipedia