Part of Series
'I am Oona, the shape-taker, Grafin von Bek, daughter of Oone the Dreamthief and Elric, Sorcerer Emperor of Melniboné' Ulric von Bek, now married to Oona, the Daughter of Dreams, has been abducted by a band of spectral natives, while travelling through Canada. Oona gives chase, en route to the Skrayling Oak which contains all realities, to brave the maelstrom of a mythic America - where malign forces try to pitch her against Elric, an aspect of the Eternal Champion and her father. Meanwhile, the captured Ulric finds himself once more in the multiverse where finally he is reunited with his alternate self, Elric, and his wife, Oona. There, the three of them must take arms against an impossible enemy, bent on destroying the Skrayling Oak. For if the tree falls, so too does the multiverse . . .
Author
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels. Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine. During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.
