Jerry Cornelius is a scientist, a rock star, and an assassin. He is the hippest adventurer of them all: tripping through a pop art nightmare in which kidnappings, murder, sex and drugs are a daily occurrence. Along with his savvy and ruthless partner-in-chaos, Miss Brunner, Cornelius is on a mission to control a revolutionary code for creating the ultimate human being, a modern messiah—the final programme. The first book in the Cornelius Quartet is the groundbreaking introduction to the misadventures and vendettas of Jerry Cornelius, one of modern literature’s most distinctive characters, the product of a bewildering post-modern culture, and an inspiration for generations of characters since. "Michael Moorcock, rechazando las disputas de límites que han reducido la novela a una confusión de subgéneros en conflicto, recobra en estos cuatro volúmenes una vitalidad y una amplitud proteicas que pudieran llamarse dickensianas si no pertenecieran tan por completo a nustro tiempo volátil. En verdad, ninguna obra reciente de ficción ha manejado mejor las contingencias vertiginosas de la imaginación del medio siglo que esta brava arlequinada de juegos de identidad, realidades falsificadas, historia paródica, y un pobre y ordinario apocalipsis" (W.L. Webb, The Guardian). "Moorcock ha creado una figura capaz de moverse a través de las versiones míticas de los problemas de hoy, sin intentar situarlas o situarse a sí mismo en contextos simplificados. Una ficción semejante, en un mundo de imaginación escasa, es un don necesario" (Harpers Bazaar) Michael Moorcock nació en Inglaterra, ha publicado más de 50 libros y fue animador principal de la célebre revista New Worlds, que introdujo el término "ficción especulativa"; una literatura "moderna, coherente y vital". En EL PROGRAMA FINAL, primera de una serie de cuatro novelas independientes, anticipa la herencia decepcionante y caótica de la década del 60, un dorado presente en el que todo parecía instantáneamente posible.

Michael Moorcock author.

The English Assassin is the third of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels. It looks through a many-sided lens at English assumptions about themselves, about class, and about the Empire over the past seventy years. It includes all the familiar characters from previous Cornelius novels (Miss Brunner, Bishop Beesley, Frank Cornelius, etc) and introduces us to a host of colourful new ones (especially Jerry's unforgettable mother). The philosophical and moral themes of the book touch on a profusion of problems - violent revolution, the responsibilities of colonialism, racialism, sex and superstition - while the novel as a whole is always highly readable and entertaining.

Civilization as we know it has been annihilated. The decay and chaos of the multiverse have left Europe in a surreal, yet ever-fashionable, mess. Jerry Cornelius finds himself in an increasingly futile series of guises, part of a cast of characters dancing the Entropy Tango towards oblivion. Will the legendary Cornelius ever be united with his true beloved, his sister Catherine? And will balance ever be restored to devastated London? Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, The Condition of Muzak is the fourth, climactic novel in the Cornelius Quartet. But this is by no means the last we will see of Jerry Cornelius—an indelible spirit of counter-culture who continues to inspire writers and artists to this day.

Catherine Cornelius and Una Persson (usually supporting characters in the Jerry Cornelius novels) grow bored of their current tranquil existence together as lovers and separate in search of adventure. Their stories are told in parallel from this point until the end, where they rejoin and the story begins again. Catherine, generally portrayed in a saintly and/or martyred role moves through a series of relationships in which she is abused or dominated by her partner. She attempts at one point to get Jerry Cornelius (her brother and sometimes her lover) to beat her, but he is unable to satisfy her. Una Persson, who ordinarily fills Jerry's role as the eternal revolutionary when he is unwilling or unable to, embroils herself in a series of revolutionary wars - always on the losing side. At the end, Una begins to despair of the situation in which she has found herself, and is rescued by Catherine who takes her back to the cottage they shared at the start of the novel to recuperate. This is an inversion of their roles throughout the book, as up until that point Una has been an active combatant and Catherine has been increasingly dominated.

The Entropy Tango is a late 20th century Grand Guignol. Its mise en scene is a climacteric world in revolutionary upheaval, its players refugees from the Cornelius tetralogy—The Final Programme, A Cure For Cancer, The English Assassin, and The Condition of Muzak. The archetypes are Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot. The basic theme of the Cornelius mythos is the obsessive search for identity in a rapidly changing cityscape. Entropy is the metaphor for identity failure. Jerry Cornelius is no longer a force for Chaos, he is its victim—he is unable to control the megaflow. The city decays and the revolutionaries age, while the temperature falls. The twin leitmotifs of the catastrophe are alienation and paranoia. Essentially a romance, The Entropy Tango incorporates anarchistic, paradoxical and apocryphal material. Moorcock abandons classical symbolism in favour of images containing the optimum number of associations—metaphors capable of many meanings. The novel is conceived in terms of tone, pace and mood, and quotes from earlier work or newspapers, magazines and pop songs (either directly or in terms of images, atmosphere and style). Written with Moorcock's characteristic bravado, The Entropy Tango is witty, lyrical and allegorical. The iconography is kaleidoscopic and the irony penetrates like a shot from a needle gun.

Where Jerry Cornelius mysteriously becomes a participant in the Rock 'n' Roll Wars and the music business is never the same again. A cast of thousands and a myriad of melodies.

In the 1960s Jerry Cornelius was the coolest assassin on the Ladbroke Grove block. By the 1970s The Condition of Muzak had won the Guardian Fiction Prize and The Final Programme was a feature film starring Jon Finch, Jenny Runacre, Hugh Griffiths and Sterling Hayden. In the 1980s the world's first cyberpunk continued to inspire a generation of writers including William Gibson, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and bands like The Human League. By the 1990s he was up and running towards the guns again in stories like 'The Spencer Inheritance', 'The Camus Connection' and 'Cheering For The Rockets', which dealt with the icons and key events of the day. Now, in Firing The Cathedral, he responds to the attacks on America of September 2001 and their consequences, to the realities of global warming and global terrorism and, once again, the apocalypse has never seemed more terrifying, never been more fun. Cooler, sharper, his fingers firmly on the pulse of the 21st century, Jerry Cornelius is back, counting names and taking heads. And modern life will never feel the same to you again.

Jerry Cornelius is an English assassin, physicist, rock star, and messiah to the Age of Science. Written between 1965 and 1967, this sequence of four novels relating Cornelius' adventures has been credited with inspiring dozens of writers and artists to rethink the genre of science fiction. Set in a shifting, fluid version of the counter-culture 1960s, these books were among the most prominent 'New Wave' SF books. Jerry Cornelius is one of the most remarkable and distinctive characters in Moorcock's work, and his time-travelling, trippy and bizarre adventures are must-reads. Contains THE FINAL PROGRAMME, A CURE FOR CANCER, THE ENGLISH ASSASSIN and THE CONDITION OF MUZAK.