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the complete review - fiction

A Cure for Cancer

by
Michael Moorcock

general information | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : neatly conceived, fairly well-done dystopian adventure

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

       A Cure for Cancer is prefaced by a note for readers: "This book has an unconventional structure." That it does. Where the first Jerry Cornelius book, The Final Programme, is a fairly straightforward novel, A Cure for Cancer ventures considerably farther, stretching form and function.
       Moorcock also acknowledges that "parts of this novel originally appeared in" several dozen British and American periodicals (everything from New Worlds to Guns & Ammo to Scientific American). Much of this material in fact refers to the title-headings Moorcock uses throughout the novel -- grabbed straight from the headlines, as it were. Most apparently have fairly little to do with the actual content of the chapters, whether they read It's KLM's 50th Anniversary. We Thought You'd Like to Share a Few Happy Moments or My Sleep-Talking Shocked My Husband. Still, they don't appear that out of place, given how much else is also unconventional, including the odd structure (the book is divided into four parts: Diagnosis and three "operations", along with additional medical sub-divisions) and the unusual tale itself.
       A cure for cancer ? Perhaps in some broadest sense, the cancer referring to civilization's own rot, but really that isn't what the book aims to deliver.
       What it does deliver is another Jerry Cornelius adventure saga, more wildly and creatively spun out than the first. The novel begins beautifully: "The time might be July 31st 1970." The place is London -- very much Jerry's town.
       Jerry is still (or again) recognizable, though it is an oddly inverted (black for white) reveler that is revealed. He has moved on from the needle-guns of The Final Programme to the more intriguing vibragun, which can literally shake anything (and anyone) apart. The world is an unsettled place. Geopolitics are messier still than even in our own familiar reality, with Israel, for example, taking over the Balkans. The world is so upside-down that Jerry can claim: "There was no doubt about it; America was the last decent country to eat in."
       "Our family always were great survivors" Frank Cornelius tells brother Jerry, and so they are -- with Frank reprising his bad guy-lead, and beloved sister Catherine a vague presence too.
       Warfare has grown more expansive, and Jerry finds himself dragged in. He doesn't like it -- but everything is relative:

Jerry didn't mind the bombs as much as the rock scene. He wouldn't care what they sent so long as it wasn't Simon and Garfunkel.

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Links:

• Four Walls Eight Windows publicity page

• Moorcock's Weekly Miscellany
• Michael Moorcock Homepage at Sweet Despise
• Bibliography
• Interview at 3 AM
• Interview at Crescent Blues
• Interview at Locus

• Other volumes from The Cornelius Chronicles (The Cornelius Quartet):
  • The Final Programme (The Final Program)
  • The English Assassin
  • The Condition of Muzak
• King of the City
• A Nomad of the Time Streams
  • The Warlord of the Air
  • The Land Leviathan
  • The Steel Tsar

• See Index of Science Fiction
• See Index of Contemporary British fiction

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About the Author:

       Michael Moorcock, born in 1939, is a prolific British author.

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