The Barnes & Noble Review
The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius: Stories of the Comic Apocalypse is a collection of 11 Michael Moorcock stories featuring Jerry Cornelius, one of Moorcock's most popular and enigmatic literary creations.

Cornelius is a curious mix of James Bond, Mick Jagger, and Jack the Ripper. The English assassin and emotionally disturbed time-traveler -- who has been called "the ultimate postmodern antihero," "the world's first cyberpunk," and "messiah to the Age of Science" -- burst onto the literary landscape in the 1960s as a too-cool secret agent battling the forces of Chaos while taking time to enjoy the (ahem!) more corporeal joys of life.

Included in this collection are not only classic stories from the '60s and '70s ("The Peking Junction," "The Delhi Division," and "The Swastika Set-Up") but also three stories never before published in the States. One such story, the novella "Firing the Cathedral," puts Cornelius in a post-9/11 world struggling with global warming, terrorism, and -- as always -- looming Chaos.

Fans of the popular Elric of Melniboné, Corum, and Hawkmoon sequences will find Cornelius a delightful, less fantastical variation on Moorcock's Eternal Champion in his Multiverse mythos. Including almost four decades of historically based stories, this collection is entertaining reading and provides fodder for hours of lively political and socioeconomic debate. Paul Goat Allen

Genre: Fantasy