A little imagination helps - Rated 
So if a little imagination helps, consider what it's like when your imagination is unreined. No reason to let a little reality stand in your way. And when the forms are constrained, it only somehow heightens the free play. Reinvention of self has rarely gone so far. Jerry's or yours.
Moorcock wrote about these stories: "Part of my original intention with the Jerry Cornelius stories was to 'liberate' the narrative; to leave it open to the reader's interpretation as much as possible - to involve the reader in such a way as to bring their own imagination into play."
These chronicles are among my favorite literary works. Each is a different literary experiment. Transform the mundane, don't let it run you down. How cool can you be? How important can you be? How intriguing can the folks you hang out with? Only Jerry seems to know. Let him show the way. Profound? Well, it's at least great, incredibly well-written fun.
Read "Dancers at the End of Time" if you want to see how well Moorcock can construct a "traditional" story. But if you want to see Moorcock's talent unleashed, give The Cornelius Quartet a try.
Timely stuff - Rated
Even The Final Programme, which isn't the best of these, still has a lot of relevance to modern times, but it's when you get into A CURE FOR CANCER that it feels chillingly timely. Moorcock has always had his hand on the pulse of the present and selects the issues which don't go away. Reading the stuff about the US 'peacekeepers' taking over England sounds like what's going on in Israel and Afghanistan now.
But what people don't mention enough is how outright funny and ironic this is. What's more it gets deeper as you go and the final book [...] is genuinely moving. Moorcock can paint characters in a few words and deal with issues in a paragraph most of his contempories take whole books or series to deal with. He accepts modern life as it is and this puts him still in the forefront of writers still struggling with the changes of the 80s, 90s and
beyond. It doesn't get any better, deeper or more hilarious than this. Beautiful.
Is this a classic ? - Rated
With Ballard and Burroughs this represents the first aggressive foray of the post-modernists -- what Moorcock calls the anti-modernists -- and like them it's stood the test of time. Moorcock's strong presence on the net brought three or four new Jerry Cornelius stories and, like Robert Altman, whom Moorcock resembles in many ways, they get better, smarter and sharper. Check out multiverse.org, The Edge or fantastic.metropolis.
as follow ups to this impressive quartet. If you like the best of Altman, where themes, character, stories developed out of material selected and presented with considerable discipline, though it seems random, then you will find your heart's delight in Jerry Cornelius. The first volume is a bit rough, a young man finding his feet, but they get better until the final volume which won Moorcock the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1977, when he, Lemmy and Hawkwind were the only 'old hippies' the Sex Pistols still had any time for. Moorcock, like Iggy Pop, has kept his street cred for forty years. This book carries the authority of real experience, from a man who had it all and enjoyed it all. Like the best music, you can run this over and over again... It's fun. And it has a great, unsentimental heart.
Multimedia Cornelius - Rated
You can now get the record THE NEW WORLDS FAIR, Deep Fix, buy the DVD or video, THE FINAL PROGRAMME with Jon Finch, and read the book, this one. Maybe a slightly patchy Cornelius experience, largely because the movie's all over the place, but not bad. Final Programme is unfortunately the weakest of the books, allegedly written in nine days. They get better as they go and the last one's a real stunner. This is still the coolest dude on the planet and all the dandy protagonists who have followed him just can't cut it. Yet the fantasy is always undercut by irony, until the final coming together of reality and illusion in the last scenes of The Condition of Muzak. Dodgem dude indeed. And the writing gets better and better as you go. The movie is certainly best enjoyed in unison with the rest. It also starts to pick up as you go, as if the actors suddenly realise they're in a comedy and not some sort of James Bond romp (but you can tell that this movie was thoroughly watched by the maker of Austin Powers). Make this weekend your Jerry Cornelius weekend.
You'll need a neat suit and a small black dress.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS, HEAVEN HELP US! - Rated
As Jerry's horrible old mum says at the end of the IT comic strip Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius, Merry Christmas, Heaven Help Us, Every One. Moorcock's riff's on his master -- and make no mistake he IS the modern Dickens -- which is why the modernists can't understand him -- was never better than in the heart-rending Christmas scene at the end of this masterpiece. It is every Christmas you ever longed for, and underlying it is an elegaic sadness which even Dickens couldn't beat. Get this to read over Christmas, even if you only read the end -- Moorcock has said the books can be read in any order -- and certainly the best is the last.
Whatever you do, read those final Christmas scenes. They echo the wedding party which concludes Mother London. I'd say they are still the best scenes he's done.
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