Ebook: The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak

Jerry Cornelius – English assassin, physicist, rock star, messiah to the Age of Science is one of fantastic literature's greatest creations. Acclaimed by Moorcock's readers, critics, and peers from Mick Jagger to J. G. Ballard, Cornelius is the ultimate postmodern antihero, more Borgesian than Asimovian.

This volume contains the final two novels in the Cornelius Quartet: The English Assassin and The Condition of Muzak.

3. The English Assassin

Jerry Cornelius rises from the deep to witness the destruction of the world – and to break up the biggest party ever thrown west of Ladbroke Grove.

This is Jerry Cornelius's third appearance: he stars also in A Cure for Cancer and The Final Programme, described by the Observer as 'pop SF, packed with fast cars, drugs, slaughter and sex; comic-strip SF... relentless doom-mongering... the relish with which Moorcock approaches all experience.'

4.The Condition of Muzak

The chaos and decay which permeated A Cure for Cancer and The English Assassin has devolved further into a surreal Europe of splintered city states. Jerry Cornelius, increasingly morphing into his role as Pierrot, has lost the power to change or even affect events and narrows his quest to an everlasting search for his true love, his sister Catherine.

”The Condition of Muzak considers the process of living as a harlequinade and is, for me, a most moving summation... Here we move through Mr. Moorcock's obsessions, Bob Dylan, the Arthurian Legend, through chrono-zones – behold the pun! – to bisexuality, with a small sideswipe at Stanley Kubrick on the way. The realisation comes that Jerry is seeking sanctuary in different universes of Time in separate private mythologies. As indeed, is the implication, are we all...” –Tom Hutchinson, The Times