The single most interesting piece in that newswire was about how Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock went to a signing together. It would have skyrocketed to awesomeness if the both of these great fantasy writers had themselves a "beard-off."
The signing afterwards was a little heavily weighted towards Alan Moore than otherwise might have occurred.
No words can express how unjust this is. Michael Moorcock is arguably the greatest fantasy writer that ever lived, and he has received nearly zero respect in recent times. When was the last time the ELRIC books were reprinted? 1996? Even Robert Howard's CONAN series has been reprinted in their complete forms recently, something that as recent as 2001 was a pipe dream for all WEIRD TALES fans until L. Sprague de Camp croaked.
(In a humiliating detail, I was able to get my paperback of THE WEIRD OF THE WHITE WOLF at a dollar store, hidden among the romance novels and NANCY DREW mysteries - though I love my girl Nancy Drew, this was the best buck I ever spent.)
Thanks goes to the White Wolf company for new editions of THE ETERNAL CHAMPION (with the original dedication to Douglas Fairbanks intact) and VON BECK.
Granted, Moorcock was a founding member of Hawkwind, arguably the biggest bunch of tone-deaf wusses at least until the coming of Wean decades later, but judging Moorcock by this is like denying Michael Jordan's place at greatness because of his lackluster career as a professional golfer.
One could have knocked me over with a feather at the sight of Moorcock writing, of all the things in the world,
comics: with all due respect to the incredible Busiek run on CONAN, the most exciting Image Sword & Sorcery comic of this decade was Moorcock's ELRIC, and in a more just world, would have met CONAN in popularity.
I used to think nobody could take over for Alan Moore when he left TOM STRONG; thankfully, Moorcock's incredible, swashbuckling story involving pirates, lost cities, talking gorillas, and what is obviously Stormbringer in a cameo, put that fear to rest forever. Moore had a big beard to fill; thankfully Moorcock has a big beard too.
When Tolkien was declared "writer of the century" by a reader poll in a recent magazine, one could forgive the always blogging Moorcock for going bananas. Tolkien was a brilliant researcher, but the Professor was not the equal of Moorcock, nor was his pastoral style a match for Moorcock's muscular style, his incredible gift for arousing interest, brevity, imagination, or characterization (not even, really, for the equally brilliant Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson and Bobby Howard).
As always, Moorcock had more to say on the matter:
"I have nothing but contempt for the regressive, retarded adults that made this poll possible," ...and he went on like that for a whole blog entry.