Title - The Black Corridor
Author - Michael Moorcock (and Hilary Bailey)
Year - 1969
Stand Alone or Series -Stand Alone
Pages - 126
Reading Time - 7 days (November 2010)
Rating - 6.5/10
Summary
The world is sick. The Forces of Chaos have energised the planet. Leaders, fuhrers, duces, prophets, visionaries, gurus, and politicians are all at each others' throats. And Chaos leers over the broken body of Order. So Ryan freezes his family into suspended animation and sets off for the planet Munich 15040, five years distant. There he will re-establish Order in a New World - and create a happier, healthier, saner and more decent society with the ones he loves. But they are suspended. And they cannot talk. And he is alone in space. And he has been travelling for three years. And he will still be travelling two years hence, and he cannot see his destination, and he is ALONE and LOST and CRACKING UP.
Review
So a Moocock book. After reading the review at Graeme's Fantasy Book Review I decided to buy and read it. In my opinion the book was not as good as he portrayed it. The book is divided in two parts... the first part is the ramblings of Ryan (our main protagonist) as he travels into another galaxy to settle there with his family. Inbetween chapters we learn about their society and why they must do the voyage. The book is quite easy to read but there are a lot of references of Moorcock own political ideology. That put me off my interest. I must say that I am most displease with all the authors out there simple minded that can don't know anything else than write novels that are more than propaganda fiction. Ken Macleod is another example. It just upsets me. I try to read them but they are so single-minded in their own convictions that they made an image than everything else is just stupid. Bah.
Returning to this novel the ending was quite interesting... It makes you think what a heck happen? Were the pods with only corpses? Weren't there any bodies at all? Was this all the fruit of his own imagination? I think that was the best part of the novel.
In the end I was not displease with everything but those "teachings" he gave about society was excusable.
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