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masong63's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
arthurbdd's review against another edition
2.0
Early novel in which Moorcock's ambition overreaches his skills; he would produce better examples of this sort of thing after he honed his chops a bit more. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/456/
smcleish's review
3.0
Originally published on my blog here.
The contents of this novel are actually from the very beginning of Moorcock's career, appearing as a pair of stories in a science fiction magazine in 1962, at around the same time as the first Elric novel, which was much more of a signpost to the type of writing he was going to go on to become known for. This packaging of the stories together which appeared in the mid-seventies must have seemed rather out of step with the cool New Wave work he was writing at the time; The Blood Red Game is, by contrast, clearly derivative from pulpy SF writers like [a:E.E. Smith|4477395|E.E. Smith|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1315184002p2/4477395.jpg] and [a:A.E. van Vogt|1293688|A.E. van Vogt|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1226200601p2/1293688.jpg], especially the latter. (I should perhaps mention that, according to Fantastic Fiction, the two stories also appeared as - extremely short - separate novels in 1966.)
The first story, originally entitled The Sundered Worlds, has a hero, Renark, who has the psychic ability to sense the universe as a whole. He realises that it is beginning to contract, threatening the total destruction of humanity, a slightly strange premise that is apparently forgetting that it would take billions of years to contract the universe, even if the contraction occurred at almost the speed of light. No explanation is given of why it poses such an urgent problem, or even any indication that the contraction is very fast. The sundered worlds of the title are a small group of planets which travel between dimensions, and Renark thinks that they will hold the key to saving the galaxy. So he, with a small group of friends, travels to the sundered worlds the next time they pass through our universe, even though no human has ever returned from similar trips.
The second story, sharing its title with this book, follows immediately on from the end of The Sundered Worlds, so much so that I suspect some re-writing was done to cover the join for publication as one. The story now sees humanity facing a different external crisis, being forced to participate in a series of incomprehensible psychic games against alien species, for the amusement of more powerful beings.
In themselves, the two stories are fairly mediocre. To the Moorcock fan, they do have interesting ideas which relate to important concepts behind his later work, including an undeveloped form of the multiverse, with clashes between universes playing a part as they do in several later stories. I can see that they would have been of sufficient interest to a magazine editor in 1962 to publish, but I don't think that anyone would have bothered to re-package them as a novel without Moorcock's name associated with them - if, say, they had been the only published stories by someone who went on to become an advertising executive or a banker, instead of a world famous and hugely influential science fiction editor and author. As things turned out, it is still interesting to read them in the context of Moorcock's other work.
The contents of this novel are actually from the very beginning of Moorcock's career, appearing as a pair of stories in a science fiction magazine in 1962, at around the same time as the first Elric novel, which was much more of a signpost to the type of writing he was going to go on to become known for. This packaging of the stories together which appeared in the mid-seventies must have seemed rather out of step with the cool New Wave work he was writing at the time; The Blood Red Game is, by contrast, clearly derivative from pulpy SF writers like [a:E.E. Smith|4477395|E.E. Smith|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1315184002p2/4477395.jpg] and [a:A.E. van Vogt|1293688|A.E. van Vogt|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1226200601p2/1293688.jpg], especially the latter. (I should perhaps mention that, according to Fantastic Fiction, the two stories also appeared as - extremely short - separate novels in 1966.)
The first story, originally entitled The Sundered Worlds, has a hero, Renark, who has the psychic ability to sense the universe as a whole. He realises that it is beginning to contract, threatening the total destruction of humanity, a slightly strange premise that is apparently forgetting that it would take billions of years to contract the universe, even if the contraction occurred at almost the speed of light. No explanation is given of why it poses such an urgent problem, or even any indication that the contraction is very fast. The sundered worlds of the title are a small group of planets which travel between dimensions, and Renark thinks that they will hold the key to saving the galaxy. So he, with a small group of friends, travels to the sundered worlds the next time they pass through our universe, even though no human has ever returned from similar trips.
The second story, sharing its title with this book, follows immediately on from the end of The Sundered Worlds, so much so that I suspect some re-writing was done to cover the join for publication as one. The story now sees humanity facing a different external crisis, being forced to participate in a series of incomprehensible psychic games against alien species, for the amusement of more powerful beings.
In themselves, the two stories are fairly mediocre. To the Moorcock fan, they do have interesting ideas which relate to important concepts behind his later work, including an undeveloped form of the multiverse, with clashes between universes playing a part as they do in several later stories. I can see that they would have been of sufficient interest to a magazine editor in 1962 to publish, but I don't think that anyone would have bothered to re-package them as a novel without Moorcock's name associated with them - if, say, they had been the only published stories by someone who went on to become an advertising executive or a banker, instead of a world famous and hugely influential science fiction editor and author. As things turned out, it is still interesting to read them in the context of Moorcock's other work.
xterminal's review
4.0
Michael Moorcock, The Blood Red Game (Dale Press, 1970)
I found it odd that this book was the only one by Dale Press in my collection until I cracked the cover. Hopefully, Dale have gone out of business, but not before a long, tortured obscurity. I'd say a year for every typo in this book, but were that the case, they'd still be around well into the twenty-second century, and we can't have that.
Typos that a week-old dead cockroach would have caught aside, the book itself is pretty standard Moorcock. Fans of the eternal champion will feel right at home in this particular science fiction universe; while it would be stretching things somewhat to call any of the protagonists here an aspect of the eternal champion, they're most certainly on a quest (though they don't realize it at first) for Tanelorn, the eternal city.
The book starts with three old acquaintances, Renark, Asquiol, and Talfryn. Renark is a former government employee with a price on his head, Asquiol a prince who was forced to abdicate, and Talfryn is, well, just along for the ride. As we open, the three of them are on a lawless planet near the rim of the galaxy, waiting for the legendary coming of a planetary system which pops into existence now and then, a place all the lawless wait for. After all, if you hop into a different planetary system that's not a part of your universe, it's not going to be subject to the same laws, right? The system comes, the three of them take off, and the real fun begins.
The hard part of reviewing a book like this is that a plot synopsis is impossible. The above paragraph takes you through well under a quarter of the book, but to say anything else would be a spoiler. You'll just have to read for yourself. Yes, the title does come to make sense, but only in the last third of the book or thereabouts, and there's a lot of ground in between the two.
One interesting thing about The Blood Red Game, in relation to the other Moorcock novels I've read over the past few months. Moorcock is a writer who seems more concerned with description and plot advancement rather than mysterious subplots most of the time. In The Blood Red Game, however, Moorcock holds a few things back to spring on you in the grand Agatha Christie tradition; no one is what they seem, and no one's part is quite what it first appears to be. It's somewhat jarring, and pleasurably so, to find in a Moorcock novel.
It's slightly less readable than the Elric novels, but that may be a personal preference thing more than anything; I almost always find science fiction harder than fantasy. This is, to my experience so far, a rare treat where Moorcock is concerned, and a fine one. ****
I found it odd that this book was the only one by Dale Press in my collection until I cracked the cover. Hopefully, Dale have gone out of business, but not before a long, tortured obscurity. I'd say a year for every typo in this book, but were that the case, they'd still be around well into the twenty-second century, and we can't have that.
Typos that a week-old dead cockroach would have caught aside, the book itself is pretty standard Moorcock. Fans of the eternal champion will feel right at home in this particular science fiction universe; while it would be stretching things somewhat to call any of the protagonists here an aspect of the eternal champion, they're most certainly on a quest (though they don't realize it at first) for Tanelorn, the eternal city.
The book starts with three old acquaintances, Renark, Asquiol, and Talfryn. Renark is a former government employee with a price on his head, Asquiol a prince who was forced to abdicate, and Talfryn is, well, just along for the ride. As we open, the three of them are on a lawless planet near the rim of the galaxy, waiting for the legendary coming of a planetary system which pops into existence now and then, a place all the lawless wait for. After all, if you hop into a different planetary system that's not a part of your universe, it's not going to be subject to the same laws, right? The system comes, the three of them take off, and the real fun begins.
The hard part of reviewing a book like this is that a plot synopsis is impossible. The above paragraph takes you through well under a quarter of the book, but to say anything else would be a spoiler. You'll just have to read for yourself. Yes, the title does come to make sense, but only in the last third of the book or thereabouts, and there's a lot of ground in between the two.
One interesting thing about The Blood Red Game, in relation to the other Moorcock novels I've read over the past few months. Moorcock is a writer who seems more concerned with description and plot advancement rather than mysterious subplots most of the time. In The Blood Red Game, however, Moorcock holds a few things back to spring on you in the grand Agatha Christie tradition; no one is what they seem, and no one's part is quite what it first appears to be. It's somewhat jarring, and pleasurably so, to find in a Moorcock novel.
It's slightly less readable than the Elric novels, but that may be a personal preference thing more than anything; I almost always find science fiction harder than fantasy. This is, to my experience so far, a rare treat where Moorcock is concerned, and a fine one. ****
hammard's review
4.0
One of the most experimental and interesting of Moorcock's early works. Set up well a lot for what is going to come later.
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