THE DEEP ONES: "The Stealer of Souls" by Michael Moorcock

"The Stealer of Souls" by Michael Moorcock

Discussion begins February 15, 2023.

First published in the February 1962 issue of Science Fantasy.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?60478

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Stealer of Souls and Other Stories
Elric: The Stealer of Souls

ONLINE VERSIONS

No authorized online versions found to date.

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No authorized online audio versions found to date.

MISCELLANY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr5nv5TP4Rs
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/radiant-time-an-interview-with-michael-moorc...
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/Itzkoff-t.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock
https://tinyurl.com/5x7kvucs

I picked up a copy of the new Moorcock Elric book The Citadel of Forgotten Myths about a month ago, and I think this story might bootstrap me into it.

I treated myself to the three volume Elric Saga published by...Saga Press) plus The Citadel of Forgotten Myths just before Christmas.

I think I've found this story in The Elric Saga, volume 2 titled Stormbringer, consisting of four books, of which the third is The Bane of the Black Sword, which is itself split into three books and an epilogue. The first book is titled The Stealer of Souls.

The Elric bibliography has been a moving target for a long time, as Moorcock keeps adding stories. I have a different Elric Saga Part II -- the Nelson Doubleday SFBC edition from 1984, which essentially collects the fourth through the sixth of the DAW yellow-spine paperbacks. In my book, "The Stealer of Souls" is also book one of the component volume The Bane of the Black Sword. The copyright page says that parts of The Bane of the Black Sword (presumably including "The Stealer of Souls" from 1962) originally appeared as a shorter book in 1967 titled The Stealer of Souls.

For a bit of assurance, my collected "Stealer of Souls" starts with this summary:

In which Elric once again makes the acquaintance of Queen Yishana of Jharkor and Theleb K'aarna of Pan Tang and receives satisfaction at last.

The first sentence of the text begins, "In a city called Bakshaan, which was rich enough to make all other cities of the North East seem poor, in a tall-towered tavern one night, ..."

Ordered a cheap paperback edition, hope to read and review by next weekend. Haven’t read Moorcock in years, looking forward to getting reacquainted!

I suspect I read this one sometime back in the late nineties, but if so I hardly remember anything of it.

>4 paradoxosalpha:

Yes, that ties up with the text in the Saga Press edition. Thank you!

The ongoing Centipede Press editions contain for the first time "the titles, contents, and order of the Elric stories... exactly as Michael Moorcock has long intended". They've just reached vol. 7 with THE DREAMTHIEF'S DAUGHTER. Two to go.
"Stealer of Souls" is in vol 6, THE REVENGE OF THE ROSE. I'll read it from there.

>8 semdetenebre:
I would be curious to know the sequence that series used. I think I have all the Elric stories in one edition or another (even comics-only items like Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer), and an integral re-read wouldn't be an unappetizing project at some point.

>9 paradoxosalpha:

I should be able to put Moorcock's preferred chronology for vols 1-7 together in one list tonight. Will post it here when I'm done.

>9 paradoxosalpha:

Here you go. It'll be a while until we see volumes 8 & 9. No word on contents yet. I didn't include the introductions, but the most apropos has to be Eric (Blue Oyster Cult) Bloom doing the one for STORMBRINGER.

ELRIC OF MELNIBONE (vol 1)
Master of Chaos
And So the Great Emperor Received His Education
Elric of Melnibone

THE FORTRESS OF THE PEARL (vol 2)
The Fortress of the Pearl
The Black Blade’s Song

THE SAILOR ON THE SEAS OF FATE (vol 3)
Introduction to the AudioRealms Version of The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
The Dreaming City
A Portrait in Ivory

THE SLEEPING SORCERESS (vol 4)
While the Gods Laugh
The Singing Citadel
The Sleeping Sorceress

THE REVENGE OF THE ROSE (vol 5)
The Revenge of the Rose
The Stealer of Souls

STORMBRINGER (vol 6)
Kings in Darkness
The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams
The Last Enchantment
To Rescue Tanelorn…
Stormbringer

THE DREAMTHIEF’S DAUGHTER (vol 7)
The Dreamthief’s Daughter

Other than Elric's distinctive inversion of Conan-based character tropes--especially his being upset at having killed Nikon--I thought this one was pretty bog-standard sword-and-sorcery, from the start in the tavern forward. I'm not generally slow to see sexual symbolism or double entendre, but I didn't find much to justify Moorcock's appraisal of it as "one of the most pornographic stories I have ever written" (especially when he has written some fairly frank direct sexual content in books like The Brothel in Rosenstrasse, although that may have been after his remark).

The portrait of Theleb K'aarna near the top of section 3 made me LOL. "He was, basically, he felt, a man of peace. It was not his fault ..."

The red sun of the final sentence suggested a senescent world in a way that I hadn't picked up on in my earlier reading of this tale.

To around to finishing this today. Indeed, I'd read it back back in the nineties, but only two scenes really triggered any memory of that read: the meeting with Dyvim Tvar and the introduction of Quaolnargn. Theleb K'aarna was familiar as a character but I remembered nothing of his rôle in this particular story.

I too had a hard time seeing what's particularly pornographic about it (the phallic symbolism of swords is pretty omnipresent in the Elric cycle).

Couldn't help but reflect that Elric got out alive essentially due to Theleb K'aarna and Nikorn being idiots. Not out of character for S&S antagonists, of course.

The world won't last very long after this story, but the up-and-coming nature of the Young Kingdoms is at odds with any dying-earth ambience, methinks.

I got back on Friday to find the Del Ray trade 2008 edition of Stealer of Souls had been delivered. It has a foreword by Alan Moore of Watchmen fame with the clever title of “The Return of the Thin White Duke”.
The first couple of chapters had balanced world-building and first rate wordsmithing. By the end I was completely bought in to the ethical algebra of pragmatic but less than ideally moral decisions Elric had to make.
I particularly liked Elric’s comment about Elkorn’s regrettable death, due to the fact that “like most merchants… he bargained too hard”

My first encounter with Elric was in June 1975, when the British weekly reprints of Marvel's Conan comic book reached the Conan/Elric crossover that had originally appeared in the US about three years earlier. The character stuck in my memory (and I always envisage him as drawn by Barry (not yet Windsor-, back then) Smith), but apart from Stormbringer, which was lent to me by a school friend in the early '80s, I haven't read any actual Elric stories until now.

I'd agree that this reads as a conventional sword-and-sorcery tale, but I'm prepared to believe that it seemed much more inconoclastic in 1962.

I'm another reader puzzling over the supposedly pornographic elements of the story. The sword with a will of its own, of course. Maybe Elric's swordless/unmanned crawling back to camp should be viewed though a masochistic lens?

A pleasant reread on this one.

>14 papijoe: That line about merchants struck me as some of Elric's grim humor (though he's often described as humorless). So should Nikron have just killed Elric when he had the chance instead of just entering a merciful bargain? Perhaps Elric, empathizing with Nikron, thinks so.

I also appreciated the final bit with Queen Yishaana. Perhaps, now knowing more of Elric and his demonic sword, she's not as sure about having Elric back as a lover.

I first encountered Elric in one of Lin Carter's Flashing Swords anthologies. Once upon a time, I was caught up on the series when White Wolf was doing their Michael Moorcock collections. Now, there are several newer ones I haven't read. I read the story out of White Wolf's Elric: Stealer of Souls

Six months after its publication, my just-posted review of The Citadel of Forgotten Myths is the first one in LT. Huh.

>17 paradoxosalpha:

"...sword & sorcery murder hobo" :-D

Hm. To me, a chief trait of a proper "murder hobo" is a lack of social ties, obligations, and dependents. So in that respect Conan, before he comes down with a case of kingship, is more of a murder hobo than Elric is.

Ever since we read this, I've been thinking I should read more Elric stories. I've been held back in part by the usual lack of time and imposing piles of unread books, partly by the bewildering complexity of the series - where should one start? My usual default is reading series in publication order, but that's not straightforward when stories have been revised, renamed, and recollected as much as these.

>19 AndreasJ:

I take your point, but Elric literally wanders all over several worlds, killing and killing, like a D&D character who doesn't know how to do anything but kill. He has worked hard to feel guilty about it, but it doesn't stop him. His motives notwithstanding, every adventure ends in bloodshed. Rather than gradually acquiring various forms of loyalty (and royalty) like Conan does, Elric inherits enormous social capital which he liquidates book by book.

The Elric edition history is pretty bewildering, especially when one adds in the comics series -- some written by Moorcock, some not. And most "Elric" series definitions seem to leave out The Albino Underground, three volumes of Elric with Ulrich von Bek and other multiverse characters, not to mention the distinct crossover Elric at the End of Time.

Kenton's inventory of the Centipede Press series above purportedly gives Moorcock's prescribed reading sequence. I note that it's almost certainly not in sequence of narrative chronology, with The Dreamthief's Daughter bumped off to the end. I'm honestly confused by even the first entry: Is "Master of Chaos" an older story that I read in one of the 1970s mass market paperbacks? I'm pretty sure it is, but I don't see it under that title in the SFBC volumes that anthologize them on my shelf. My best guess (via ISFDB) is that it is the original title of "The Dream of Earl Aubec" included as the prologue of The Weird of the White Wolf in my copy. And that one is a tale of the Young Kingdoms before Elric's time, suggesting that the Centipede Press sequence did in some measure try to incorporate narrative chronology.

Even as I look at those SFBC omnibi, I see opportunities for confusion. "The Weird of the White Wolf" is the third story in the first component "book" Elric of Melniboné, but the same title is given to the whole of the third "book" (that includes "The Dream of Earl Aubec"). The two SFBC volumes are called The Elric Saga Part I and The Elric Saga Part II, and these titles have been repurposed by the 21st-century Saga Press series for books with differently-organized content, now running to three volumes, plus the new Citadel of Forgotten Myths. My confidence that these distinctions are reflected in the LT work and series data is ... low.