‘The Time Dweller’ – Michael Moorcock

I really want to get more book posts in this week so thought I’d kick things off with a short story as it feels like ages since I’ve done one of those (the last one was 'The Fall and Rise of the House of the Wizard Malkuril' back at the beginning of July). It’s been even longer since I read any Michael Moorcock (there’s something about ‘the Revenge of the Rose’ where I just can’t get into it) so I thought I’d combine the two and I ended up reading ‘The Time Dweller’. I found it in ‘Breakfast In The Ruins And Other Stories’, I don’t know where else you might find it.

 Dusk had come to the universe, albeit the small universe inhabited by Man. The sun of Earth had dimmed, the moon had retreated and salt clogged the sluggish oceans, filled the rivers that toiled slowly between white crystalline banks, beneath darkened, moody skies that slumbered in eternal evening.

 

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that just after the title, Moorcock choses to lead with an opening paragraph that raises the stakes, for whatever is about to come next, almost immediately. Time is running out, quite literally. Mankind may have adapted to new surroundings and (a few lines later) there’s even a possibility that the sun might just flare up again in a few thousand years, unlikely but you never know I guess, but right now, whatever is going to happen needs to happen quickly. With that in mind, it felt funny then (well, to me anyway) that our hero, the Scar Faced Brooder, chooses to ride a ‘seal beast’ that may well ‘gallop’ but you’d have thought that he’d go for something a little faster? Get the job done quicker? I don’t know, anyway…

 

The Scar Faced Brooder has been forced to leave the lands of Lanjis Liho where the ruling Chronarch has seen fit not to trust him with either a fraction of the past or a small part of the future, showing how time is viewed by the Chronarch’s people now that there isn’t much of it left. It’s not much a journey to the Land of Fronds (where the Scar Faced Brooder must seek his fortune) but there’s enough room here for Moorcock to give us a nice little ‘Dying Earth’ vibe with mankind having to live off the scraps of what previous civilisations have left behind. There’s a fitting hint of melancholy here and I couldn’t help but wonder what, if anything, the Scar Faced Brooder would be able to do with the time he has. Quite a lot as it happens.

 

The Scar Faced Brooder’s sojourn in the town of Barbart shows us an interesting contrast in how different groups see the passing of time but at the same time, both parties slavishly adhere to what that means for them. They can’t see how it could possibly be done differently which leads to the Scar Faced Brooder doing a little jail time for eating lunch when it wasn’t ‘lunch time’. It seems so typical of humanity that in the face of extinction (because that’s what we’re looking at here, apart from those who made it to the Moon and seem to be doing ok out of it), people will still squabble about the most ridiculous things but this also serves to set the story up for the whole point of the title so I’m cool with it.

I’m generally rubbish at ‘getting’ concepts in books, it always takes me a couple of reads to get my head round something. I’m not quite sure how the Scar Faced Brooder did what he did (like he was mixing the ‘best bits’ of both ways of looking at time?) but the important thing is that he does and that it provides an answer to the question that this story asks. I just need a couple of re-reads to get my head round it, that’s all 😊

 

So the Scar Faced Brooder is a hero in two lands then and brings an intriguing little tale to a close. For me, ‘The Time Dweller’ was more about that melancholy atmosphere, than the story itself, but I suspect that will change once I get my head round it a bit more. A good read, to kick off the week, though.