Susan Budd's Reviews > The Final Programme

For a 1960’s science fiction novel laced with sex, drugs and rock & roll, I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as I thought I would. The Final Programme was my introduction to Michael Moorcock and I will probably not be reading the other three books in this quartet. I say ‘probably’ rather than ‘definitely’ because the book wasn’t actually bad. But it was a chore to read to the end.

The fact that the story was not compelling had little to do with my boredom. I don’t need a plot or well-developed characters to be happy. Create the right atmosphere and I’m good. And the atmosphere of London in the Swinging Sixties should have kept me plenty amused. But it didn’t. The outrageous sci-fi elements and Eastern philosophy also should have held my interest. But they didn’t. Looking back on the reading experience as a whole, I can say the book was not without its fun, but there were no actual moments when I was having any.

There’s one scene that stands out to me as a good example of my ambivalence about this book. It is a psychedelic scene where Jerry Cornelius is tripping on a hallucinogen-laced needle shot at him by his brother during a raid on his eccentric family’s booby-trapped mansion. Sounds like fun already, right? Well, it sounds like more fun than it is.

“He was riding a black ferris wheel of emotions. His brain and body exploded in a torrent of mingled ecstasy and pain. Regret. Guilt. Relief. Waves of pale light flickered. He fell down a never-ending slope of obsidian rock surrounded by clouds of green, purple, yellow, black. The rock vanished, but he continued to fall. World of phosphorescence drifting like golden spheres into the black night. Green, blue, red explosions. Flickering world of phosphorescent tears falling into timeless, spaceless wastes. World of Guilt. Guilt—guilt—guilt…Another wave flowed up his spine. No-mind, no-body, no-where. Dying waves of light danced out of his eyes and away through the dark world. Everything was dying. Cells, sinews, nerves, synapses—all crumbling. Tears of light, fading, fading. Brilliant rockets streaking into the sky and exploding all together and sending their multicoloured globes of light—balls on an Xmas tree—x-mass—drifting slowly. Black mist swirled across a bleak, horizonless nightscape” (98).

I love psychedelic imagery, but this passage strikes me as uninspired, pedestrian. It’s not bad. It’s just that it has potential to be good and it doesn’t live up to that potential.

Then there’s the general atmosphere of Swinging London ~ the neon signs and pinball machines, Beatles music and mod fashion. This also should have been much better than it is.

“It was a world ruled by the gun, the guitar, and the needle...” (111).

Perhaps substitute a lava lamp for the gun and a bong for the needle, but no, it’s not the trappings of the scene; it’s the style that loses me. I’m okay with an evil James Bond. Apparently I’m even okay with incest and assassination. But I’m not okay with writing that falls flat. Moorcock never quite creates the mood that would breathe life into his novel.

Still, there are things I liked about the book. It was campy and I like that ~ in small doses. I also understand from John Clute’s introduction that the Jerry Cornelius stories are a sort of template for New Wave sci-fi and it was good to get a feel for the subgenre. I can see how this book could easily become a cult classic, but it’s not a cult I’m likely to join.