The Diary: Michael Moorcock

I’m just completing my ‘Doctor Who’ novel. It’s been fun and also harder work than I expected. I’ve no idea how it will be received. Humour and wild science fiction ideas are the series’ hallmark, so I decided to write it as if PG Wodehouse and Arthur C Clarke had collaborated. I hope it comes up to the high standards the existing TV writers have set. To get myself in the mood I read Barry Paine, the Edwardian writer who was Wodehouse’s main inspiration. I knew I wasn’t up to rivalling the master. Wodehouse and Clarke had more in common than I at first supposed. Wodehouse wrote the odd fantasy story and Clarke could be amusing, if not exactly a rib-tickler. Both writers were quintessentially English, yet both spent most of their lives out of the country, survived a scandal and received knighthoods late in life.

I never met Wodehouse, who was my favourite writer as a boy, but Clarke was a friend whom I liked a great deal. When I wrote to sympathise with him about the Sunday Mirror’s allegations regarding his sex life in 1998 he took the whole thing with his usual Wodehousian sunniness. He told me it was obviously a plot to embarrass his pal Prince Charles and not to worry, his friend Rupert Murdoch would sort it out for him. He and “Plum” [Wodehouse] had the same way of dealing with trouble, were not altogether of this world and lived long, productive, athletic and rather enviable lives.

Although I’m often referred to as a science fiction writer, I’ve written comparatively few SF novels, most of them in the 1960s when I was lucky enough to think of a few ideas which turned out to be fairly accurate. In 1961 I came up with the “multiverse” – the notion of a near-infinite number of parallel universes nesting inside the other – and also predicted what we now call black holes and miniaturised computers (this was in the days when computers took up whole buildings and, logically, a better one was always a bigger one) but they weren’t based on any profound knowledge of astrophysics. If anything the ideas had more in common with metaphysics. Still, I’m proud of my predictions. Whether I’ll be so lucky with this new story remains to be seen.

The Doctor’s job done, I’d hoped to borrow the Tardis and leave Texas, where I live for much of the year, for Europe. The BBC haven’t yet responded to my request. If they do I suppose it will be the usual red tape about time paradoxes and all that. Even if we’re forced on to more conventional transport, I’ll be glad to get out of Texas, where the temperature is over 90°F most days now.

That said, we have a great time in Austin. During the recent SXSW music festival a huge variety of music was heard across the city. You could walk less than a block and hear western swing, salsa, hardcore rock, reggae, bluegrass, indie or zydeco – everything but commercial pop. The festival blends scores of influences. Even traditional country music has a far greater range than many realise, as heard on Willie Nelson’s latest album, Country Music. Willie, of course, is pretty much on a level with God in this bible belt state. A few years ago a rookie cop inspected a truck on the side of the road. There he found Willie asleep, a strong smell of top-quality skunk wafting from his glove compartment. So he arrested Willie. As Texans anticipated, when the case came to court, Willie walked. The cop was fired. Willie represents the progressive individualistic style you find in Texas, always ready to support a good cause. He’s 73 now and still touring. A city couldn’t have a better ambassador.

A major advantage to living in the Texas hill country is, especially after a wet winter, the gorgeously varied wealth of wild flowers that stretches for miles. Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady, established a wildflower centre near Austin and made city authorities stop cutting highway verges willy-nilly. Some farmers let fields lie fallow so when we drive the backroads we see a tapestry of astonishing colour and richness, second only, in my experience, to the high meadows of Morocco’s Atlas mountains. Newcomers expect dust and cactus so it’s always a pleasure to show off the flowers and the city’s civilised attention to green spaces, trees and waterside walks.

Another of Austin’s treasures is the huge collection of modernist manuscripts, visual art and rare books kept at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center. This is largely the work of the literary scholar Tom Staley, who used the university’s wealth to put together an unrivalled resource. They have Charlotte Brontë’s earliest notebooks written in a tiny but decipherable hand, Norman Mailer’s office reproduced in its entirety and collections from living writers. I was delighted when they purchased my friend Iain Sinclair’s papers, inviting him to help with their cataloguing.

Sinclair, who is London’s leading psychogeographer, and author of Downriver, Lights Out for the Territory and Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, was asked to give some poetry readings, a talk and appear with me for a public conversation. We discussed the modern mythology that draws writers to London or Texas. I was attracted to the state because you can witness myths being made and embellished almost by the day. In our little town, a few miles from Austin, the Tractor Store still sells working chaps, hats, saddles, boots and lariats. Working cowboys still sometimes ride down Main Street to tie their horses up outside the local saloon, some packing long-barrelled .38s. A friend who writes fine books about the Wild West insists on sporting black-powder Colt revolvers.

I have one or two myself that I keep unloaded and often imagine catching a burglar in the living room, then asking him to wait a few minutes while I ram gunpowder into the chambers and fix my firing caps. Mainly I just like to practice my quick draws, border rolls, Mexican switches and other fancy tricks learned as a boy when the local common stood in for the prairie and I was the only law west of the Circle Line. My tricks are pretty impressive but my wife still insists I practise my yodelling in the garage.

Explaining the English elections to American friends has proven a bit tricky recently. Personally, I suspect more Brits are now enfranchised. We might just get some decent moderate rational progress, for which we’re often admired. I’m only worried by “Atlanticists” who think that borrowing US solutions to our problems is all that’s needed. Homegrown methods are always the sturdiest. I’m embarrassed by British politicians’ US-style campaigning. There’s material for a good comic novel about MPs desperately looking for a black candidate to become Britain’s prime minister. I suspect all Obama needs to do to ensure his next job is establish his British dual nationality. He could probably lead a consensual coalition as Britain’s next prime minister. I’d applaud that – so long as he leaves the NHS alone!

Michael Moorcock’s non-fiction book, ‘Into the Media Web’ (Savoy Books) will be published in June