The Condition of Muzak—like The Final Programme, A Cure For Cancer, The English Assassin and some related works—continues Moorcock's harlequinade theme and brings it to a climax, though climax may be too simplistic a term in the Cornelius context of a universe in which time and location are wild variables, where endings are hardly ever final, and where the characters have a Tom-and-Jerry-like capacity for resurrecting themselves from personal calamity.

In The Condition of Muzak the Cornelius family—plus the enigmatic figures of Una Persson, Bishop Beesley, Miss Brunner and the others who make up their circle of friends/enemies—are shown again performing all the gyrations of the Entropy Tango, but this time we are aware of the dance slowing down. Jerry Cornelius himself begins to lose his vital force, and near the end of the book the death of his mother is presented as...