Michael Moorcock specialises in fantasies, but his aren't of the jubilant human variety which the Christmas fairy loves. His universe is one which possesses neither meaning nor logic, and human beings can play only a minimal role in it. The Knight of the Swords is a science fiction of the past—'science' in the sense that Man and all his works are not at its centre. It's really a novel about changing perceptions, about evanescent technologies and star-crazed soft-ware that escape the usual boring traps of 'the individual' and 'society'. Prince Corum—not a human being but some creature of a greater destiny—goes on a quest to destroy the thing he most fears. And in the process the book adopts the sacramental language of Malory, and combines it with the special effects of a Dr Who script….

The narrative might be set in the remote past or...