Mage said:
Ah. Confusing. It wouldnt have been the sacking of Immryr would it? Or was it when they first met.
Nah. It was the was one of the stories that take place prior to the sacking of Immyr. That is why it was changed. I think it was either the story that takes place in Nadsokor, or the one with Duke Astran in Rhy-Ken-Aa. Well, to be more accurate the story orginally took place after the sacking of Immyr (I believe that was the first Elric story written), but was later adjusted to occur eariler.
Orignally, the Elric stories were published in SF/Fantany pulp-style magazines. That's why so many of the stories are collected works of short stories rather than full length novels. It is also one of the major reasons for the change is style and tone. Not only were the old stories written a long time ago when Michael was a differernt person, and the world a differernt place, but the needs of writing entertaining fiction for a magianze are quite differernt from those of writing a novel. You have to fit everything in under a certain word count.
When the SF mags died out, and the stories collected into book form, Moorcock made several revisions and tried to organize everything into some sort of order. If you buy used, you can run across some pre-revision printings of stuff, and occasionally be surprised.
This was partly because Moorcock killed off Elric and ended the saga fairly early (somewhere between a dozen or two short stories), and when he wanted to go back to write new Elric stories he had to find places to fit the new stories in, since the way the saga ends makes continuing the character impossible (or at least so cheap as to ruin the saga).
So the series is so confusing mostly becuase it wasn't indented to be one. Moorcock pretty much broke from every standard of Franasy stories at the time (skinny wizard king who loses everything instead of big brawny warior who fights evil wizards to become a King). He didn't realize just how much of an impact Elric made on the genre, or he probably wouldn't have ended the saga the way he did. But then, IMO, those end stories are the best ones of the Saga.
