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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 8312987" data-attributes="member: 21169">WARNING: This post contains unblurred spoilers for the Elric story While the Gods LaughExistentialism is a major theme in several of Michael Moorcock's early Elric stories. This post is about the novelette While the Gods Laugh. This story first appeared in the British magazine Science Fantasy #49 (1961) and formed part of the collection The Stealer of Souls (1963), which features in Appendix N of the 1e AD&D DMG.Moorcock describes the influences on Elric in the introduction to a later collection, Elric: The Stealer of Souls (2008): "Before I came to write the first Elric stories I was already absorbing the kind of literature which influenced my generation, including that of the great French Existentialist writers and film-makers."While the Gods Laugh is existentialist in at least two ways (and this is also true of other early Elric stories). Firstly, Elric is himself an existentialist who believes that life is meaningless. Secondly, events in the narrative suggest that Elric is correct in this view.His companion, Shaarilla, asks him why he seeks the Dead Gods' Book, "believed to contain knowledge which could solve many problems that had plagued men for centuries". He replies"Does an ultimate God exist — or not? That is what I need to know, Shaarilla, if my life is to have any direction at all." "Does Law or Chaos govern our lives? Men need a God, so the philosophers tell us. Have they made one — or did one make them?" "Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a God, Shaarilla. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through the black barrenness of space for something — anything — which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets, not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy." "Without a God, a sensitivity to the order of things — of climbing destiny — without this, my only comfort is to attempt, equably, to accept the anarchy. This way, I can revel in chaos and know, without fear, that we are all doomed from the start — that our creeping flash through time is meaningless and damned. I can accept, then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us. Sometimes this is comforting to know — sometimes it is mind-shattering and I gape at myself in horror, wondering why I should believe in anarchy and evil when so much proof exists to the contrary. I have weighed the proof, Shaarilla, and believe that anarchy prevails, in spite of all the laws which seemingly govern our actions, our sorcery, our logic. I see only chaos in the world. If the Book we seek tells me otherwise, then I shall gladly believe it. Until then, I will put my trust only in my sword and myself."However when Elric finds the Dead Gods' Book, it crumbles to dust in his hands."Now," he said, "I will live my life without ever knowing why I live it — whether it has purpose or not. Perhaps the book could have told me. But would I have believed it, even then? I am the eternal sceptic — never sure that my actions are my own; never certain that an ultimate entity is not guiding me." "I envy those who know. All I can do now is to continue my quest and hope, without hope, that before my span is ended, the Truth will be presented to me."Thus the story's message is also existentialist. Elric's attempt to gain knowledge about the deeper truths of reality was futile (and, as he says, may have been futile even if the book had been preserved). He is as beset by existentialist anxieties at the end of the story as he was at the beginning. He has learned nothing.</blockquote>

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