The Black Corridor

Did You Know?

• The novel includes scenes based on a rough draft dystopian novel started but not finished by Moorcock's then-wife, Hilary Bailey, described as 'a straight future disaster story – collapse of society stuff'.
• Barry N. Malzberg reviewed the novel unfavorably on release, saying 'it is not good. It is really not at all good', but concluded that Moorcock might someday write a substantial novel.
• The Black Corridor was cited by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the thirteen best science-fiction horror novels.

Plot summary

Ryan, a tough-minded British businessman, is appalled by the breakdown of society at the end of the 20th century and considers himself one of the few sane people in a world of paranoiacs. With a small group of family and friends, he steals a spaceship and heads for Munich 15040 (Barnard's Star), a planet believed suitable for colonization. He keeps watch alone while his 13 companions are sealed in suspended-animation cabinets; his daily report on each is always 'Condition Steady'. Tormented by nightmares and memories of Earth's violence, Ryan fears losing his grip on reality, and the shipboard computer urges him to take a drug that eliminates delusions, but he is strangely reluctant.

Typographical art

The novel includes sequences of typographical art in which, as the author described, 'words create a pattern of other letters forming other words'. The first American edition (Ace, 1969) rendered the art correctly but cut the opening passages; the first UK edition (Mayflower, 1969) restored those passages but the typesetters mishandled the art, though they placed it on the correct pages—something later American printings failed to do. When John Davey edited the Tales of the Eternal Champion omnibuses for Orion (UK) and White Wolf (US) in the 1990s, care was taken to perfect the typographical art in the volume containing The Black Corridor (Sailing to Utopia); these omnibuses, especially the White Wolf edition, are regarded by Moorcock as the 'most accurate typographically'.