Once, it was said, the whole city had been sentient, the most intelligent being in the universe, but now it was senile and even its memories were fragmented. If you want to test your reactions to the infringement of virtually all standards of decency, the breaking of many hallowed taboos, all done lightheartedly, then this book may interest you. Heady stuff indeed, but with a better than average plot I would suggest it to hardcore SF readers only. The story itself shows Moorcock at his most spry, lovingly lampooning some of the themes of his other works, the romance genre, and English literary traditions in general. After having adjusted the geography where the Iron Orchid and Jherek lunched and turning the sea into a deep pink, described as almost cerise, he is shown to be once more experimenting with artificial wings, to the chagrin of Iron Orchid, who wonders why he insists that they are a success.

This is a brillaint homage to Goethe, Wilde and the Fin de Siècle decadents of that period – with a wink and a nod. She falls in love with him at last; as they are about to embrace, however, she is whisked back to her own time. The book is included in Interzone editor David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (1985). Since I'm a huge fan of Decadent classics, Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans comes immediately to mind, and also New Wave SF, I found every page of this singular Michael Moorcock positively scrumptious - so much so, I even created a special black and yellow bookmark from a Victor Vasarely print to match the cover of the SF Masterworks edition.Originally a trilogy, republished as a single volume, Moorcock's story about the decadent final days of humanity starts strongly but lost its interest for me as it progressed.

The first volume, An Alien Heat introduces us to the protagonist Jherek Carnelian who is something of a trendsetter in the decadent society. The ending of the series is not a bad ending, but it feels as though it could have happened 300 pages earlier without changing anything. Nurse and the Children of the Pit - Another jocular, playful romp is when Jherek falls down and is trapped among "The Children of the Pit" ruled over by a robot nurse who treats Jherek like one of the children. Upon realising this, Jagged understood that time is circular, not linear as was previously assumed, and devised a new plan. You see, these suffering-free denizens of this future age do continue one aspect of our current day world - they indulge each other with entertainment and amusements.Pale Roses begins with the destruction of the rainbow part of Werther de Goethe's creation Rain by the Everlasting Concubine, Mistress Christia, and Werther's despair. Michael Moorcock’s cycle of three novels is a tribute to the decadent dandyism of fin de siècle England with such colorful personalities as Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm and Aubrey Beardsley. Into this crazy, quaint, immoral World, stumbles Mrs Amelia Underwood, a prim and proper, 'virtuous' lady from 19th century England.