The Entropy Tango

The Entropy Tango is a late 20th century Grand Guignol. Its mise en scene is a climacteric world in revolutionary upheaval, its players refugees from the Cornelius tetralogy—The Final Programme, A Cure For Cancer, The English Assassin, and The Condition of Muzak. The archetypes are Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot.

The basic theme of the Cornelius mythos is the obsessive search for identity in a rapidly changing cityscape. Entropy is the metaphor for identity failure. Jerry Cornelius is no longer a force for Chaos, he is its victim—he is unable to control the megaflow. The city decays and the revolutionaries age, while the temperature falls. The twin leitmotifs of the catastrophe are alienation and paranoia.

Essentially a romance, The Entropy Tango incorporates anarchistic, paradoxical and apocryphal material. Moorcock abandons classical symbolism in favour of images containing the optimum number of associations—metaphors capable of many meanings. The novel is conceived in terms of tone, pace and mood, and quotes from earlier work or newspapers, magazines and pop songs (either directly or in terms of images, atmosphere and style). Written with Moorcock's characteristic bravado, The Entropy Tango is witty, lyrical and allegorical. The iconography is kaleidoscopic and the irony penetrates like a shot from a needle gun.