I've been reading Moorcock almost as long as I've been reading, and this remains my favourite of his (sets of) books. The Dancers at the End of Time is a romance, in the traditional Victorian sense; but it's a romance of how virtue meets vice,and how vice triumphs. Or, rather, it's a demonstration about how virtue is meaningless in an effectively timeless world.

It's also very, very funny, and hence you should all go read it.

I swirled through a tonne of Michael Moorcock in my dieing teenage years. Most of it was a bit unlikely to reach very wide appeal but Dancers at the End of Time was an exception. Interesting and ace. View possibily influenced by the "fond memory" effect ;)

I first read this trilogy half my life ago and it has been my favourite story ever since. While it could be described in part as science-fiction, its scope helps it transcend such tags. In fact, every sci-fi book you've read could well have taken place in the same world, thousands of years before the main events of this tale take place.

Set, obviously, at the very end of time, the world's tiny population benefits from the work of past civilizations. They have no idea how it works, but they can simply channel a great power that enables them to create whatever they like - houses, clothes, landscapes, creatures - and destroy them just as easily. This has resulted in nothing more than an endless succession of fads and fashions as people while away their endless, conscience-free days partying and gossiping, punctuated by the occasional arrival of time- and space-travellers.

When Jherek Carnelian falls in love with an accidental visitor from Victorian England, a whole new series of ancient fashions sweeps the end of time while he attempts to make sense of this unusual emotion and track down his confused sweetheart.

The wondrous setting of the end of time and its ever-changing inhabitants and visitors would be entertaining enough, but the story is also deepened not only by the cross-century adventures and misunderstandings but also by the discovery of what it means to exist at the very end of time. In addition, those who have read some of Moorcock's other tales will find familiar time-travelling faces popping up on their way to or from other tales, which adds to the sense of a gloriously rounded and believable universe.