The novel “The Wrecks of Time”, also known as “The Rituals of Infinity”, by Michael Moorcock was published for the first time werialized between November 1965 and January 1966 in the magazine “New Worlds” under the pseudonym James Colvin and in 1967 as a book.
Professor Faustaff is traveling in the California of one of the various versions of the Earth when he meets Nancy, who is hitchhiking. Together, they stop at a motel, where they meet another traveler who seems to Faustaff immediately suspect. He’d like to investigate but gets called for an emergency.
The D-squads are back at work. These mysterious people cause Unstable Matter Situations, phenomena that lead to the destruction of one Earth. Faustaff and his organization are trying to stop them but the Professor soon realizes that the situation is more complex than he previously thought.
In one of his early novels, Michael Moorcock uses one of the themes that have marked his work, that of the alternative worlds. Over the years, he built his own fictional multiverse that connects several different universes described in his stories.
In “The Rituals of Infinity” Professor Faustaff (Faust+Falstaff) runs an organization that has the means to move through a series of alternate Earths. About thirty years before the events of the novel, Faustaff’s father discovered their existence but over time some of these Earths have been destroyed by the mysterious D-squads for unknown reasons.
“The Rituals of Infinity” telss the attempts by Faustaff and his organization to oppose the actions of the D-squads and save the alternate Earths that are attacked. A typical element of Michael Moorcock which can already be seen in this novel consists in the fact that throughout the story Faustaff discovers that things are far more complex than he previously thought and the truth is different from what he expected.
This novel is very short by today’s standards so after a beginning that introduces characters and setting the pace is generally very high, with several twists. Michael Moorcock is strongly linked to the New Wave movement but the plot of “The Rituals of Infinity” is more reminiscent of the adventurous stories of the previous years. The author adds elements more typical of the ’60s as the rituals of the title.
Faustaff himself seems in many ways more a character of the Golden Age story, being a scientist with multiple skills. Again, Michael Moorcock seems to want to somehow “modernize” him but I think it does it in a clumsy way weakening the absolute protagonist of the novel.
In my opinion, Faustaff’s eccentricity end up being mostly a distraction. The author seems to want to make him more human but in the end he just seems a bit weird. The impression is that Michael Moorcock was still developing his style but he couldn’t develop the characters at their best yet.
Even Nancy, whom he met at the beginning of the novel, and with whom he quickly started a relationship, ends up being a burden. In his case, the problem is that she’s essentially useless in the story. When she’s present, she speaks with Faustaff, sees some events but has no real role.
The result is a story that in my opinion works especially in its basic elements. There’s an adventure through the worlds with the gradual discovery of what is really going on that is intriguing. Everything around it is so-so, beginning with the characters: besides Faustaff, there are a couple of them decently developed, the others are essentially irrelevant.
In the end, “The Rituals of Infinity” is in my opinion a decent novel to be considered for its “historical” value in Michael Moorcock’s career and for this reason it may be interesting especially for his fans.
