Michael Moorcock, at 30, begins to stand in relation to the world of science fiction much as Poe stood in relation to the Gothic novel. That is to say, he is an ingenious and energetic experimenter, restlessly original, brimming over with clever ideas, whose exploitation of a certain form is so thorough that one almost smells a whiff of parody at the root of it. Again like Poe, if Mr Moorcock set out half-inspired by a need to mock the conventions he was using he soon lost that cynicism. His albino prince, Elric, hero of the early short stories collected as The Stealer of Souls, is mastered by the sword Stormbringer in the novel of that name…. Elric's handling of Stormbringer has things in common with the author's handling of SF. The weapon comes alive in his grip. Mr Moorcock began with fancies and conceits, which increasingly assumed a weight or aspect of true myth. That aspect is nearly complete in [Behold the Man]….

[In this novel] Mr Moorcock has gone farther in point of imaginative outrage than ever before and farther—in my limited experience—than any previous writer in the genre. This is all to the good. What's the use of having men on the moon unless they're men who've read The Naked Lunch? Mr Moorcock's Karl Glogauer travels backwards in time in search of the truth about the Crucifixion. He finds more than he bargained for: a drooling idiot Jesus confined to a back room of the carpenter's shop, an animal Mary, Joseph on the make….

Some will protest that his writing is still not up to his theme, and that the book to this extent is sensational, a parcel of blasphemies and conjuring tricks lacking a final seriousness of style to string it together. In my opinion it would be fairer to say that here is an author of rare talent who has stumbled rather too early on an idea so dangerous and brilliant that scarcely any living writer could do justice to it.