Media Resources/The Cornelius Chronicles

Made up of four 'books': The Final Programme, A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak, this book 'did it all' in the 60's. Jerry Cornelius, stylish amoral superspy, scientist, identity-shifting breacher of Entropy with a crazy entourage of beings that have been used/are being used in Mr Moorcock's other books and stories and which he also gave to his writing friends to fool around with as well.

Sound familiar yet?

Very playful, whimsical, put paid to the concept of comedy being serious (when isn't it serious?), but really a Damn. Good. Read.

A good primer on just what PBX can be (and just what a Character is); in fact this, teamed up with Michael's Dancers to the End of Time series, pretty much sums up the foundation of what PBX is for me (everything else is topping for the sundae so to speak, in the same way that I view a lot of technology as 'missing the point', which heavens, doesn't stop it from being fun to fool around with, though -:).

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell%27arte

Mucho geek moment: for those of you who have read the Invisibles, I think this is where King Mob got 'is inspiration from.