“A Nomad of the Time Streams”, by Michael Moorcock

 

 

484 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041790

 

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. A Nomad of the Time Streams was the fourth in this series featuring the character Oswald Bastable, and includes the tales The Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar.

 

Strange as it may sound, Michael Moorcock did not, in fact, create the character of Oswald Bastable: in 1890, E. Nesbit (that would be Edith Nesbit, married name Edith Bland) created Oswald Bastable and his five siblings for a series of children’s novels: The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), The Wouldbegoods (1901), The New Treasure Seekers (1904) and Oswald Bastable and Others (1905). Moorcock has stated, in response to numerous questions on his website forum, that the name “Oswald Bastable” wasn’t linked to Nesbit’s character but was, instead, linked to a particular “Fabian ‘liberal’ imperialism, still fundamentally paternalistic but well-meaning” that he thought Nesbit aspired to (Nesbit and her husband, Hubert Bland, were among the founders and leading members of the Fabian Society, who sought to establish Socialism in Britain in a gradual manner). So Moorcock’s Bastable books explore various variants on the theme of Imperialism and Colonialism: the British and other colonial empires persisting into the later 20^th Centuries, or conversely collapsing already in the early 1900s, and so on.

 

With all that said, Moorcock’s character is quite a different species: he is Captain Oswald Bastable of the 53^rd Lancers and Special Air Police; the conceit of these books is that Moorcock has discovered a safe, tucked away in the family attic in 1973; within are the lost narratives of Bastable’s adventures across time, about how with English grit and British integrity this brave English airshipman defends the mighty Pax Britannica maintained by the airfleet of dirigibles. The Warlord of the Air takes place on Earth in an alternative 1973: all of the great powers are still intact and keep the peace (more or less) via grand fleets of airships, the mightiest of which is maintained by the still-mighty British Empire (no Commonwealth here), ruled by King Edward VIII and his Queen, Wallis. This is a pretty terrific world-building exercise, a kind of pre-Steampunk creation that influenced much of what came later with the idea that Imperialism is forever. Bastable’s general character arc is that of the lonesome traveler lost not only in time, but in ideology, as well, for while Oswald may be an upholder of the Pax Britannica he still has his doubts about the Empire he serves. Moorcock is no imperialist sympathizer; quite the opposite, actually, although the number of straw men set up and knocked down could be used to thatch the roofs of a whole village. This world of perpetual Empires is stagnant, with Victorian technology, morals and even styles still very much in vogue, and proof that you can’t stop history and, regardless of who are the culprits are, certain things will inevitably come to happen.

 

The Land Leviathan is a framed much like The Warlord of the Air, with Moorcock printing his grandfather’s “introductory notes” in which the long-passed senior Moorcock travels to the Valley of the Morning for adventures of his very own, wherein in comes into possession of the remnants of Bastable’s story. Bastable’s second adventure starts with a return to Teku Benga to see if the place was real or just a dream, but, all too soon, the global political and cultural milieu take center stage in his life, whether he wants them to or not. This time it’s an alternative 1903 and the world has been irrevocably changed by O’Bean, an Irish immigrant inventor living in Chile. Read the story for yourself for all of the technological details, but suffice to say that Moorcock’s leftish re-envisioning of the near-past is what one might expect. The Land Leviathan is a lefty Englishman’s commentary on the (then) contemporary United States and its comeuppance, a kind of Steampunk take on the social and political state of world politics circa 1970-something, with racial and authoritarian motifs emerging to swamp the story. This can get tedious after a (very little) while, but the story is never boring, as we follow Oswald Bastable and his somewhat reluctant quests to uphold the Pax Britannica.

 

Lastly is The Steel Tsar, which imagines a world in which the imperial shoe is on the other foot, as the focus now shifts to Southeast Asia, Japan, Russia and Ukraine. Starting with the usual conceit of a discovered manuscript, Bastable once again finds himself mysteriously arriving at a strange place and time; after locating himself, he (naturally) becomes embroiled in the mightiest political struggles of the day, leading to a conclusion with a (tedious lefty) agenda. The airships from The Warlord of the Air thankfully make a reappearance, but the story all comes down to the Steel Tsar, his identity and motivations, and while the politically loaded conclusion is what one has come to expect from these Bastable tales, it is no less exciting for all of that. The last book in the series, Moorcock reveals not only the secrets behind Una Persson and Bastable’s time travel capabilities, but also is more overt in the novel’s political commentary – just in case readers of the first two novels missed the point.  An alternate history of an alternate history, readers who enjoyed The Warlord of the Air and The Land Leviathan will find nothing to complain about in The Steel Tsar. As a side note: while it is not necessary to read the three Oswald Bastable books in order, there are certainly benefits to doing so.  Simply put, the over-arching theme and frame story gel when read in publishing order.  So, if intrigued, start with The Warlord of the Air as a test to the series suitability to your interests.  If you like it, then by all means continue with The Land Leviathan, then The Steel Tsar as they are consistent follow ups.