Viriconium Nights

Idolator results are up. Maybe later I'll have something interesting to say about this.

Michael Moorcock, A Nomad Of The Time Streams: The Warlord Of The Air / The Land Leviathan / The Steel Tsar

Surprisingly enjoyable though formulaic homages to turn-of-the-century works of utopian socialism, chief among them apparently being Edith Nesbit's Oswald Bastable stories, which give the protagonist of these books his name (and probably more than that, but, not having read them, I couldn't say), and the works of H.G. Wells. Captain Bastable hops through various alternate histories, and I hate to spoil things, but yes, shockingly, zeppelins and steam power are involved.

A Nomad Of The Time Streams: In 1903, Michael Moorcock (grandfather of the author), vacationing on Rowe Island in the Indian Ocean, meets the unhinged Oswald Bastable, who tells him the story of how he became an opium-addicted wreck in the future. It seems that after being caught in some magical earthquake, Bastable was sent into futuristic 1973, an advanced society built on steam power and airship technology. But all is not well in this seeming paradise, for anarchists, socialists, nihilists, and other such undesirable elements lurk in the background to threaten the peace and stability of the British Empire's dominance.

Bastable gets an airship job he enjoys and settles into a happy life until lame satire strikes. Boy scout leader Ronald Reagan [1], a loud and belligerent passenger, acts all stereotypically American, makes a big deal about his right to carry a gun on the ship, and acts so racist that even the racist people around him are uncomfortable. This leads to Bastable losing his job in disgrace, so when a dandy named Cornelius Dempsey offers him another position on the airship of Captain Korzeniowski, he jumps at the chance.

This decision leads to quick regret when Bastable gets to know his shipmates, which include Captain K.'s daughter, the lovely Una Persson, and her paramour, the terrorist Count Rudolf von Bek -- radicals all, not to mention the Captain himself, who's all "I lived under British colonial rule so I know it sucks" when Bastable defends imperialism. Our hero resists them but eventually winds up being taken to China where outlaws, scientists, and thinkers fleeing the world's various regimes have come together at the Dawn City, a commune established by the brilliant (we kind of have to take it on faith) and charismatic (ditto) General O.T. Shaw.

Shaw, who has experienced enough colonialism to recognize its serious problems and also is of mixed Chinese and English blood which establishes his cred, incites worldwide colonial revolt and plans to take back China from the European oppression that it has faced since the events leading up to the Opium Wars. For no good reason, he really wants Bastable on his side. In between lectures from failed revolutionary (in this timeline) Lenin, Bastable is eventually convinced of the righteousness of the General's cause, mostly due to some over-the-top racism from the opposing side, and joins Shaw for a demonstration of an untested experimental weapon on a Japanese city. Surprise! It's an atomic bomb, and their target is Hiroshima.

After the explosion Bastable finds himself back in 1903. The twist? It's not *his* 1903. DUN-DUN-DUNNNH. So he becomes a wreck [2], tells his story to Grandpa Moorcock, and disappears again. TO BE CONTINUED IN...

The Land Leviathan: Present day Michael Moorcock has found more of Grandpa's notes! Seems that the mysterious Una Persson met up with Old Man M. to drop off a manuscript of Bastable's continued adventures (and vanished, of course). This time, Bastable has been sent to a world only a couple of years in his future, where he promptly comes across an alternate version of Captain Korzeniowski. The state of affairs here: Chilean super-genius Manuel O'Bean abolished scarcity by finding new power sources and developing inventions to solve the problem of world hunger. Everything was great once poverty was obliterated. Then all the Great Powers lost all of their colonial holdings to revolution (in the wake of O'Bean's even distribution of inventions and the wealth that followed), nationalist movements gained power, and soon everyone was preparing for war. Europe was leveled and hit with bioweapons shortly thereafter. Presently, victories (and rumors of atrocities, etc.) are piling up at the feet of the African military genius Cicero Hood. Hood, a former American slave turned warlord, is also known as the "Black Attila." I'm not sure which name sounds dumber.

Needless to say, O'Bean also developed advanced steam power and airships.

Britain is pretty much fucked in this timeline, and Bastable eventually realizes this after rescuing Una Persson from a small-town lynch mob. He joins Korzeniowski's crew and ends up in "Bantustan" (AKA South Africa), a prosperous pacifist Communist republic led by Gandhi where everyone lives in racial harmony. Bastable loves this place and its values of peace and equality, and lives happily until Cicero "Chobin" Hood comes to parley with President Gandhi. Expecting a tyrant, Bastable is "reminded [...] of a sort of black Abraham Lincoln!" (p. 221) and is further surprised to find Una Persson at his side. For no good reason, Hood offers Bastable a position at his side during his impending attack on the United States (to liberate black America), and Bastable, while conflicted, accepts, if only to assassinate the General should his actions prove unacceptable. After battling by sea and air and reaching the States, Hood unveils his experimental superweapon. Surprise! It's not an atomic bomb! It's actually kind of an invincible giant mega-tank, the Land Leviathan, which is promptly used to crush New York and vanquish an irrational raving racist Herbert Hoover.

At this point, Bastable, frightened by the incredible power of the Land Leviathan, has an unconvincing attack of white pride. He hurries to Washington to warn the leadership and assist them if possible, meeting an irrational raving racist Joe Kennedy on the way. After seeing that KKK-enthusiast President Beesley has reinstated slavery and has created a line of black human shields as protection, Bastable finally realizes the right side to be on. Hood wins, Una Persson opens up (only slightly, of course, but at least revealing that she's also a timeline-hopper), and Bastable is happy, helping Hood in his gentle and fair conquest of America and returning to Bantustan for a period of peace before hopping to another timeline.

The book alternates a cavity-inducingly sweet (to the point of condescension) portrayal of its black characters with an unbearably smug condemnation of the one-dimensional irrational hateful racists who oppose them. It ends up being more embarrassing than offensive.

The Steel Tsar: Una Persson shows up herself to visit the present day Michael Moorcock and present him with Oswald Bastable's final manuscript. Bastable first finds himself in British Singapore in 1941. It's under attack by the Japanese, and he soon winds up on Rowe Island from the first book with alternate versions of various characters (there's a Begg, a Nye, an Underwood -- recurring name alert), most notably an opium-addicted wreck version of Cornelius Dempsey, who is responsible for this world's war because he dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The Japanese aren't far behind. Everyone gets interned and there's an ultra-annoying boring loser who I think might be Woodrow Wilson and there's a rescue and eventually Bastable joins the Russians.

In Odessa, Bastable first hears of the messianic socialist warlord known as the Steel Tsar, who is definitely Stalin and wears an ancient steel helmet and is rumored to be a cyborg and is leading Cossacks in a civil war against Kerensky's government (Lenin is fucked in all of these timelines). Soon, Bastable is captured by the Cossack forces and finds most of his surviving internment camp chums on the Steel Tsar's side -- and Una Persson is the Tsar's right-hand gal. Stalin is a crazy paranoid anti-Semitic megalomaniac with no regard for his followers and there's some shit with a giant mechanical Stalinbot and basically he wants to drop atomic bombs on everyone, including his own people, and it becomes clear that Una Persson is just playing along to stop him. We meet her compatriot Max von Bek, AKA Monsieur Zenith, an aristocratic albino who introduces Bastable to the League of Temporal Adventurers; their goal is to foil the Steel Tsar's plans before they have a greater effect on the multiverse or the time stream or whatever. Dempsey goes crazy with guilt and martyrs himself to get rid of Stalin/the bombs, hoping to make amends for his previous act of genocide. Finally, Bastable joins the League and looks forward to taking control over his future destinations, with Una Persson at his side.

It's becoming clear that Moorcock's major subject is the balance of human weakness with personal responsibility in the abstract as explored through war and acts of genocide/mass death in particular; the Bastable books come off like a lighter but better version of the Erekose books, with Bastable feeling a more reasonable amount of guilt for his responsibility in dropping the bomb (they also end better than the Erekose books -- the gradual reveals of Una Persson's nature are perfectly paced and Bastable moving towards his future profession feels earned).

All of the various utopias Bastable comes across are fragile, resulting from circumstance and built inevitably on blood. This comes off well. What doesn't work is the various strawman spokesmen for the various ideologies we're subjected to. The socialist good guys have no real flaws, and inevitably the baddies rave about shit leading Bastable to think something along the lines of, "If I had been in two minds about my loyalties before, I was no longer. Powell's parting sneer of contempt had succeeded in my deciding to choose Shaw's side once and for all. The mask of kindly patronage had dropped away to show the hatred and the fear beneath." (p. 132)

That's the problem. The mask always has to fall. Usually in the most obvious and indefensible way possible. It's not enough that Stalin is evil and crazy; he also has to lead pogroms and betray his people. It's not enough that the American government is stupid and wrong; they also have to be crazy racists working against their own best interests. There are so many ways to implicate Empire that Moorcock has no excuse to get lazy and dumb with his social commentary.

[1] Yes, this book appears to predate Reagan's Presidency.
[2] One of many disappointing inconsistencies: the opium addiction disappears between adventures.

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