Superior Pulp
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These stories are pulp fiction - quick to read, simple in structure, and disposable. They're also written by Moorcock, which means witty, exciting, strange, and thoroughly enjoyable. Lacking the pathos or depth found spread through other multiverse stories, these three novels are "just" huge fun. Don't be suprised if you put the book down to find that the hours have flown by and you've finished it at a sitting!
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The British (and American) Empire Rises Again
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The British Empire as a benign force, maintaining a Pax Britannica with the use of mighty aerial battleships, the dream
of Kipling and others. It was their version of the future.
Moorcock takes this idea and then invests it with a whole new
meaning, showing the empire to be anything but just and maintained by military power. The first book in the sequence is probably the best (including its portrait of Ronald Reagan as an incompetent scout master) but all of them are relevant to what goes on today as the American empire expands and the Russians do their best to keep what's left of theirs with force.
As usual, Moorcock shows remarkable prescience in books written
some twenty or thirty years ago. They are even more relevant to our troubled times. Moorcock doesn't date. He just matures! Well worth a read with their fascinating pictures of
a North America still maintaining its race laws and a Russia
where the Communists never won but which remained an imperial
nation, nonetheless. And there is an interesting secondary
theme in the books concerning the historical dropping of the
atomic bombs on Japan.
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Pulp Sci-Fi meets Imperialist Regimes...
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Volume 6 in Moorcock’s newly ordered and revised ‘The Tale of the Eternal Champion’ series contains the following 3 novels: THE WARLORD OF THE AIR (1971) – Concerning one Captain Oswald Bastable’s trip to an alternate 1973 timeline, where globalisation has led to a seeming utopia. A fast moving tale mixing equal parts adventure and satire, with numerous appearances of real life historical figures in telling roles. A perfect balance between a superficially straightforward adventure story and a political cautionary tale. THE LAND LEVIATHAN (1974) continues Bastable’s story, and this time sees him flung into an alternate world where a “Black Attila” is engaged in a struggle for global domination under Negro rule. As with its predecessor, this is a fast and lively tale, though unfortunately slightly bogged down by an overlong prologue concerning how the tale’s manuscript came to be uncovered. THE STEEL TSAR (1981) is probably the least successful of the three novels, as by now the situations that Bastable finds himself in have become rather formulaic. There is a nice idea about an alternate history where a world war was started (rather than concluded) by dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and Bastable’s own direction in the multiverse is finally established, but the supporting people and places of this particular history are instantly forgettable. All in all, a reasonably enjoyable set of novels, marred only by their own fairly repetitious nature.
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Still the best!
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Philip Pullman's Amber Knife, Moore's From Hell, Talbot's Luther Arkwright, Mieville's Perdido Street Station, Morrison's Invisibles -- you name them, they all recognise Moorcock as the originator of what is sometimes called 'steam punk' but which I call 'alternate urban adventure' since they tend to focus on the darker aspects of City Life. But what Moorcock also shares with these authors is his constant, unwavering suspicion of authority. Before this there were no steam-driven airships and the like,
no alternative futures, no examination of the underbelly of government, no dark, alternate Londons. This looks at three imperial dreams -- the British, the American and the Russian -- and shows in the first -- and by far the best -- Warlord of the Air how those empires are maintained by injustice, brutality and hypocrisy. Moorcock has not just given us a lot of good, original stories -- he has given many different authors who followed him a range of different methods. This is one method (the future as seen from the past) but Jerry Cornelius is another, Dancers at the End of Time are another and, of course, he changed the whole face of fantasy fiction with Elric and Co -- and that's without mentioning the literary fiction, the Pyat books, Mother London and all the non-fiction. In the 60s and early 70s Moorcock anticipated Black Holes and the Multiverse, both ideas once considered too outrageous by science, now highly respectable ideas debated in NATURE and NEW SCIENTIST. His scientific vision alone ranks him beside Wells and Clarke and his words have entered the language in the same way.
Oswald Bastable is a decent, idealistic young Army officer on the North West Frontier, circa 1900.
After some Haggard-like funny business in an old Temple, he awakes to find himself in the future --
a future he has anticipated in his own self-sacrifice -- i.e. a perfect Pax Britannica maintained by the mighty airships of a benign Britain. Why on earth would 'terrorists' wish to attack this perfect system ? No doubt from jealousy ? And why would Joseph Conrad (here
Korzeniowski the airship captain) support such
people ? This is also a very early example, if not the first, of post-modernist 'intervention' in genre. As well as playing games with Lord Jim and his creator, Moorcock takes Kipling's With The Night Mail and turns it on his head. Kipling supported his elite republican heroes against 'the mob'. As ever, Moorcock's heart is decidedly on the side of 'the mob' and that, again, is what makes this science fiction in the honourable tradition of Wells, London, Huxley and Orwell -- and just as influential on both literary and popular culture. The first novel is still the best. The others are excellent riffs on the main tune and worth reading. It still has the excitement of a new form being discovered and tried which gives it a special authority, makes it a particular joy.
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Airships, colonial wars, nuclear terrorism
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It's all here. A great read but chillingly prescient. Moorcock confirms his uncanny visionary powers. An enduring favourite and
even more relevant now.
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