User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Rollicking, ripping action packed adventure yarn.
The Warlord of the Air - in the spirit of Balzac and Maupassant, a good old-fashioned frame tale. Actually, our British author goes one better, giving us a frame tale within a frame tale. And this novel is the first of three in his classic steampunk trilogy
Nomad of the Time Streams.
Here's the setup: Michael Moorcock comes into possession of a manuscript typed out by his Grandfather, a gent also by the name of Michael Moorcock. Turns out, back in 1903 Grandpa served as scribe for one Oswald Bastable, a man who over the course of several days and nights related his fantastic, outrageous adventures - both in 1902 and 1973!
I'll leave the hows and wheres for each reader and make an immediate shift to the bulk of the novel: Bastable's bold, astonishing tale, presented here as a highlight reel:
KINGDOM CLAIMING TO BE OLDER THAN TIME
Bastable, a handsome chap in his late twenties, begins as the beginning: despite his young age, back in 1902 he was Captain Bastable who lead a small army into the upstart Himalayan land of Kumbalari (they dared kill a few British officials manning a frontier station within their borders) to make sure this race of cruel, ignorant, dirty but proud people recognized the supreme, rightful authority of the British Empire.
Events move apace until their leader, Sharan Kang, invites the good Captain and a handful of his men to his palace in Teku Benga. Upon entering this walled mountain city, Bastable can't imagine how such a city was built out of the crags of the Himalayas as many of the buildings “looked as if they had been plucked up and perched delicately on slivers of rock which could scarcely support the weight of a man.”
The more we listen to Bastable's descriptions of the city's barnyard stench and the sickening mixture of architectural styles with sculptures formed into “serpent finials, fabulous monsters grinning or growling from every corner, tigers and elephants standing guard at every doorway,” the more Teku Benga appears to be not only the stuff of fabled Oriental exotica but a maddening, diabolical cross between the mythic city of Shambala and Kurtz's Heart of Darkness Inner Station. Any bets on an unexpected spiraling down for Captain Bastable and his band of not so merry men?
ACTION AND MORE ACTION
Many reviewers give away far too much. A reader deserves to follow Bastable's adventures and misadventures with fresh eyes. But I will say Captain B faces the challenge of being drugged and then waking up in the aftermath of an earthquake only to face a mind-bending (understatement) time shift.
POLITICS AND SOCIETY
A pair of Bastable reflections: One: “All over the world the British were settling and administering – and so civilizing – even the most inaccessible areas, thanks to the invention of the airship.” Two: “And as for the seamier side of life, well, there was hardly any at all, for the social and moral evils which had created them had been abolished. The Suffragettes of my own day would have been happy to hear that women over thirty now had the vote and there was talk of extending the franchise to women of twenty-one.”
One of the more charming features of the tale: a man from the world of 1902 observing the tale's world of 1973.
SUPERSIZED STEAMPUNK
“For the entertainment of the passengers there were kinemas, ballrooms, phonographs, deck sports and party games, restaurants – all anyone might desire concentrated in a space of a quarter of a mile floating two or three thousand feet above the surface of the earth.” Hmmm. I wonder if those kinemas are something like the “feelies” from
Brave New World?
A key invention of retrofuturistic technology: the airship. Michael Moorcock, prime precursor of what has come to be known as Steampunk, lets it fly – his airships here can be ten times as large as the largest ocean liners. The QE2 x 10. Now that's colossal! Are there any doubts we're talking alternate 1973 history?
Fans of steampunk will especially take to
The Warlord of the Air since a good chunk of the novel's drama transpires up in the clouds.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Michael Moorcock, prolific real life author, always leaves enough room for a reader's imagination. Case in point, as part of the fun we can make our own connections revolving around characters. For example: there's a Captain Joseph Korzeniowski (Joseph Conrad's Polish name), ah, another JC eternal hero, and the captain had a fine former second officer named Marlowe (perhaps a conflation of Christopher Marlowe with Marlow the sailor/meditating Buddha of
Heart of Darkness fame). The list goes – Che Guevara, Lenin, Churchill, Kennedy, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, Mick Jagger, even a fashionably dressed young man with long black hair: Cornelius Dempsey - but we need not be bound by our own twentieth century cause we're talking alternate history here.
CORNBALL CAPTAIN
Recall I alluded to Bastable's misadventures. This term surely applies when our hero must deal with a bloated buffoon who happens to be the leader of teenage scouts. “His comical appearance was heightened by the look of stern self-importance on his red, lumpy face.” And the name of this poopstick? Captain Reagan. Bullseye, Michael Moorcock! So prescient. Ronald Reagan was only a B actor turned California Governor back when Sir Michael wrote
Warlord.
SHE'S BEAUTIFUL, AND THEREFORE TO BE WOOED
“Behind him stood a pretty girl dressed in a long, black traveling coat. Her short, dark hair framed her heart-shaped, serious little face and she stared at me curiously with steady grey eyes.” What's a tale of adventure without the presence of a stunning beauty? Also aboard a colossal airship is none other than luscious lovely Una Persson, one of the female luminaries from the Jerry Cornelius novels. Hang in there, Bastable! You might hit a streak of luck, romance-wise.
TRUE WARLORD
Michael Moorcock lets us know he's always had an enthusiasm for late-Victorian and Edwardian fiction. Indeed, this novel can be seen as a tribute to writers like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Grab a copy and read about the many twists and conundrums Oswald Bastable must face, especially when he encounters General O.T. Shaw, a man who proves beyond doubt he is the true Warlord of the Air.
Rare photo of Oswald Bastable
"Each ship was a thousand feet long. Each had a hull as strong as steel. Each bristled with artillery and great grenades which could be dropped upon their enemies. Each ship moved implacably through the sky, keeping pace with its mighty fellows."
British author Michael Moorcock, born 1939
Rating: really liked it
As ever, Moorcock is a wry, clever author full of ideas and insights, but he ends up rushing from one moment to another when I wish that he would let his stories play out. The characters and their relationships were intriguing and promising, but Moorcock tends to fall back on exposition instead of showing the development of his characters and plot through interaction and carefully-constructed scenes. The scope of his tales rarely seem to match the length of his books.
I have great appreciation for the freedom he allows his imaginative drive, so that he has no compunction about sticking a bit of inexplicable Lovecraftian time travel in as a framing story for his zeppelin combat narrative. That sort of pulp zaniness combined with an authorial voice that can be subtle and clever and precise will keep drawing be back to Moorcock's writing--indeed, he is an inspiration for authors of speculative fiction, if only he'd spend a little more time polishing up.
Some of his political satire was a bit rough, lacking in the precision that makes satire truly effective, but other sections showed a much lighter, knowing touch. Likewise, there were errors in his structure, particularly the killing off of a certain character in a large battle that seemed entirely unnecessary--there was no apparent reason that he needed to be sent into sudden danger when he was, especially as the conflict could have been (and eventually was) resolved by a much simpler method. It seemed he was only thrown to the wolves to procure a bit of drama, which seemed rather cheap to me.
Hopefully as the series continues Moorcock will take a bit more confidence in his voice and let the story play out instead of interposing interesting scenes and rather more bland exposition.
Rating: really liked it
Very good, if your into steampunk, which i very much am. It was so neat to read some that was written in the 70's and compare it with the steampunk genre today. This is the first book in a 3-novel volume i'm reading about Oscar Bastable called The Nomad of Time, if you have a more recently published copy, it is now called The Nomad of the Time Streams.
Moorcock's story, if it wasn't for the fantastical aspects, very much reminded me of George Orwell actually, in the way it covered British colonization, imperialism in general and war. Set in an alternative history where life is similar to ours but some inventions have been created earlier and some not at all. Some cameos from people whoare suposed to represent- Mick Jagger, Lenin and Ronald Reagan as a childish, tempermental Boy Scout Troup leader. This was my first Moorcock book and i will be reading more; it is extremely well-written in my opinion. Great book- air ships, time travel, and he's good at describing the mundane and making it great..
Rating: really liked it
This book is certainly well-written and interesting. It starts rather slow, with Moorcock explaining how he found a manuscript left by his grandfather, with the grandfather explaining how he met the main protagonist who dictated said manuscript, and then the main protagonist, Oswald Bastable, describing how he managed to get from a punitive expedition in the 1902 Himalaya to the 1973 British Empire build on giant airships. But the speed of the action increases, and Bastable goes through what appears to be a fairly conventional adventure stories, with air pirates, rowdy Americans, and everything. But underlying this is a strong critique of imperialism and colonialism, subverting not just Bastables' morals as an upstanding British officer, but also some of the readers preconceptions about politics and adventure literature.
On the downside: While easy enough to read, and, after a slow start, well-paced, the books writing does show its 1971 vintage. If I remember correctly, there are only two women in the book - and for one we primarily hear about her ankles. The other is a physicist and anarchist and, IIRC, takes a bigger role in other instances of Moorcocks multiverse, but remains rather anaemic here.
Recommended as a good yarn with some unexpected depth, and a very early example of steampunk.
Rating: really liked it
This first Oswald Bastable novel was steampunk before there was a name for such a thing.... before there was anything-punk, come to dwell on it. It's an alternate-history political novel very much in the tradition of Wells, told with the found-manuscript framing made so popular by Burroughs. Set in a 1973 world in which World War II never happened, it shares some common themes and characters with other multiverse tapestry pieces, but isn't an integral part. It's more slowly paced than his sword-adventure books, but less serious Reagan and Jagger have walk-ons) than much of his later, more consciously literary work. It's good stuff.
Rating: really liked it
I didn't even know this book existed until a friend on Goodreads mentioned it to me, and I'm so glad he did. Thanks for the recommend Jorge.
I love the steampunk idea but it often falls short for me. Retribution Falls is by far the best I've read to date. But I think Moorcock's The Warlord of the Air is something a little different, maybe that's because it was written quite a while back, it may have even been one of the first steampunk novels, I'm not sure. But it is something a little special.
This is a short book at 222 pages and therefore couldn't spend too much time building up the world we were roaming around in, but even with that I still felt very much immersed, I could picture, feel, being there. I want to say this book is very much of its time, but of course, this time never existed. And I for one would never have guessed this was written in the '70s, it stands up so well that it doesn't feel dated at all to me.
I really enjoyed the beginning of this. It felt just like those old classics in its telling. Fantastic stuff.
My only criticism is that the third quarter of the book was a little rushed. I would have liked to have dwelled on Bastable's predicament between downfall to revolutionary a little more. But that's just me trying to think of an issue, it's really not that big a deal.
In short, I'd say, a must-read! And yes, I've already bought the next two books in the series.
Rating: really liked it
3.5 StarsIntentionally written in the style of H.G. Wells as well as the pulp science fiction of the early 20th Century (seePhilip Francis Nowlan), but with modern (late sixties and early seventies) sensibilities. Having been a fan of this type of science fiction since my childhood I found "The Warlord of the Air" to be great fun. Mr. Moorcock combines Victorian and mid-twentieth century attitudes and throws the story at us with a wink since the inside joke is that we (the readers) already
know that it's an alternative history story. Typical of this type of fiction character development is minimal and the plot relies on improbable events taking place to move it forward. There are other reviewers who have taken issue with this, but if you are familiar with the older science fiction novelists then you won't have any trouble with "The Warlord of the Air". This is my first Michael Moorcock novel and I think I'll try another one.
Rating: really liked it
Oswald Bastable IS steampunk. There may have been earlier examples of the genre, and perhaps there are later examples that more solidly explore the ideas behind steampunk, but the Nomad of the Timestreams trilogy is the definition of steampunk to me.
While a dimension hopping, time traveling Oswald Bastable might seem to be a hard pill to swallow, it is written with such an honest face that not only could I suspend my disbelief, I could almost turn full circle and believe that I was reading a historical text.
Moorcock used the conceit that the novel was copied down by his true grandfather and that even adds to the illusion. Perhaps the political subtext is laid on a little thick in the way that Moorcock represents certain historical figures, but even these touches add to the purported reality of alternate dimensions.
If you have any interest in steampunk, I couldn't advise a better trilogy than the Nomad of the Timestreams to introduce the genre. This is a must read.
Rating: really liked it
Michael Moorcock, one of the most prolific of British SFF writers, was at his most prolific in this period. This book is the first of the Oswald Bastable trilogy - Bastable being one of the less well-known manifestations of the Eternal Champion.
Written 16 years before steampunk became "a thing" with Jeter's 'Infernal Devices', this proto-steampunk novel is a mix of steampunk, alternate history and the multiverse. It is also one of the more overtly political novels of this period of Moorcock's career.
This is something different from an author known for being different.
Rating: really liked it
The steampunk adventures of Oswald Bastable, a Victorian soldier lost in time.
Lauded as one of the stories which established the steampunk genre, Warlord of the Air sees Oswald Bastable, a well intentioned Victorian soldier, catapulted into a future in which the British Empire never fell, the world wars never happened, the streets are crowded with electric cars and the skies with airships. Moorcock takes the adventurous principles of HG Wells and Jules Verne, and injects into them his own political sensibilities, wacky late 60s/early 70s freakadelia, and a sense of pacing and fun that surpasses the efforts of either. The book is the very definition of a ripping yarn. Is it as profound as your typical Wells novel? absolutely not, but it was and is more profound than 99% of the pulp science fiction aimed at teens that gets published back then and now. You see the world through Bastable's eyes and learn as he learns. What starts as a gentle ribbing of Victorian sensibilities and ideas of cultural superiority and "the white man's burden" - Bastable initially believes he has been transported into some future utopia, slowly becomes something far more serious and unsettling.
I'm very surprised by the low rating on Goodreads. Moorcock is well respected, and this novelette has Moorcock (at least in his youthful form) operating at peak powers. The pacing is terrific, the themes are properly explored, the characters well-developed and the ideas original and thought-provoking. I will certainly read the remainder of the Trilogy some time soon.
Rating: really liked it
Very much an entertainment, to coin Greene’s use of the term. Steampunk with a wide net of allusion from Conrad, Lenin and TE Lawrence to the fumbling bigot Reagan, I enjoyed this, I’m not sure it engendered a great deal of thought. There in that silence, that pause, remains the other books in the series. I’m not adept at finishing cycles.
Rating: really liked it
In 1971, Michael Moorcock receives from his father a box of his grandfather's, and namesake's, papers. In the box is a typewritten manuscript prepared by the first Michael Moorcock in the year 1903. It is the transcript of a narrative related to the elder Moorcock by Oswald Bastable, an opium-addicted stowaway he encounters while taking a kind of rest cure on Rowe Island in the Indian Ocean. (Rowe Island is Moorcock's -- our Moorcock's -- invention.)
Bastable was a British officer serving in the Raj in 1902. He had been sent on dangerous expedition into Nepal to put down a potential rebellion by one Sharan Kang, a sorcerer leader based in the remote fortress of Teku Benga. Bastable is a shattered man, and over the next three days Moorcock records his remarkable tale. In Teku Benga, Bastable and his men are drugged, lost in the labyrinthine maze of the temples at Teku Benga, and victims of what appears to be an earthquake. When Bastable regains consciousness, his clothes are in tatters, the city is destroyed, and a chasm now separates him from any hope of return. But he is rescued by a vast air ship. The year is 1973.
Warlord of the Air is Moorcock writing in a Wellesian mode and the first of his
Nomads of Time trilogy. The story brings together three time sequences. Moorcock the writer in 1971 is reading his grandfather's 1903 transcription of adventures that Bastable claim took place in 1973. The reader can write off Bastable story as opium-induced ravings, since what he has to say about 1973 is so far off the mark of what we, and Moorcock, Jr., know. But Moorcock's grandfather is inclined to believe the young man, and we should be as well. Just because Bastable has travelled into the future, it doesn't mean that it is our future. In the same sense, Bastable suspects that the present he has returned to is not exactly the present he left that year before in Teku Benga.
Bastable is awestruck and delighted with the future world his discovers. It is a colonialist utopia. All those benign powers he knew from the turn of the twentieth century control their colonies with a firm but just hand, although there remain a few warlords in China and no right-thinking Englishman could really approve of how things are handled in Russians and Japanese territories. But there has been no serious war for seventy years and as his rescuer, Major Howell, assures him things are going along swimmingly. At that moment a bomb explodes nearby.
Major Howell's face was suddenly grim and white and his dark eyes blazed with anger,
"What was that?"
"Bomb"
"Here?"
"Anarchists, Madmen, European troublemakers, almost certainly...Germans - Russians - Jews, they've all got an interest in the disruption of order."
Damn those malcontents. Bastable instinctively does not approve of them. The rest of Moorcock's short novel will be Bastable's education in the ways of this new world, the flaws in this utopia, and an account of his hero's difficult transition from faithful soldier of the Raj to one aligned with the revolutionary movements of the day.
As an exercise in literary style, this is the most entertaining of any Moorcock book I have read. He is writing in the 1970's what purports to be a transcript taken in 1903. The future he describes, as comically off-the-mark as it may be, is true to the vision we can imagine concocted by an early twentieth-century novelist. He peoples it with stock characters including evil Oriental geniuses, London dandies, aristocratic anarchists, and socialist visionaries, all aided by a technology the we know never developed in the way his characters experience it. At the end of the story, with Bastable once again disappeared into the time stream, Moorcock's grandfather reviews the manuscript in his hand.
I glanced through my notes. Giant airships--monorailways - electric bicycles - wireless telephones - flying machines - all the marvels. They could not have been invented by the mind of one young man,
Moorcock is describing the novel he himself has just completed.
Rating: really liked it
Long on politics, short on action and adventure. OK, so it takes all sorts, but this is my review and I felt like I was reading a pamphlet (which is not to say I do or don't disagree with the sentiments, just this is
fiction and I prefer fiction to be fun). I'd also quibble with the status of this book as a steampunk classic. Not much 'steam' and pretty easy on the 'punk', too. It's dieselpunk, if anything. The presence of a few airships in a book does not a steampunk classic make, so look elsewhere if that association is what drew you to this book. As readers of this review have rightly pointed out, that's not Moorcock's fault, (see further comments below), but now that I've read more Moorock, I think the 2 stars are warranted independently of this work's dubious steampunk status.
Rating: really liked it
In general the book was more successful in its ideas than in its story: the author gets carried away with the description of life in alternate 1973 and the exploration of the results of unchecked imperialism, and then skimps on the story aspects of plot and character. Much of it felt cramped, with the Warlord of the title only appearing some two-thirds through, and then Bastable experiencing a relatively fast change of heart to join him. This conversion is shown in a compressed time scale without a personal event to anchor it, and as a result it felt like I was being told instead of shown, and rushed through the author's themes of imperialism and racism.
Rating: really liked it
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"Notable as an Early Steampunk/Jules Verne homage….
The Warlord of the Air is the first of a trilogy of steampunk novels (Land Leviathan, The Steel Tsar) by Moorcock collected in the omnibus edition The Nomad of Time and later as The Nomad of the Time Streams.
The story follows Oswald Bastable [...]"
