![]() First UK edition | |
Author | Michael Moorcock |
---|---|
Cover artist | Chris Foss |
Language | English |
Series | Oswald Bastable |
Genre | Science fiction novel |
Publisher | Quartet (UK) Doubleday (US) |
Publication date | 1974 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
Pages | 161 pp |
ISBN | 0-7043-2018-5 |
Preceded by | Warlord of the Air |
Followed by | The Steel Tsar |
The Land Leviathan is an alternative history novel by Michael Moorcock, first published in 1974. [1] Originally subtitled "A New Scientific Romance", it has been seen as an early steampunk novel, [2] dealing with an alternative British Imperial history dominated by airships and futuristic warfare. It is a sequel to Warlord of the Air (1971) and followed by The Steel Tsar (1981). This proto-steampunk trilogy is also published as the compilation volume A Nomad of the Time Streams .
The story of Oswald Bastable's adventures "trapped forever in the shifting tides of time" is framed with the concept of the book being a long lost manuscript, as related by Moorcock's grandfather. Several years after Bastable disappeared in 1910, the elder Moorcock travels to China in an attempt to track him down, meeting Una Persson of the Jerry Cornelius novels on the way who before disappearing leaves him a manuscript written by Bastable for Moorcock, relating what happened to Bastable after he unexpectedly left the elder Moorcock at the end of Warlord of the Air , probably bound for another alternate twentieth century.
Bastable's story takes place in a post-apocalyptic early twentieth century between 1904 and 1908, where Western Europe and the United States have been devastated by accelerated technological change caused by a prolific Chilean inventor, which led to a prolonged global war causing their reversion to barbarism. By contrast, South Africa, rechristened Bantustan, is ruled by President Mohandas Gandhi, has never had apartheid, and is an oasis of civilisation which stayed out of the conflict being an affluent, technologically advanced nation in this alternate, anti-imperialist twentieth century. To restore civilisation and social order in the afflicted Northern Hemisphere, a 'Black Attila', General Cicero Hood, leads an African army to beneficent if paternalist conquest of Europe and an apocalyptic war against the United States featuring the "vast, moving ziggurat of destruction" of the title.
The historical personage of our world appearing as alternate versions of themselves include:
Martin Wisse noted that the book "is quite obviously a commentary on the 'yellow peril' and 'black peril' novel of the late 19th and early 20th century, with its unthinking racism, love of superweapons and willingness to commit genocide of the 'lesser races'. Here the formula is inverted, and the sympathies of the writer and reader are with Gandhi and the 'Black Attila', shown as a genuinely good man". [3] They are contrasted with the impoverished, tribalised white supremacists of the devastated former United States, which has reintroduced African American slavery. Bastable accuses Hood of "genocide" though the word was not coined until 1943 in reality. [4]
It was first published in 1974 and has remained in print, in various editions, ever since.
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, particularly of science fiction and fantasy, who has published a number of well-received literary novels as well as comic thrillers, graphic novels and non-fiction. He has worked as an editor and is also a successful musician. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, which were a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s.
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by, but not limited to, 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American frontier, where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LoEG) is a multi-genre, cross-over comic book series co-created by writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill which began in 1999. The comic book spans four volumes, an original graphic novel, and a spin-off trilogy of graphic novellas. Volume I and Volume II and the graphic novel Black Dossier were published by the America's Best Comics imprint of DC Comics. After leaving the America's Best imprint, the series moved to Top Shelf and Knockabout Comics, which published Volume III: Century, the Nemo Trilogy, and Volume IV: The Tempest. According to Moore, the concept behind the series was initially a "Justice League of Victorian England" but he quickly developed it as an opportunity to merge elements from numerous works of fiction into one world, in a matter akin to the shared fictional universes of Marvel and DC Comics.
Jerry Cornelius is a fictional character created by English author Michael Moorcock. The character is an urban adventurer and an incarnation of the author's Eternal Champion concept. Cornelius is a hipster of ambiguous and occasionally polymorphous gender. Many of the same characters feature in each of several Cornelius books, though the individual books have little connection with one another, having a more metafictional than causal relationship. The first Jerry Cornelius book, The Final Programme, was made into a 1973 film starring Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre. Notting Hill in London features prominently in the stories.
The Eternal Champion is a fictional character created by British author Michael Moorcock and is a recurrent feature in many of his speculative fiction works.
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Series. The series' first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
Retrofuturism is a movement in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If futurism is sometimes called a "science" bent on anticipating what will come, retrofuturism is the remembering of that anticipation. Characterized by a blend of old-fashioned "retro styles" with futuristic technology, retrofuturism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology. Primarily reflected in artistic creations and modified technologies that realize the imagined artifacts of its parallel reality, retrofuturism can be seen as "an animating perspective on the world".
Subterranean fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction, science fiction, or fantasy which focuses on fictional underground settings, sometimes at the center of the Earth or otherwise deep below the surface. The genre is based on, and has in turn influenced, the Hollow Earth theory. The earliest works in the genre were Enlightenment-era philosophical or allegorical works, in which the underground setting was often largely incidental. In the late 19th century, however, more pseudoscientific or proto-science-fictional motifs gained prevalence. Common themes have included a depiction of the underground world as more primitive than the surface, either culturally, technologically or biologically, or in some combination thereof. The former cases usually see the setting used as a venue for sword-and-sorcery fiction, while the latter often features cryptids or creatures extinct on the surface, such as dinosaurs or archaic humans. A less frequent theme has the underground world much more technologically advanced than the surface one, typically either as the refugium of a lost civilization, or as a secret base for space aliens.
Master of the World, published in 1904, is one of the last novels by French pioneer science fiction writer, Jules Verne. At the time Verne wrote the novel, his health was failing. Master of the World is a "black novel," filled with foreboding and fear of the rise of tyrants such as the novel's villain, Robur, and totalitarianism. Master of the World contains a number of scientific ideas, current to Verne's time, which are now widely known to be errors. For example, traveling at high speed does not reduce a vehicle's weight.
The Warlord of the Air is a 1971 British alternate history novel written by Michael Moorcock. It concerns the adventures of Oswald Bastable, an Edwardian era soldier stationed in India, and his adventures in an alternate universe, in his own future, wherein the First World War never happened. It is the first part of Moorcock's A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy and, in its use of speculative technology juxtaposed against an Edwardian setting, it is widely considered to be one of the first steampunk novels. The novel was first published by Ace Books as part of their Ace Science Fiction Specials series.
Abaddon Books is a British publishing imprint, founded in 2006. It is part of the Rebellion group of companies, along with publishing companies Solaris Books, 2000 AD, 2000 AD Graphic Novels, and Cubicle 7.
The British Empire has often been portrayed in fiction. Originally such works described the Empire because it was a contemporary part of life; nowadays fictional references are also frequently made in a steampunk context.
Nisi Shawl is an African American writer, editor, and journalist. They are best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy short stories who writes and teaches about how fantastic fiction might reflect real-world diversity of gender, sexual orientation, race, physical ability, age, and other sociocultural factors.
Black science fiction or black speculative fiction is an umbrella term that covers a variety of activities within the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres where people of the African descent take part or are depicted. Some of its defining characteristics include a critique of the social structures leading to black oppression paired with an investment in social change. Black science fiction is "fed by technology but not led by it." This means that black science fiction often explores with human engagement with technology instead of technology as an innate good.
The Steel Tsar is a sci-fi/alternate history novel by Michael Moorcock, first published in 1981 by Granada. Being a sequel to The Warlord of the Air (1971) and The Land Leviathan (1974), it is the final part of Moorcock's A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy regarding the adventures of Captain Oswald Bastable and which has been seen as an early example of steampunk fiction. The same cover image was used for the 1984 reissue of Judas Priest album Rocka Rolla and also the 1989 video game Ballistix.
A Nomad of the Time Streams is a compilation volume of Michael Moorcock's early steampunk trilogy, begun in 1971 with The Warlord of the Air and continued by its 1974 and 1981 sequels, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar. The trilogy follows the adventures of Edwardian-era British Army Captain Oswald Bastable in alternate versions of the 20th century.
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This is a bibliography of the works of Michael Moorcock.
Dying Earth is a subgenre of science fantasy or science fiction which takes place in the far future at either the end of life on Earth or the end of time, when the laws of the universe themselves fail. Dominant themes include world-weariness, innocence, idealism, entropy, heat death of the universe, exhaustion or depletion of many or all resources, and the hope of renewal. A related subgenre set in the distant future of entropic decay is called entropic romance.