The Nomad Of Time

The Nomad of Time is a collection of 3 of Michael Moorcock's stories, each detailing an adventure in the life of Oliver Bastable. Bastable was originally the head of unit of the British military who in 1902 went on a mission to try and get the residents of Teku Benga to stop attacking their outposts. While he was there, things went south, he went running, got lost in the Palace/Temple, and wound up in a different universe, and 1973, to boot.

Bastable's goal initially is to find some way back to his universe, when he hasn't surrendered to despair and opium, anyway. It never works out, though, as he he keeps landing in worlds not quite like his. The 1973 world had no World Wars 1 or 2, and airships, not airplanes, were the big thing. The 1904 of The Land Leviathan was even more technologically advanced than the previous world, and the 1941 of The Steel Tsar seems somewhere in between the two. Regardless, whenever Bastable pops up, there's either a war going on, or one is about to start. Interestingly, the wars don't usually start because of hostilities between the Great Powers. It's the people under the thumb of the major powers who usually kick start it in an attempt to free themselves. Sometimes, it leads to them against their oppressors, other times they inadvertently set the major powers against each other. Either way, Bastable always finds himself in the middle of it, and somehow always winds up meeting a particularly charismatic leader of some group fighting to put themselves on equal footing with the major powers.

Occasionally, Bastable meets people with the same names as those he met before. There was an airship captain named Korzeniowski in 1973 he served under, then in 1904 there was a sub captain named. . . Korzeniowski. Some of these appear to be coincidence, if that exists, but the frequent appearance of Una Persson is not. She's there by design, and by the end of the third story, when she makes Oliver an offer, I was fairly convinced she had been manipulating events to bring Bastable to that moment. She'd always attached herself to the charismatic leader, and thus he always seemed at least a little fondly inclined towards Oliver. She told Oliver he'll never make it back to his universe, the timeline won't accept him. Well sure, that's what she says, but how does he know that? I found her motives suspect.

Maybe there's more to it, but it struck me as curious she always seemed able to run into Oliver, considering there a probably a ton of universes out there he could land in, at all sorts of times. I think this would probably be explored more in a different series of Moorcock's books, but this is all I have to go off of at the time.

I thought Moorcock made it too easy for Bastable to switch sides in the stories. He's always opposed to the charismatic leader initially, disapproves of his methods, disagrees with his beliefs. Then his eyes are opened and inevitably Oliver sees the people the charismatic leader is fighting against are really hateful people who do even worse things (and usually severely racist), and so maybe the leader is justified, and Bastable helps him. The exception would be The Steel Tsar, as he's the charismatic leader and the hateful, evil guy at the same time. That's the third story, and it's a bit different, owing to Bastable becoming more accustomed to his travels, I suppose (though his memory of some past events seems lost). I was disappointed that made it much easier on Bastable to pick a side. Then again, Oliver came from England of the late 19th, early 20th century, so he saw things in a different way from me, and maybe that explains something.

In The Steel Tsar, Oliver spends some time on Rowe Island. In another world, he met Moorcock's grandfather on Rowe Island in 1903 of and related the tale of The Warlord of the Sky to him there. In Steel Tsar, the island's been left to itself, the mining company having largely deserted it when the war started. No transports pass by, there's little communication with the outside world, the people are just trying to survive off what's there. The idea of finding a place like that sounded appealing, and I was surprised Bastable was so eager to leave. So he could participate in the war no less, the destruction of Singapore for some reason having really riled him. I thought he'd enjoy some time to collect himself, and avoid death and violence (though Rowe Island wasn't all smiles and sunshine) for a time. He's a man of action, so I guess sitting idle isn't for him.