The Steel Tsar

The Steel Tsar is the third novel in the Oswald Bastable trilogy, A Nomad of the Time Streams, by Michael Moorcock. It is a sequel to The Land Leviathan and was originally published in the United Kingdom by Granada Books.

The novel was heavily revised and rewritten for its inclusion in the Orion/White Wolf omnibus of A Nomad of the Time Streams to the extent that it is virtually a different novel. Moorcock has expressed his dissatisfaction with the original novel, which was written when his marriage to Jill Riches was breaking up.

Publishing History (UK)

• Mass Market Paperback, Granada, 160pp., ISBN: 0-583-13432-7, 17 Dec 1981, Cover by Melvyn
• Mass Market Paperback, Grafton, 160pp., ISBN: 0-586-20998-0, 25 Jan 1990, Cover by Paul Damon

Omnibus Publication (UK)

• The Nomad of Time, Granada, 1984 (hc), 1985 (pb)
• A Nomad of the Time Streams, Gollancz, 1993 (tp/hc), 1996 (pb)

Publishing History (US)

• Mass Market Paperback, DAW, 160pp., ISBN: 0-87997-773-6, Sep 1982, Cover by Walter Velez

Omnibus Publication (US)

• The Nomad of Time, SFBC, 1982
• A Nomad of the Time Streams, White Wolf, 1995 (hc), 1997 (tp)

Mike Says

• "I should never have written it. I rewrote it extensively for the omnibus -- the only one I did rewrite. I think I improved it, but I'd need other opinions before I was sure! The book was such a disappointment to Don Wollheim, the original publisher, that he said it wasn't worth the advance we'd agreed. I said he was quite right and why didn't we settle for half ? Done, he said, and the book came out. Don could never resist a deal.

• "I wrote Tsar...back to back with The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, which I think was the more successful. Both were done in days to deadlines in unsettling conditions. But even then I feel I should probably have stopped at the second volume, with its emphasis on racism, as the first had emphasised imperialism, its constant twin. But the publishers had all begged me for a third volume at a time when I was financially and somewhat morally weak... As I said, I did my best to improve it in the rewrite, but I probably should have suppressed it. Then everyone would have wondered what nation had the power to keep me quiet..."

• "I was never satisfied with the original version of The Steel Tsar. I felt it fell down on structure. When I wrote it I was in the process of splitting up with a lady who was a little uncertain about whether she wanted to split up or not and alternated between trying to kill herself and trying to kill me! I associate writing that book (and the Sex Pistols book which I did at the same time) more with hands holding carving knives than airships... :) When I had the chance to revise it for the omnibus I added a fair amount of new material. I like it better now! Wrote the new material in summer, in a lovely, calm garden... The American editor who bought the book, incidentally, didn't like my take on Stalin. He was probably the last unregenerate Stalinist in NY!"

• "I actually used the rewritten Nomad of the Time Streams as a kind of pivot for the series when I was revising them all for the omnibus set. So I added material, specifically to the final (and I thought weakest) volume, which needed rewriting anyway, so as to give some extra substance both to the sequence and to the series as a whole. In the omnibus version you'll find some additional ideas about the multiverse which I thought worth mentioning somewhere and that was for me the ideal place to put them."

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