Terhali's Particular Satisfaction, or Reading Through the Michael Moorcock Multiverse: A Nomad of the Time Streams: Synopses

OPTA 1976, Cathy Millet

The Warlord Of The Air

Editor’s Note: The Author states that the book is his grandfather’s unpublished work, recently discovered.

BOOK 1: How An English Army Officer Entered The World Of The Future And What He Saw There

The Opium Eater of Rowe Island: In 1904, the Author’s grandfather (also named Michael Moorcock) vacations on Rowe Island (on the Indian Sea). There, he meets a strange opium-addicted man named Oswald Bastable. Moorcock convinces Bastable to relate his unbelievable tale and begins taking down the following notes.
The Temple at Teku Benga: In 1902 India, a British officer named Captain Bastable enters the Himalayas to “discipline” the indigenous tribal peoples of Kumbalari, located in their stronghold Teku Benga. When invited to their Temple of the Future Buddha, they soon realize they are being drugged during a feast. Resisting the drug's effects, they fight their way out of the banquet chamber but become lost in the mysterious, labyrinthine temple. Bastable soon finds himself alone and then battered by a strange whirlwind, during which he loses consciousness.
The Shadow from the Sky: Bastable wakes to find the entire city of Teku Benga in a state of long-standing ruin and his uniform in a state of great decay. While searching for a way to descend from the mountain plateau, he sights a giant airship labelled “Royal Indian Air Service”.
An Amateur Archaeologist: Bastable is picked up by the airship Pericles and is informed that an earthquake had destroyed Kumbalari 70 years ago, and that the current date is 1973. When Bastable describes his true origins, their resident archaeologist/captain Major Powell believes he has been reading too much H.G. Wells.
My First Sight of Utopia: The Pericles lands in Katmandu, where Bastable decides to claim amnesia for fear of being thrown into the loony bin. In this reality, Britain dominates the world with its advanced airships, and no wars have occurred in nearly a century. However, a random bomb explosion outside Bastable's hospital reveals that “anarchists” still exist.
A Man Without a Purpose: In the following days, Bastable is escorted by Lieutenant Michael Jagger on the airship Light of Dresden to London, where he marvels at the utopian cleanliness and beauty of his home city.

New English Library, 1972

BOOK 2: More Strange Events—A Revelation —And Several Disasters!

A Question of Employment: After a period of celebrity and retraining, Bastable joins the Special Air Police (essentially "air marshals") and finds himself on the commercial airship Loch Etive, commanded by an old-timer named Captain Quelch.
A Man with a Big Stick: In San Francisco, an American “Scout leader” named Ron Reagan is transferred to the Loch Etive due to a breakdown on an American passenger airship. A self-proclaimed “Roughrider”, Captain Reagan treats the ship’s crew with disdain and arrogance, and is generally a huge pain in the ass.
Disaster—and Disgrace!: Reagan's panicky actions cause Captain Quelch to fall and break his leg, thus ending his flight career. Shortly thereafter, Reagan begins attacking a fellow Indian passenger in a racially-driven episode. Bastable loses his temper and beats up the man, but this violent indiscretion leads to wide criticism of the Air Police. He is forced to hand in his resignation to his C.O., Major-General Nye.
A Bohemian “Brother”: Bastable receives an invitation to meet an unknown “brother”. At the Royal Aeronautics Club, he is approached by a bohemian named Cornelius Dempsey (who looks much like Jerry Cornelius), and is offered a job on a “tramp airship”.
Captain Korzeniowski: Bastable meets Captain Korzeniowski (writer Joseph Conrad in our world), who commands a battered airship named The Rover, and accepts the job offer. Soon aloft, Bastable recognizes amongst its passengers the Polish anarchist Rudolf von Bek, accompanied by Mrs. Una Persson, Korzeniowski’s physicist daughter. Bastable is horrified when he realizes that these political “undesirables” are actually personal friends of Captain Korzeniowski.

Ace 1971, Davis Meltzer

BOOK 3: The Other Side Of The Coin—The Tables Turned—Enter The Warlord Of The Air—And Exit the Temporal Excursionist

General O.T. Shaw: Convinced that he has joined a crew of anarchist sympathizers, Bastable decides to turn them in to the British authorities, hoping to then get reinstated in the Air Police as a reward. During a stand-off von Bek disarms him from behind and he is confined to his quarters. Later, The Rover takes on some Chinese pilgrims at Saigon. In short order, the airship is captured by O.T. Shaw, a notorious Chinese warlord also known as Shuo Ho Ti.
The Valley of the Morning: Shaw tells Bastable that a fight had broken out between his forces and von Bek’s, although both are essentially socialists/communists. Bastable is told that he must pilot the ship or he will have Korzeniowski, von Bek and Una tortured to death. Bastable pilots the ship to Shaw’s Chinese base in the Valley of the Morning. There he is amazed to see that Shaw has also captured his old airship, the Loch Etive.
Chi’ng Che’eng Ta-Chia: At Shaw’s scientifically-advanced home city of Dawn City (Chi’ng Che’eng Ta-Chia), Bastable hears the violin of an Indian exile named Professor Hira (who first appeared in The Final Programme).
Vladimir Ilyitch Ulianov: Von Bek and Bastable meet a well-known Russian revolutionary named Vladimir Ilyitch Ulianov (Lenin in our world), who believes that despair on the part of the common people will drive them to revolt. Shaw counters that a utopian paradise is what will draw followers to his cause. Later, they are all brought to a “kinema” where they are shown a film of various native peoples being massacred by Japanese, Russian, British and American colonists/soldiers. Shaw then shows off his heavier-than-air attack planes (“Fei-chi hornets”), with which he hopes to drive off the imperial forces of Russia, Japan and Britain occupying China.
The Coming of the Air Fleets: In the next few weeks Bastable begins to sympathize with Shaw’s revolutionary-utopian cause, although he refuses to outright join his rebel fleet. Eventually, the fleets of the Great Powers (Russia, Japan, Britain, France, and America) begin a concerted attack on Dawn City. Armed with 15 modified merchant airships and 50 Fei-chi hornets, Shaw is able to temprarily drive off the armada, although Korzeniowski goes down with The Rover.
Another Meeting with the Amateur Archaeologist: Bastable finally signs up with Shaw and is given the Shan-tien (formerly the Loch Etive) to command. One day the Pericles (the airship which had picked up Bastable in the Himalayas) makes a sneak attack but is captured. Powell is disappointed in Bastable’s "conversion" and warns of a great war in Europe. Bastable states that a “Great War” is overdue, and had one happened (as it did in our world) it would have loosened the Great Powers’ hold over their subject peoples.
Project NFB: Shaw decides that it is time to unleash their secret weapon, Project NFB, soon revealed to be an atomic bomb. Shaw has decided that the only way his army can contine to resist the Great Powers' armada is by destroying their nearby airfield at Hiroshima. The mission is successful and the bomb is dropped. In the ensuing explosion a horrified Bastable rues the invention of the airship.
The Lost Man: Bastable next wakes up back in 1903, burnt by bomb radiation and floating in the sea. He is rescued, but he soon suspects that this version of 1902 is not his own version: it is a parallel reality with subtle differences. He turns to opium and eventually meets the book’s author (Michael Moorcock senior) on Rowe Island and tells him his story. Bastable then disappears once again while Moorcock is sleeping. In later years (1907, 1910), Moorcock notes that our world is not turning out the way Bastable had described, thus confirming that Bastable had landed in the wrong reality.

Editor’s Note: The Author notes that his grandfather (Michael Moorcock) died in WW I.

OPTA 1976

The Land Leviathan

Introduction: Dated 1971, the Author (Michael Moorcock, b. 1939) states that he has discovered some decades-old notes locked in his grandfather's safe, comprised of a prologue (by his grandfather, Michael Moorcock) and some notes (written by Oswald Bastable).

Prologue: In Search of Oswald Bastable: Moorcock (the grandfather) tries to have his earlier account of Bastable and The Warlord of the Air published, but the entire account is treated as either fiction or a hoax. Moorcock decides to search for Bastable himself, and heads to China to seek out the Valley of the Morning, thinking that Bastable may have gone there looking for some sign of New Dawn City. Moorcock is taken inland by a guide and a large party of armed mercenaries. The warlord Liu Fang eventually stops them and begins to rob them of their cargo (it turns out that Moorcock’s guide is an opium smuggler). However, another party of attackers, armed with somewhat advanced weaponry arrives and kills everyone in sight except for Moorcock. This group is led by Mrs. Una Persson, who appears to be the same age as she was portrayed in Bastable's "alternate 1973". Una hints that Bastable is now a “nomad of the time streams”. She departs in the morning, but leaves behind a bundle of papers, which turn out to be Bastable’s own hand-written memoirs intended for Moorcock’s perusal.

Orbit-Quartet 1976, Chris Achilleos

BOOK 1: The World In Anarchy

The Return to Teku Benga: After reciting his 1973 exploits to Moorcock at Rowe Island (described in the previous volume), Bastable returns to Teku Benga, the Himalayan region where he had originally gotten "displaced". He stumbles across a cave tunnel which leads to another strange “disturbance”. He emerges from the cave and hopefully makes his way to a local British station.
The Dream—and the Nightmare— of the Chilean Wizard: Bastable learns that the year is 1904, but the world he has emerged into is yet another alternate history to his own. Due to a deluge of scientific breakthroughs in the latter part of the 19th century (due to an Irish prodigy named Manuel O’Bean working from Chile), poverty had been abolished. However, this release from drudgery had allowed opposing political forces to rise against nationalism, ultimately resulting in a Great War between the Powers. Although the world is apparently now in ruins from this war, Bastable joins some Arabian seamen in order to find passage back to England. Unfortunately their steamer ship is torpedoed by an Irish submarine.
The Polish Privateer: Bastable is eventually rescued by the submarine Lola Montez, where he meets a younger version of Korzeniowski, in this world the "freelance" captain of an advanced sub (formerly of the Polish Navy). Although Korzeniowski informs Bastable that Southern England has been devastated by bacteriological weapons, the Captain insists on seeing for himself and is dropped off at Dover.
The King of East Grinstead: The citizens of London have been reduced to disease-wracked tribes of tribal “beast-men”. Arriving in his hometown of East Grinstead, Bastable sees Mrs. Una Persson being tortured for spying by the local despot, "King John". Bastable rescues Mrs. Persson from the mob, after which they escape in her hidden O’Bean tunneling machine (a kind of Burroughsan "iron mole").
The Start of a New Career: After Una departs back to her base in Africa, Bastable makes his way north to the Scottish Isles in order to track down and reunite with Captain Korzeniowski. Korzeniowski informs Bastable that a ruthless white-hating warlord from Africa named "the Black Attila” (Cicero Hood of Arkansas) is amassing an army to take over the rest of the world.
“A Haven of Civilization”: After a year on the high seas, Korzeniowski and his crew turn to Bantustan (South Africa) in order to join President Gandhi’s navy. Gandhi welcomes them to his utopian (and Marxist) paradise, but also informs them that his military forces are only for show, and that he would never allow blood to be spilled in his name even against the forces of the Black Attila.
A Legend in the Flesh: President Gandhi announces that he has invited Cicero Hood himself to visit Bantustan in the hopes of forming a peace. Hood arrives with a small fleet as his ally Una Persson. During dinner, Hood thanks Bastable for saving Una’s life. Bastable accuses Hood of being a mass murderer and storms out.
A Decision in Cold Blood: President Gandhi asks Bastable to be part of a diplomatic group to be assigned to New Kumasi (the capital of Hood’s empire) in order to smooth relations. Bastable agrees, but inwardly resolves to use this as an opportunity to assassinate Hood. When Bastable and the others (including another Professor Hira) arrive in New Kumasi, Hood explains that his brutal methods are only a means to a utopian end, and that he wants to place the black man into the dominant position that whites have had up until now. Una Persson then informs Hood that his main adversary, the Australasian-Japanese Federation, has been working with the genius-inventor Manuel O’Bean to create a powerful army and that Hood must act immediately if he wants to successfully conquer America.

Quartet 1975, Chris Foss

BOOK 2: The Battle For Washington

The Two Fleets Meet: Bastable is assigned to accompany Hood’s armada as it heads for America. Several of Hood’s battleships are used to tow a gigantic “secret weapon” of some sort. In the Atlantic, a massive battle under, over and on the surface of the sea erupts. The forces of the Australasian-Japanese Federation eventually retreat, at least temporarily.
The Land Leviathan: Bastable is invited to join Hood and Una Persson on their flagship, the Chaka. The armada arrives in New York and Hood orders his tanks (“land ironclads”) to assemble on the quays. Hood also unveils his gigantic “Land Leviathan”, essentially a 7-story-high arsenal on wheels.
The Deserter: The Land Leviathan crushes all resistance in New York. Black resistance groups organized in America in anticipation of Hood’s arrival help maintain order over the KKK-inspired white gutter-rats. As Hood’s armada heads across the country, Bastable sneaks away and meets up with Joe Kennedy’s army in Wilmington (Delaware) in an attempt to warn the Americans.
The Triumphant Beast: In Washington, Joe Kennedy introduces Bastable to President Beesley (another Cornelius alternate), a corpulent, ouright racist. Bastable realizes that Washington has reintroduced slavery, and that blacks have been forced to build defenses for their white-hooded masters. Beesley also plans to put the blacks of Washington in cages and mount them on his walls as a deterrent against Hood’s artillery. Torn and disgusted, Bastable eventually joins the black resistance in a mission to liberate the slave compound. When trapped, they are saved at the last minute when a couple of Hood’s “diggers” erupt from the ground (with one of them piloted by Una Persson). With the Australasian-Japanese Federation on its way, Hood has decided to advance his timetable and launched a ground attack earlier than expected (while his air forces attack the AJF forces en route). The Land Leviathan arrives and destroys everything in its path, eventually settling on the remains of the Capitol building.
A Matter of Loyalties: Una greets Bastable and informs him that the AJF has retreated. In the following year, Hood liberates the rest of the United States (although the Land Leviathan remains on Capitol Hill as a symbol of conquest). After Hood forms a peace treaty with the AJF, he proceeds to make America over into his vision of the black man dominating now-denigrated whites (at least for one generation). Bastable writes down his memoirs for Moorcock’s consumption and asks Una Persson to pass them on, as it appears that Una is able to travel through time and space at will. He then heads back to Bantustan, thinking that he may one day again return to the Himalayan “time tunnel” in order to search for his real home.

Epilogue: After leaving a note to Una to visit him in England, Moorcock (the grandfather) departs China and makes his way back home to West Riding.

OPTA 1982, Claude Fritsch

The Steel Tsar

The following synopsis is based on the revised text found in The Nomad of the Time Streams omnibus.

Introduction: The Author (Michael Moorcock, b. 1939) states that he has been in contact with Mrs. Persson and that she has been helping him with his “fiction” by volunteering stories from the various timestreams. Sometime in 1980, Mrs. Persson passes on some more of Bastable’s memoirs. After the events of the previous novel, Bastable had returned to Teku Benga and made his way to yet another alternative historical thread, and then signed on to become a crew member of another airship aloft during the Great War of 1941.

Pocket 1997

BOOK 1: An English Airshipman’s Adventures In The Great War Of 1941

The Manner of My Dying: Bastable has been drifting aimlessly at sea for seven days in a small boat, slowly dying of exposure. He luckily beaches on an uncharted island, apparently a British colonial outpost.
The Destruction of Singapore: The narrative jumps backwards in time. Bastable’s stint on a Greek merchant airship ends when it crash lands in British-ruled Singapore, a veritable paradise of imperial rule. However, Bastable’s troubles begin anew when a Japanese aerial fleet attacks the city. Bastable and a few other survivors escape on a hospital ship.
The Crash: Bastable’s hospital airship heads towards the seaport town of Surabaya, but unexpected winds cause the airship to overshoot the city and crash in the mountains of Java.
Prisoners: Most of the passengers and crew of the hospital ship are slain in the crash, and the rest are taken prisoner by Malay mountain bandits.
The Price of Fishing Boats: After evading the bandits, Bastable eventually stumbles upon a fishing village where he finds temporary employment. Unfortunately Japanese soldiers arrive, prompting Bastable to steal a motorboat in a desperate attempt to reach Australia. Days later he somehow lands on Rowe Island in the Indian Sea.
The Mysterious Dempsey: Bastable is nursed back to health by Doctor Hira and his hospital staff, Bastable learns that Rowe Island had been a thriving British mining base until the Japanese attack on Singapore. One day, an English lieutenant named Begg arrives (serving a Brigadier Nesbit) and raids an opium den in an attempt to maintain order. One of the opium-addicts is a dissolute Englishman named Captain (Cornelius) Dempsey.
Dead Man: Later, Bastable visits a hotel near the island’s airfield, where he meets the Dutch proprietor Olmeijer, as well as Nye, a remaining officer of the mining company. There, Bastable awaits the return of Rowe Island’s radio operator Mr. Underwood, hoping that he can then contact the English authorities for rescue. However, Underwood is killed in an island domestic conflict.
The Message: Dempsey warns Bastable that the Chinese and the Malay natives are restless and will likely soon attack all of the Caucasians on the island. After they radio for help from Darwin (Australia), they return to Olmeijer’s airfield hotel where Dempsey darkly hints that he knows how the entire war had started and that it was an accident.
Hopes of Salvation: The Europeans on the island are informed that a rescue ship from Darwin will soon arrive. When an airship arrives, Bastable runs out to greet it, but it turns out to be a Japanese craft.
Lost Hopes: The Japanese assume control over Rowe Island and take all of the Europeans (including Bastable, Nye and Olmeijer) prisoners of war (Begg had been killed during an earlier native uprising). The island natives then begin mounting concerted attacks on the Japanese, apparently led by a strangely-maddened Dempsey. In the end, Dempsey is captured (later to escape in mid-air), and the Japanese airship takes its prisoners of war to Rishiri (Hokkaido).

Gallimard 2008

BOOK 2: “Neither Master Nor Slave!”

The Camp on Rishiri: In the Rishiri internment camp, Bastable is hounded by an annoying bore named “Peewee” Wilson (in some earlier editions "Harry Birchington"). Wilson tries to involve Bastable in a debate between himself (a democratic socialist) and a Ukrainian anarchist named Nestor Makhno (a real world Cornelius character). Nye organizes an escape attempt, but their escape coincides with a Russian raid on the Japanese base and in the confusion Nye is shot (due to Wilson's idiocy).
Back in Service: Bastable eventually joins the Russian airship fleet, as Britain and Russia are not at war with each other. He signs on to (yet another) Captain Korzeniowski’s airship Vassarion Belinsky, and they are assigned to put down a rebellion in Yekaterinaslav instigated by "the Steel Tsar" (Djugashvili), who wants to return Russia to re-Revolutionary times.
Cossack Revolutionists: When Korzeniowski’s airship arrives at Yekaterinaslav they see that a Free Cossack cavalry is preparing to attack the city (still held by Russian Central Government forces).
The Black Ships: Korzeniowski’s airship attacks the cavalry, slightly slowing its advance towards the city, while more Central Government troops are deployed in the city to meet the cavalry head on. After the Vassarion Belinsky exhausts its bombs and torpedoes, it heads back to base but is then attacked by unknown black airships. Outnumbered and outgunned, Korzeniowski uses every trick in the airship warfare book to even the odds. However, one of the black ships eventually sneaks alongside and grapples the Vassarion Belinsky. The crew prepares for boarders.
A Question of Attitudes: Korzeniowski meets with the black ship’s captain, which turns out to be Nestor Makhno, last seen in the Rishiri (the Anarchists have lent their help to the Steel Tsar’s despotic cause in the spirit of revolution). During the parley (during which Makhno states that anarchists have neither masters nor slaves), Makhno’s crew quietly take over the Vassarion Belinsky. After both ships land at the Steel Tsar’s base, Bastable is brought before the depot himself. He sees that both Peewee Wilson and Mrs. Una Persson are amongst the Steel Tsar’s party. Djugashvili orders the prisoners to be executed, but Makhno forces him to change his mind.
Secret Weapons: Later at a banquet (which includes Captain Dempsey, still alive but a bit tattered), Makhno is insulted and departs Djugashvili’s company. After the helmeted Tsar’s assassination attempt on the anarchist leader outside fails, Makhno briefly returns to tell him that their alliance is over. Djugashvili then brings in the sickly Professor Marek. Marek explains that prior to his self-exile on Rowe Island, Dempsey had been misled into dropping Marek's nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The detection of wreckage from Dempsey’s British-made airship in the aftermath had started the Japanese war against Britain.
A Mechanical Man: Djugashvili announces that Dempsey and Bastable will soon drop more nuclear bombs on Makhno’s base. The albino Count Max von Bek (also announcing himself as "Monsieur Zenith") appears in a strange “time freeze” to Bastable, Dempsey and Mrs. Persson. He then offers Bastable membership to the League of Temporal Adventurers. The next day, Wilson presents his new invention to Djugashvili: a giant robot in the image of Djugashvili himself. Upon activation, the robot apparently goes out of control (earlier sabotaged by von Bek) and kills Wilson. In the meantime, with Japan now in retreat, the Russian Central Government has had the opportunity to launch an airship fleet against the Steel Tsar. The armada soon appears above the Free Cossacks and begins a land assault.
Revolutions: The airship carrying Marek's nuclear bombs (ironically, the Vassarion Belinsky) takes off with Bastable, Dempsey, Djugashvili and the others towards Makhno’s camp. Time and space seem to splinter briefly and during that period a strange glimpse of Monsieur Zenith/Von Bek working “invisible lines” can be seen in the control room. When Dempsey asks Bastable to investigate a “strange noise” in the engines, Mrs. Persson joins him as he goes above. She then informs Bastable that they must disarm the bombs. They make their way down to the bomb hold but suddenly Dempsey appears above them and forces them to stop their work. Mystified at her fellow Temporal Adventurer's change of heart, Mrs. Persson surrenders. Bastable and Mrs. Persson are given personal gliders and forced off the ship. Shortly after they land, a massive explosion lights up the sky: Dempsey has triggered the bombs in mid-air. When Bastable mentions concern over radiation, Mrs. Persson assures him that Von Bek must have shifted the airship into a neutral plane before it exploded fully. However, she is disappointed in Dempsey’s change of plans. If they had disarmed the bombs it would have halted their subsequent development and broken a cycle of fate across several planes – Dempsey’s martyrdom has only redeemed himself for his earlier attack on Hiroshima. They eventually reach Makhno’s camp and learn that the anarchist leader has absorbed the Steel Tsar's Free Cossacks into his own group and that they have been given Ukraine by the Central Government to settle. Bastable accepts Mrs. Persson’s invitation for him to join her as a member of the League of Temporal Adventurers.

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