‘The Steel Tsar’

The Steel Tsar: Third Volume In The Oswald Bastable Trilogy

St Albans: Granada, 1981 (December 17th) mass-sized paperback;
original price: £1·25;
155 pages;
I.S.B.N.: 0-583-13432-7;
cover artist: Melvyn (Grant);
no (individual) hardcover edition.

The Steel Tsar is, as its sub-title makes clear, the third volume of Moorcock’s proto-steampunk trilogy featuring Oswald Bastable, the Nomad of Time, which (like the Cornelius books) tackles head-on the legacies of British imperialism; Empire gone sour. It was collected in The Nomad Of Time (1982) with The Warlord Of The Air and The Land Leviathan, before being “substantially rewritten and expanded” for collection in A Nomad Of The Time Streams (1993), itself later title-reverted back to The Nomad Of Time (2013).

(Preceded by The Land Leviathan)

First edition
Granada reprint, 1982.

London: Grafton, 1990 (January 25th) mass-sized paperback;
original price:  £2·99;
155 pages;
I.S.B.N.:  0-586-20998-0;
cover artist:  Paul Damon.

First American edition: New York: DAW Books, 1982 (October) mass-sized paperback;
no sub-title;
original price:  $2·25;
160 pages;
I.S.B.N.:  0-87997-773-6;
cover artist:  Walter Velez.

London: Titan, 2013 (August 13th) trade-sized paperback;
sub-titled “Third Volume In The Oswald Bastable Trilogy” on title page (only);
edited by John Davey;
original price:  $9·95;
211 pages;
I.S.B.N.:  9781781161470;
cover artist:  “Amazing15”;
foreword by Kim Newman.

First standalone edition of revised text (see description above). This edition, however, was flawed, with an integral, fictionalised introduction (by Moorcock, describing a visit to him from Una Persson) left out.

(Click here for Foreign Editions)

The Steel Tsar is also available as e-books: 9781781161500 (U.S.A.) & 9780575092723 (U.K.).