The Land Leviathan

Infobox Book |
name = The Land Leviathan
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Dust-jacket from the first edition
author = Michael Moorcock
illustrator =
cover_artist = Chris Foss
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = Oswald Bastable
subject =
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Quartet
release_date = 1974
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback and Paperback)
pages = 161 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-704-32018-5
preceded_by = The Warlord of the Air
followed_by = The Steel Tsar

"The Land Leviathan" is a sci-fi/alternate history novel by Michael Moorcock, first published in 1974. [ [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/michael-moorcock/land-leviathan.htm "Land Leviathan" on Fantastic Fiction] ] Originally subtitled "A New Scientific Romance", it has been seen as an early steampunk novel [cite web|author = Bebergal, Peter|publisher = "The Boston Globe"|title = The age of steampunk|date = 2007-08-26|url = http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/26/the_age_of_steampunk/|accessdate=2008-05-10] , 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), the all-steampunk trilogy is also published as the compilation volume "A Nomad of the Time Streams".

Plot Summary

The story of Oswald Bastable's continuing adventures "trapped forever in the shifting tides of time" is framed with the conceit 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 upon mysteriously 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 20th century.

Bastable's story takes 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, which led to a prolonged global war, causing their reversion to barbarism and savagery. By contrast, South Africa is ruled by Gandhi, apartheid never happened, 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' 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:

*Mahatma Gandhi as the president of the wealthy, Marxist Republic of "Bantustan" (which is our world's South Africa),
*Herbert Hoover as a racist New York city gangster organizing the city's last stand against the black, African-based "Ashanti Empire", the white people of North America having re-introduced slavery of blacks, blaming the latter as scape goats for epidemics that were actually initiated by biological warfare among the perished Western nations,
*P. J. Kennedy as an amateur explosives hack which makes him the local mob lord or tribal chief of Wilmington (it's not made clear whether this is Wilmington, New York, Wilmington Township, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, or Wilmington Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, only that it is situated between New York City and Washington, D. C.)
*Frederic Courtland Penfield (son of Daniel Penfield and formerly a US diplomat in our world as well as the one Bastable visits) as founder of a new Ku Klux Clan and a residing, nominal 'president' over a "de facto" perished USA, in a Washington, D. C. surprisingly spared at least by bombings (as the government had fled into subterranean shelters at the beginning of the Great War) which makes up most of his reach.

Major themes

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."Fact|date=July 2008 They are contrasted with the impoverished, tribalised white supremacists of the devastated former United States, which has reintroduced African American slavery.

Publication history

It was first published in 1974 and has remained in print, in various editions, ever since.

References

External Links

*cite web
last =
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authorlink =
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title = Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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date =
url = http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?THLNDLVTHC1974
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accessdate = 2007-12-16
*cite web
last =
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title = Moorcock's Miscellany
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url = http://www.multiverse.org/imagehive/v/bookcovers/books/mikebooks/tll/
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accessdate = 2007-12-16
*cite web
last = Brown
first = Charles N.
authorlink = Charles N. Brown
coauthors = William G. Contento
title = The Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984–1998)
work =
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date =
url = http://www.locusmag.com/index/t259.htm#A27542
format =
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accessdate = 2007-12-16