The Steel Tsar
Page 15
Captain Oswald Bastable,
Airshipman,
Somewhere in the Lower Devonian.
Editor's Afterword
And that, as best I can present it, is the final story of Oswald Bastable. As many readers will already know 'The Steel Tsar' Djugashvili sounds remarkably like 'the Man of Steel', that well-known ex-priest, the Georgian who chose for himself the name of Josef 'Stalin'. But then it is not uncommon, in all the worlds of the multiverse, for the same kind of personalities to emerge in roughly similar roles. What is usually more interesting is when, through altered circumstances, they appear in very different roles. Although I expect further visits from Mrs. Persson, I gather that there will be no more special news of Bastable now that he has joined the famous League. I am glad, however, to learn that he has found himself at last, found some sort of direction, and is reconciled both to his 'crime' and his loss of home.
Michael Moorcock
Yorkshire, June 1980