A review by colinandersbrodd
The Steel Tsar by Michael Moorcock

5.0

POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW: So, in this third installment of the Nomads of the Time Streams trilogy, our protagonist Oswald Bastable "washes up" in an alternate 1941 in which a world war is raging, particularly between a Japanese empire and a Russian one. Although it is said that the war was begun by the bombing of the Japanese air shipyards at Hiroshima, it is eventually revealed that this was accomplished using an atomic bomb, causing much musing from Bastable about the inevitability of apocalyptic war and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in any alternate timeline. Regardless, Bastable and his companions fall in with a Cossack leader among the Russians, a former Georgian priest called Djugashvili, now known as the Steel Tsar (astute observers will note that this was the given name in our world of the man who chose to call himself Stalin, the Man of Steel). The Steel Tsar is megalomaniacal and intends to, by show of force, make all of Russia submit to him. There is a fiddly bit about an actual steel robot, like a gigantic icon of Djugashvili, and plans to set these ACTUAL steel tsars in every village of Russia to reinforce his reign, but this seems a distraction from the real plan, which is to demonstrate the use of more atomic bombs! If the first book dealt with colonialism, racism, and the "Yellow Peril"; and he second book dealt with colonialism, racism, and Africa/Black Lives; this third volume deals with the "Red Menace," fear of socialism and the abuses to which it is put, and the long shadow of atomic Armageddon in the Cold War, as well as what it means when atrocities are carried out in our name, and social responsibility. There is a great bit here: "How can we both bear responsibility for the destruction of Hiroshima?" . . . "Because we are all, in a sense, responsible for such great evils," [Una Persson] said . . . "It is . . . a shared responsibility . . . Our own actions can lead to something like a Hiroshima , to the rise of Djugashvili" . . . Great stuff! Incidentally, there is also a lot of musing about the nature of fate, and free will, and across multiple alternate timelines in a potentially infinite multiverse, whether human nature condemns us to certain outcomes. Heavy stuff!