[1] He is the protagonist in The Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan, and The Steel Tsar, and appears in other stories.
Moorcock stated on the forums of his website[3] that his use of the name "Oswald Bastable" was not supposed to directly link his character with Nesbit's (i.e. to make his novels into sequels).
Rather, he said that he was trying to connect with a particular "Fabian 'liberal' imperialism, still fundamentally paternalistic but well-meaning" which he felt belonged to Nesbit's era.
Edith Nesbit and her husband Hubert Bland had been among the founders and leading members of the Fabian Society.
It can be said that in practice this made its members into proponents of a continued, reformed British Empire.