The Novels of Roger Zelazny
Andrew Wheeler
gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
read but can remember semi-coherently.
AMBER
Corwin
_Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
_The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
_Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
_The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
_The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
For ill, because it was so successful that he ended up writing the
second series -- and because it cemented his move from writing
interesting and very different works to putting out smoothly-written
book with less and less ambition as time went on.
Do I need to talk about the plot? There's this family, and they rule the
"one true world." Our amnesiac hero discovers that he's one of them, and
gets involved in a dizzying array of plots and intrigues. Perhaps epic
fantasy would have been more fun if it had followed this model, but, as
far as I can tell, only Elizabeth Willey (and what ever happened to
*her*, anyway?) has followed up in this vein.
Merlin
_Trumps of Doom_ (1985)
_Blood of Amber_ (1986)
_Sign of Chaos_ (1987)
_Knight of Shadows_ (1989)
_Prince of Chaos_ (1991)
Notice how the titles seem to be generated by a computer? This is the
first bad sign. Zelazny's sentences and paragraphs are still smooth and
pleasant, his dialogue is as sparkling as ever, and the magical
inventiveness is entertaining. But the books feel like yardgoods,
completely extruded and cut to order. They're not *bad* books, but
they're the literary equivalent of meringue. This series disappears even
as you read it. If you like reading Zelazny's prose, they're worth your
time. But if you want something to top the first Amber series (or even
to make sense as a whole), you're out of luck.
THE CHANGING LAND
_The Changing Land_ (1981)
Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
(Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
_Dilvish, the Damned_ (1982)
Fix-up of some very early swords & sorcery stories, with some new (new
being 1982) materials at the end. I remember that the hero has a horse
made out of black metal (possibly a demon?) and that these books were
fun, but that's about it.
WIZARD WORLD
_Changeling_ (1980)
_Madwand_ (1981)
An interesting new fantasy world that Zelazny seemed to be excited by,
and willing to keep self-consistent. Everybody thought there would be a
third, but Zelazny lived fifteen years after the second one without a
peep. The original edition was part of a flurry of illustrated SF books
in the late '70s and early '80s, and the illustrations are quite nice.
Perhaps created as an attempt at a "second Amber," but it didn't take
off on that level. Well worth reading, though.
STAND-ALONE NOVELS
_This Immortal_ (1966)
Hugo winner. Pleasant, but not up to his best work. Lighter in tone than
some of the other things he was doing around the same time -- possibly a
precursor of things to come. What's the story about? Well, there's this
immortal guy -- I hope that's not a spoiler -- who is on a medium-future
Earth dominated by some alien race. As I recall, he isn't exactly trying
to drive off the evil oppressors, but something like that happens
anyway. Not as memorable as some Zelazny, to me anyway.
_The Dream Master_ (1966)
Nebula winner as a novella. This is, IMHO, much stronger than
_Immortal_, though the psychotherapy may seem dated now. Our hero --
with the marvelous name of Charles Render -- is future psychiatrist who
uses bafflegab machinery to enter his patients' heads and move the
furniture around bodily. The ending is uncharacteristic of Zelazny's
novels, but to say more would be a spoiler.
_Lord of Light_ (1967)
Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
towards what would be his really great books.
But it is one of the top twenty or so SF novels, with energy to burn and
nearly boundless inventiveness. Far in the future, on a colony world,
the rulers of the world style themselves after the Hindu gods, and have
the power to back it up. But one of their kind decides to break their
power by turning himself into the Buddha. It also seems remarkably short
these days -- 245 pages in the edition I have --when I remember it as a
huge, vast book full of marvels. (Potted "Good Ol' Days" speech deleted,
since I'm still much too young for that sort of thing.)
_Isle of the Dead_ (1969)
Has slipped entirely out of memory. Is this the one with the plague? It
shares a main character with _To Die in Italbar_, which I can't remember either.
_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
_Damnation Alley_ (1969)
Hard-bitten old guy (and slightly stringy younger guy) drive across
post-holocaust USA to deliver...what was it, medicine to the dying
daughter of the President or something silly like that? Perhaps Zelazny
was trying to channel Keith Laumer; I don't know why he wrote this. It's
not bad, but it's silly and slight and probably left for the very end of
one's Zelazny-reading life.
_Today We Choose Faces_ (1973)
A great title, but memory is fuzzy on the inside. I think this is the
one about the guy who's repressed most of his memories, and so, when he
starts getting attacked (and, if I remember right, killed multiple
times), he has to peel back the layers of forgetfulness to become again
the wisecracking god he, of course, really is. If this is that book,
it's one of his better less-known works. If not -- find that other book!
_To Die in Italbar_ (1973)
Maybe *this* is the one with the plague -- it sounds more right. Zelazny
once said that this was based on somebody's classic plot -- "a good guy
going down, a bad guy coming up, and they meet in the middle." Given my
choice, I'd die somewhere else.
_Bridge of Ashes_ (1976)
Another obscure one. I think this one is the telepathy novel, but I have
it in a 2-in-1 with _Today_, so I could be combining them in my head.
But I think minor Zelazny from this period is fascinating, anyway -- he
was throwing all kinds of interesting things on the page, and, even if
they all didn't work, the books were still fast-moving and fun.
_Dies Irae_ (1976, with Philip K. Dick)
My memory is that is a not-very-successful miss-mosh of both writer's
standard baggage, which makes me think it has amnesiac wisecracking gods
on drugs and unsure about reality in it (which can't be right). But
that's about all I do remember.
_Doorways in the Sand_ (1976)
Discussed extensively here recently. (Google is your friend.) Slight but
fun -- pointing the way for pretty much all of Zelazny's later novels.
Eternal student gets into trouble, and gets out of it by climbing around campus.
_My Name is Legion_ (1976)
This is a fix-up of three novellas, all about a guy who doesn't exist
(well, he does, but nobody else knows he does, so he can do the tough
jobs, the impossible jobs, the jobs no one else can do, because down
these mean streets yadda yadda). Late Zelazny done well.
_Roadmarks_ (1978)
The Zelazny single novel I loved to read the most (as opposed to
_Creatures_, which was the book I admired the hell out of). You see,
there's this highway that runs from the past to the future, and the
right people can find the ways onto it.
_Eye of Cat_ (1982)
Competent SF thriller about a Navajo tracker and the alien beastie who
will help him with the requisite toughest case ever if he promises to
let the beastie eat him at the end. This plot (among many of his others)
makes me think that Zelazny should have read less sub-Chandler mysteries
and more of just about anything else --- Regency romances would have
made an interesting change.
_Coils_ (1982, with Fred Saberhagen)
One of my favorite books for a while -- I was a *huge* Saberhagen fan
for a while -- about a guy who can communicate with computers and, well,
probably The Fate of the World (or, knowing Zelazny, All The Worlds).
Has not stuck in memory much.
_A Dark Traveling_ (1987)
Short Young Adult novel about young people time-traveling. From the same
short-lived series that brought us Silverberg's _Letters from Atlantis_,
but this book (as usual with Zelazny) has more energy and life than that.
_The Black Throne_ (1990, with Fred Saberhagen)
Alternate-world romp with Edgar Alan Poe(s). I liked it a lot, but it's
not a major work of anybody's.
_The Mask of Loki_ (1990, with Thomas T. Thomas)
I just couldn't take the co-author's name seriously, so I never read it.
_Flare_ (1992, with TTT again)
Ditto
_A Night in the Lonesome October_ (1993)
Zelazny had seemed to have long-since slipped into a comfortable rut, so
this was a happy surprise. Once again, style and writerly tricks --
here, telling a novel from the viewpoint of a dog and over thirty-two
daily chapters -- re-invigorated him and gave him one of the best books
of his career.
(Since I want to end on a high note, I'm stopping there, ignoring the
three books with Sheckley -- silly fluff, but useful for killing time --
and the two books finished by Jane Lindskold after his death.)
His short story collections are all also well-worth reading, especially
the first (_The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other
Stories_ -- the current edition also includes the bits of _Four for
Tomorrow_, a four-novella collection, that weren't already there) and
the last (_Front and Fire_).
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
"Day One: Ringwraiths killed: 4. V. good.
Met up with Hobbits. Walked forty miles. Skinned a squirrel and ate it.
Still not King." -- from The Secret Diary of Aragorn son of Arathorn
Richard Horton
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>_This Immortal_ (1966)
>
>Hugo winner. Pleasant, but not up to his best work. Lighter in tone than
>some of the other things he was doing around the same time -- possibly a
>precursor of things to come. What's the story about? Well, there's this
>immortal guy -- I hope that's not a spoiler -- who is on a medium-future
>Earth dominated by some alien race. As I recall, he isn't exactly trying
>to drive off the evil oppressors, but something like that happens
>anyway. Not as memorable as some Zelazny, to me anyway.
Well, you know they weren't evil oppressors -- it's just that Conrad's
buddies thought they were, and wanted to Conrad to help them get rid
of them.
And what Conrad does in the end -- isn't EXACTLY driving them away.
It's a nice book, though I'd agree it's not as good as, say, _Lord of
Light_.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Richard Horton
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>
>Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
>long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
>dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
>stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
>book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
>Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
I just read this, and I have to admit I didn't like it at all.
It was boring, maybe partly because I was too dumb to understand it,
but partly because the characters had way too much arbitrary power.
A.C.
"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
news:3C819347...@optonline.com...
> Well, why should James have all the fun? Zelazny's an author nobody's
> gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
> read but can remember semi-coherently.
I think Zelazny's very much underrated; he's easily an A-list sf writer who
is too often eclipsed by his more famous contemporaries.
> AMBER
> Corwin
>
> _Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
> _The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
> _Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
> _The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
> _The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
I remember enjoying the books immensely, but for some reason I can barely
remember how they unfolded. Maybe I can find my old copies.
> _Lord of Light_ (1967)
>
> Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
> the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
> was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
> towards what would be his really great books.
Lord of Light frequently duels with A Canticle for Leibowitz and The Stars
My Destination for my "best sf ever" slot.
> _My Name is Legion_ (1976)
>
> This is a fix-up of three novellas, all about a guy who doesn't exist
> (well, he does, but nobody else knows he does, so he can do the tough
> jobs, the impossible jobs, the jobs no one else can do, because down
> these mean streets yadda yadda). Late Zelazny done well.
This has always been another of my favorites. Of course, I'm a sucker for
the "troubleshooter" sub-genre.
--
nomadi...@hotmail.com | http://nomadic.simspace.net
"There are several good protections against temptation, but the
surest is cowardice."--Mark Twain.
A.C.
news:a5s7kj$bf5$1...@peabody.colorado.edu...
>
> On 2-Mar-2002, "A.C." <nomadi...@removethistomailmehotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think Zelazny's very much underrated; he's easily an A-list sf writer
> > who is too often eclipsed by his more famous contemporaries.
>
> Did they get more Hugos and Nebulas?
The Heinleins, Asimovs, Clarkes, Bradburies, Herberts, etc. Yes, I'd place
him on that level.
Think of it this way; how likely is it that a non-sf fan will have heard of
him if you brought his name up?
Lee Ann Rucker
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> _The Changing Land_ (1981)
>
> Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
> (Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
> resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
I liked the side bits about the other wizards in the world - the part
where one wizard reverse-engineers another's spell comes close to
describing how I program computers.
Chris Camfield
>THE CHANGING LAND
>
>_The Changing Land_ (1981)
>
>Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
>(Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
>resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
>
>_Dilvish, the Damned_ (1982)
>
>Fix-up of some very early swords & sorcery stories, with some new (new
>being 1982) materials at the end. I remember that the hero has a horse
>made out of black metal (possibly a demon?) and that these books were
>fun, but that's about it.
Fun disposable fantasy in a semi-swords & sorcery kind of way.
(Zelazny throws in references to the Cthulhoid mythos, like Howard did
in some stories, and I think there might be some Howard references
too, but I'm not sure). The nature of Dilvish's horse is never
totally defined, but basically he (Dilvish) was a half-elf warrior who
tried to interrupt the sacrifice of a maiden by an evil wizard. For
this his soul was banished to hell while his body became a statue.
After several hundred years (the start of the stories) he escapes from
hell and starts going after the wizard.
[snip]
>_Isle of the Dead_ (1969)
>
>Has slipped entirely out of memory. Is this the one with the plague? It
>shares a main character with _To Die in Italbar_, which I can't remember either.
This is the first Francis Sandow novel. He's in Italbar and one of
Z's short stories as well. Sandow is the only human to achieve a
certain bond with one of the alien Pei'an (sp) deities, one he doesn't
believe is real (he doesn't believe in these beings) but as a result
of this bonding he's one of the few terraformers in the galaxy. An
old enemy returns to haunt him, kidnapping friends and forcing him
into a showdown.
>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>
>Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
>long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
>dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
>stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
>book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
>Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
It should be pointed out, as far as "ambition" goes, that Zelazny
never intended it for publication - which is why it's got so many
experimental elements to it. Then his publisher got word of it, asked
to take a look, and offered to publish it. Nifty book.
>_Today We Choose Faces_ (1973)
>
>A great title, but memory is fuzzy on the inside. I think this is the
>one about the guy who's repressed most of his memories, and so, when he
>starts getting attacked (and, if I remember right, killed multiple
>times), he has to peel back the layers of forgetfulness to become again
>the wisecracking god he, of course, really is. If this is that book,
>it's one of his better less-known works. If not -- find that other book!
Yes, that's it. The main character isn't a god, but otherwise more or
less accurate. Kind of an interesting framing story surrounding the
whole situation too.
>_To Die in Italbar_ (1973)
>
>Maybe *this* is the one with the plague -- it sounds more right. Zelazny
>once said that this was based on somebody's classic plot -- "a good guy
>going down, a bad guy coming up, and they meet in the middle." Given my
>choice, I'd die somewhere else.
Not one of his better works. It is the one with the plague.
>_The Black Throne_ (1990, with Fred Saberhagen)
>
>Alternate-world romp with Edgar Alan Poe(s). I liked it a lot, but it's
>not a major work of anybody's.
>
>_The Mask of Loki_ (1990, with Thomas T. Thomas)
>
>I just couldn't take the co-author's name seriously, so I never read it.
>
>_Flare_ (1992, with TTT again)
>
>Ditto
You really, REALLY weren't missing anything. These were dire. I
didn't like The Black Throne either, but not being familiar with Poe,
I think I missed a lot. :)
>His short story collections are all also well-worth reading, especially
>the first (_The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other
>Stories_ -- the current edition also includes the bits of _Four for
>Tomorrow_, a four-novella collection, that weren't already there) and
>the last (_Front and Fire_).
_Frost and Fire_.
Chris
David Eppstein
ccam...@sympatico.ca (Chris Camfield) wrote:
> >_Dilvish, the Damned_ (1982)
> >
> >Fix-up of some very early swords & sorcery stories, with some new (new
> >being 1982) materials at the end. I remember that the hero has a horse
> >made out of black metal (possibly a demon?) and that these books were
> >fun, but that's about it.
>
> Fun disposable fantasy in a semi-swords & sorcery kind of way.
> (Zelazny throws in references to the Cthulhoid mythos, like Howard did
> in some stories, and I think there might be some Howard references
> too, but I'm not sure).
Dunsany Dunsany Dunsany. I'm not sure about explicit references but the
style is very reminescent of Dunsany.
And of course _The Changing Land_, which is sort of a sequel, is also a
homage to William Hope Hodgson's _The House on the Borderland_ (Hodgson
even shows up as a supporting character).
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
P. Korda
>gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
>read but can remember semi-coherently.
I've been waiting for somebody to do this one. I'd have done it
myself, except for all this obnoxious grad school business which has
decided to dominate my life...
>AMBER
> Corwin
>
>_Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
>_The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
>_Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
>_The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
>_The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
>
>For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
>lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
>well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
>then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
It's not a series for somebody who demands rock-hard internal
consistancy, but that's the only negative thing I can think to say
about it. Corwin is one of my very favorite fictional characters of
all time. It reads as if Zelazny only wrote down a fraction of
everything there was to know about Amber and its Royal Family. One
gets the impression that there's a lot lurking under the surface, and
only occasionally do we get a glimpse of what it might be. It gives
the reader a lot of room to speculate about the history of the
characters, and such.
> Merlin
>Notice how the titles seem to be generated by a computer? This is the
>first bad sign. Zelazny's sentences and paragraphs are still smooth and
>pleasant, his dialogue is as sparkling as ever, and the magical
>inventiveness is entertaining. But the books feel like yardgoods,
>completely extruded and cut to order. They're not *bad* books, but
The second series doesn't come near the excellence of the first one,
by an order of magnitude, IMO. It does contain a lot of good _bits_:
some excellent scenery, interesting concepts, some decent
mysteries. But the bits are not combined particularly well-- not with
one another, and not with the first Amber series. This series bums me
out because it COULD have been good-- you can see the potential-- but
it just wasn't.
>_Lord of Light_ (1967)
>
>Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
>the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
>was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
>towards what would be his really great books.
It's widely considered his masterpiece. I haven't read it in years, I
really ought to.
>_Isle of the Dead_ (1969)
>
>Has slipped entirely out of memory. Is this the one with the plague?
>It shares a main character with _To Die in Italbar_, which I can't
>remember either.
_Italbar_ is the one with the plague, although _Isle_ is set in the
same universe. In _Isle_, Francis Sandow, world designer
extraordinaire (and avatar of the thunder god Shimbo) goes to some
desolate planet to confront an enemy of his.
>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>
>Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
>long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
>dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
>stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
I love this book. It ties straight in to my love of mythology of all
sorts. It's about old gods being replaced by new ones. Furthermore,
its about what IS a god, in the first place. Is it just a functional
thing: has Powers Beyond Our Comprehension, controls the fates of
worlds, dominion of some important aspect of human life (or death)? Or
is there something more fundamental?
>_Damnation Alley_ (1969)
>
>Hard-bitten old guy (and slightly stringy younger guy) drive across
>post-holocaust USA to deliver...what was it, medicine to the dying
>daughter of the President or something silly like that? Perhaps Zelazny
>was trying to channel Keith Laumer; I don't know why he wrote this. It's
>not bad, but it's silly and slight and probably left for the very end of
>one's Zelazny-reading life.
I'm pretty sure this was originally a novella, or some short thing
like that, and got expanded into a novel. I've only read the short
version, in which the hard-bitten guy drives across post-holocaust USA
to deliver medicine to the plague-stricken East Coast. I remember it
being an entertaining adventure story, I don't really think it merited
expansion to novel length.
>_Today We Choose Faces_ (1973)
This is the only non-collaboration Zelazny I haven't read. I own it,
but I have not read it, I think because once I do, I won't have any
more new (new to me, at least) Zelazny to read.
>_Roadmarks_ (1978)
>
>The Zelazny single novel I loved to read the most (as opposed to
>_Creatures_, which was the book I admired the hell out of). You see,
>there's this highway that runs from the past to the future, and the
>right people can find the ways onto it.
The actual plot of the book isn't too memorable, but it's worth
reading just for the image of the Highway of Time. (Actually, it's a
highway of Time and Alternate Realities, but let's not quibble.)
>_A Night in the Lonesome October_ (1993)
One of my favorite books. Good plot, interesting characters (or, more
appropriately, interesting and original uses of stock characters), and
just generally good fun.
A couple you didn't mention:
_Jack of Shadows_ (1971)
Which I've read, but remember absolutely nothing about.
_Psychoshop_, with Alfred Bester (1998)
Published posthumously: Zelazny was finishing up an unfinished
manuscript of Bester's, and was mostly done when he died. IIRC Greg
Bear did the finishing touches. Premise: there's a sort of pawn shop
where you can unload an unwanted aspect of your personality, in
exchange for something else. It starts out like a typical Bester
story, and ends like a typical Zelazny story.
>His short story collections are all also well-worth reading, especially
>the first (_The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other
>Stories_ -- the current edition also includes the bits of _Four for
>Tomorrow_, a four-novella collection, that weren't already there) and
>the last (_Front and Fire_).
Some of Zelazny's very best work was in his shorter stuff. I wish
somebody would put together a final collection, of all the short
stories he publised between _Frost and Fire_ and his death.
--
Pam Korda
kor2 @ midway.uchicago.edu
Home Page: http://home.uchicago.edu/~kor2/
Book Log: http://home.uchicago.edu/~kor2/booklog/
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<nomadi...@removethistomailmehotmail.com> wrote:
><how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
>news:a5s7kj$bf5$1...@peabody.colorado.edu...
>>
>> On 2-Mar-2002, "A.C." <nomadi...@removethistomailmehotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I think Zelazny's very much underrated; he's easily an A-list sf writer
>> > who is too often eclipsed by his more famous contemporaries.
>>
>> Interesting. Who are these more famous contemporaries who eclipsed him?
>> Did they get more Hugos and Nebulas?
>
>The Heinleins, Asimovs, Clarkes, Bradburies, Herberts, etc. Yes, I'd place
>him on that level.
But those guys were a generation older. Zelazny died young. Heinlein
and Asimov and Clarke and Bradbury started publishing in the '40s;
Zelazny started in the '60s.
I don't think of them as Zelazny's contemporaries, purely on a
chronological basis. His contemporaries would be the likes of Niven
and Spinrad, maybe Philip K. Dick.
And Herbert. Okay, I'll give you Herbert.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 3/2/02
My latest novel is THE DRAGON SOCIETY, published by Tor.
Hetta
> A couple you didn't mention:
>
> _Jack of Shadows_ (1971)
>
> Which I've read, but remember absolutely nothing about.
A fantasy set in an interestingly one-faced world: on one side magic works, on
the other, science. Jack is a minor deity on the magic side; he makes some
serious enemies there, and spends some time on the science side, looking for the
ultimate in magic in a place where it could never work.
I liked it; but then, I liked _Donnerjack_, too, which IMO is a very nicely done
cyberfantasy. "A real pisser", indeed.
Almost all of Zelazny's works are good (Amber 6-10 and TTT co-works excluded),
but almost all of them have such abysmally unfitting names that every reread is
a mystery: "Which one was this again?"
> Some of Zelazny's very best work was in his shorter stuff. I wish
> somebody would put together a final collection, of all the short
> stories he publised between _Frost and Fire_ and his death.
Agreed.
Hetta (Oh, and most of the rogue-playing crowd will have heard of Zelazny; if
for nothing else, then for ZAngband.)
--
he...@saunalahti.fi Hetta Kress Helsinki, Finland
Best of RHOD - http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/rhod/main.html
Luke Webber
news:JKgg8.987$rq5.11...@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com...
[Creatures of Light and Darkness]
> I just read this, and I have to admit I didn't like it at all.
>
> It was boring, maybe partly because I was too dumb to understand it,
> but partly because the characters had way too much arbitrary power.
Really? But there was nearly always somebody with even *more* arbitrary
power. Even Set, the most powerful of the lot, had his trials. Tearing off
your own genitals can't be a picnic. ;^)
After all, it's hard to write gods without getting into the matter of power,
at least a bit.
Luke
Luke Webber
news:a5s7fb$bel$1...@peabody.colorado.edu...
> How did you miss >>This Immortal<< in your review?
Look again. He didn't.
Luke
Luke Webber
> gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
> read but can remember semi-coherently.
>
> AMBER
> Corwin
>
> _Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
> _The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
> _Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
> _The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
> _The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
>
> For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
> lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
> well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
> then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
I don't really see them as his finest work. Entertaining and involving,
though.
> For ill, because it was so successful that he ended up writing the
> second series -- and because it cemented his move from writing
> interesting and very different works to putting out smoothly-written
> book with less and less ambition as time went on.
True. A bloody shame that.
[Big snip]
> _This Immortal_ (1966)
>
> Hugo winner. Pleasant, but not up to his best work. Lighter in tone than
> some of the other things he was doing around the same time -- possibly a
> precursor of things to come. What's the story about? Well, there's this
> immortal guy -- I hope that's not a spoiler -- who is on a medium-future
> Earth dominated by some alien race. As I recall, he isn't exactly trying
> to drive off the evil oppressors, but something like that happens
> anyway. Not as memorable as some Zelazny, to me anyway.
My mileage obviously varies wildly. The blending of the mythic elements with
the futuristic setting makes This Immortal a firm favourite of mine. Add in
the superbly detailed characterisations, the layered back-story and the
sheer poetry of the expression and TI is literary dynamite.
> _The Dream Master_ (1966)
>
> Nebula winner as a novella. This is, IMHO, much stronger than
> _Immortal_, though the psychotherapy may seem dated now. Our hero --
> with the marvelous name of Charles Render -- is future psychiatrist who
> uses bafflegab machinery to enter his patients' heads and move the
> furniture around bodily. The ending is uncharacteristic of Zelazny's
> novels, but to say more would be a spoiler.
Ho-hum. More mainstream, but a long way from his best, IMO. BTW, I believe
it was expanded from a shorter work entitled "He Who Shapes".
> _Lord of Light_ (1967)
>
> Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
> the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
> was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
> towards what would be his really great books.
It would be my pick for his best work. Again, he combined mythic elements
with a far-future setting. And still more fascinating, well-drawn
characters, more poetry, more of just good old "what it takes".
[snip]
> _Isle of the Dead_ (1969)
>
> Has slipped entirely out of memory. Is this the one with the plague? It
> shares a main character with _To Die in Italbar_, which I can't remember
either.
Chris Camfield has already sorted you out on this one. I think it's pretty
bloody good.
> _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>
> Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
> long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
> dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
> stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
> book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
> Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
More gods and mayhem. A good read, and a touch of the old spark, but lacking
the polish and depth of his better works. Always IMO, of course.
> _Damnation Alley_ (1969)
>
> Hard-bitten old guy (and slightly stringy younger guy) drive across
> post-holocaust USA to deliver...what was it, medicine to the dying
> daughter of the President or something silly like that? Perhaps Zelazny
> was trying to channel Keith Laumer; I don't know why he wrote this. It's
> not bad, but it's silly and slight and probably left for the very end of
> one's Zelazny-reading life.
My greatest criticism was that the ending was too predictable. But I thought
he was channelling Harlan Ellison! ;^)
Still a good read, though.
> _Today We Choose Faces_ (1973)
>
> A great title, but memory is fuzzy on the inside. I think this is the
> one about the guy who's repressed most of his memories, and so, when he
> starts getting attacked (and, if I remember right, killed multiple
> times), he has to peel back the layers of forgetfulness to become again
> the wisecracking god he, of course, really is. If this is that book,
> it's one of his better less-known works. If not -- find that other book!
Too long since I've read it. I can only recall that I found it
disappointing.
> _To Die in Italbar_ (1973)
>
> Maybe *this* is the one with the plague -- it sounds more right. Zelazny
> once said that this was based on somebody's classic plot -- "a good guy
> going down, a bad guy coming up, and they meet in the middle." Given my
> choice, I'd die somewhere else.
It was OK, but not up to Isle of the Dead.
[snip]
> _Doorways in the Sand_ (1976)
>
> Discussed extensively here recently. (Google is your friend.) Slight but
> fun -- pointing the way for pretty much all of Zelazny's later novels.
> Eternal student gets into trouble, and gets out of it by climbing around
campus.
It was a pretty good romp, and he threw in some interesting curves. The
eternal student, the climbing, the left-right switch and it's effects, the
galactic kula chain. A light treatment, but I wouldn't *really* call it
"slight".
> _My Name is Legion_ (1976)
>
> This is a fix-up of three novellas, all about a guy who doesn't exist
> (well, he does, but nobody else knows he does, so he can do the tough
> jobs, the impossible jobs, the jobs no one else can do, because down
> these mean streets yadda yadda). Late Zelazny done well.
I didn't enjoy this one all that much. Possibly I was jaded by the excess of
clones. Too much like a game of Paranoia.
> _Roadmarks_ (1978)
>
> The Zelazny single novel I loved to read the most (as opposed to
> _Creatures_, which was the book I admired the hell out of). You see,
> there's this highway that runs from the past to the future, and the
> right people can find the ways onto it.
I liked it well enough, but it didn't really ring the bell for me. Red
Dorakken and his implied dragon thing, plus the T-Rex and the Marquis du
Sade just didn't carry the ring of conviction that I get from a lot of his
other works.
> _Eye of Cat_ (1982)
>
> Competent SF thriller about a Navajo tracker and the alien beastie who
> will help him with the requisite toughest case ever if he promises to
> let the beastie eat him at the end. This plot (among many of his others)
> makes me think that Zelazny should have read less sub-Chandler mysteries
> and more of just about anything else --- Regency romances would have
> made an interesting change.
Maybe. I found it OK, but I've only reread it once, which I consider pretty
low mileage for a Zelazny novel.
> _Coils_ (1982, with Fred Saberhagen)
>
> One of my favorite books for a while -- I was a *huge* Saberhagen fan
> for a while -- about a guy who can communicate with computers and, well,
> probably The Fate of the World (or, knowing Zelazny, All The Worlds).
> Has not stuck in memory much.
I never read much Saberhagen, but I did really enjoy Coils. Probably in part
because I'm in IT and I'm attracted to the idea of being able to _really_
figure out what's happening in a compter and actually influence it.
[snip]
> (Since I want to end on a high note, I'm stopping there, ignoring the
> three books with Sheckley -- silly fluff, but useful for killing time --
> and the two books finished by Jane Lindskold after his death.)
Unh! I came across Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming and I thought I held
the Holy Grail in my grasp. Zelazny *and* Sheckley, together? One of the
bitterest disappointments of my reading life.
> His short story collections are all also well-worth reading, especially
> the first (_The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other
> Stories_ -- the current edition also includes the bits of _Four for
> Tomorrow_, a four-novella collection, that weren't already there) and
> the last (_Front and Fire_).
I can also recommend The Last Defender of Camelot, another collection of
shorts.
Luke
GSV Three Minds in a Can
person P. Korda <ko...@midway.uchicago.edu> said
<snip>
>A couple you didn't mention:
>
>_Jack of Shadows_ (1971)
>
>Which I've read, but remember absolutely nothing about.
This is the one set, iirc, on the planet which has stopped spinning and
has a permanent dark / light side, with some sort of shield generated to
prevent one side from freezing and the other burning. Sundry immortals
live / war on the dark side (Jack being one), while on the light side a
'normal' earthlike culture reigns (with computers and everything). And
there is the dragon stuck guarding the boundary, awaiting the dawn that
never comes.
Sort of cross between _Lord of Light_ and _Creatures of Light and
Darkness_, with shades of _Xanth_ thrown in. Worth a read, imo, but not
really vintage Zelazny.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Nancy Lebovitz
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 03 Mar 2002 03:06:47 GMT, Andrew Wheeler
><acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
>>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>>
>>Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
>>long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
>>dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
>>stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
>>book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
>>Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
>
>I just read this, and I have to admit I didn't like it at all.
>
>It was boring, maybe partly because I was too dumb to understand it,
>but partly because the characters had way too much arbitrary power.
>
because the bits (though some of them were individually excellent)
didn't hang together.
I believe, totally without evidence, that the novel is cobbled together
from scraps that Zelazny had in the back of a filing cabinet.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
Velveeta: So vegetarians can have spam, too
Nancy Lebovitz
A.C. <nomadi...@removethistomailmehotmail.com> wrote:
>"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
>news:3C819347...@optonline.com...
>
>>
>> This is a fix-up of three novellas, all about a guy who doesn't exist
>> (well, he does, but nobody else knows he does, so he can do the tough
>> jobs, the impossible jobs, the jobs no one else can do, because down
>> these mean streets yadda yadda). Late Zelazny done well.
>
>This has always been another of my favorites. Of course, I'm a sucker for
>the "troubleshooter" sub-genre.
>
Nancy Lebovitz
Chris Camfield <ccam...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>_Isle of the Dead_ (1969)
>>
>>Has slipped entirely out of memory. Is this the one with the plague? It
>>shares a main character with _To Die in Italbar_, which I can't remember either.
>
>This is the first Francis Sandow novel. He's in Italbar and one of
>Z's short stories as well. Sandow is the only human to achieve a
>certain bond with one of the alien Pei'an (sp) deities, one he doesn't
>believe is real (he doesn't believe in these beings) but as a result
>of this bonding he's one of the few terraformers in the galaxy. An
Sandow isn't just a terraformer--he's a world designer.
>old enemy returns to haunt him, kidnapping friends and forcing him
>into a showdown.
>
Nancy Lebovitz
>>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>>
>>Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
>>long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
>>dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
>>stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
>>book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
>>Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
>
>It should be pointed out, as far as "ambition" goes, that Zelazny
>never intended it for publication - which is why it's got so many
>experimental elements to it. Then his publisher got word of it, asked
>to take a look, and offered to publish it. Nifty book.
>
Hot damn. My "scraps from the back of the filing cabinet" theory
wasn't entirely false.
Nancy Lebovitz
>gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
>read but can remember semi-coherently.
>
>AMBER
> Corwin
>
>_Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
>_The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
>_Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
>_The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
>_The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
>
>For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
>lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
>well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
>then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
I strongly disagree--_Nine Princes_ is excellent, but the remaining
books began to seem like one chaotic hellride after another.
>
>STAND-ALONE NOVELS
>
>_This Immortal_ (1966)
>
>Hugo winner. Pleasant, but not up to his best work. Lighter in tone than
>some of the other things he was doing around the same time -- possibly a
>precursor of things to come. What's the story about? Well, there's this
>immortal guy -- I hope that's not a spoiler -- who is on a medium-future
>Earth dominated by some alien race. As I recall, he isn't exactly trying
>to drive off the evil oppressors, but something like that happens
>anyway. Not as memorable as some Zelazny, to me anyway.
>
Pretty much agree. There's something sketchy about the setting which
made it less enjoyable than a lot of other Zelazny for me.
>_Lord of Light_ (1967)
>
>Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
>the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
>was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
>towards what would be his really great books.
>
>But it is one of the top twenty or so SF novels, with energy to burn and
>nearly boundless inventiveness. Far in the future, on a colony world,
>the rulers of the world style themselves after the Hindu gods, and have
>the power to back it up. But one of their kind decides to break their
>power by turning himself into the Buddha. It also seems remarkably short
>these days -- 245 pages in the edition I have --when I remember it as a
>huge, vast book full of marvels. (Potted "Good Ol' Days" speech deleted,
>since I'm still much too young for that sort of thing.)
>
It does amaze me how much the Good Old Stuffists managed to fit into
relatively short books. Anderson's _Three Hearts and Three Lions_
is especially impressive.
_Lord of Light_ is fine flashy stuff, and also gets points for saying
that revolution is difficult.
>_Doorways in the Sand_ (1976)
>
>Discussed extensively here recently. (Google is your friend.) Slight but
>fun -- pointing the way for pretty much all of Zelazny's later novels.
>Eternal student gets into trouble, and gets out of it by climbing around campus.
It's amazing how consistantly Zelazny maintains the light tone in this one.
>_The Mask of Loki_ (1990, with Thomas T. Thomas)
>
>I just couldn't take the co-author's name seriously, so I never read it.
Mostly forgotten except that it had some interesting stuff about glass-
blowing.
_Lord Demon_
I enjoyed this one--good descriptions, engaging main character, and
a heartbreakingly dumb pun. Or at least it got to me....Zelazny pulls
out the thesaurus and all the stops to describe a created landscape
as azure, indigo, cerulean, lapis lazuli. And then the creator explains
that he made it that way because he was in a blue mood.
I imagine Zelazny as thinking, "They didn't like 'the fit hit the
shan'? This is a stupid pun, I like it, I'm dying, and I'll let it
stand."
James Nicoll
>
>Competent SF thriller about a Navajo tracker and the alien beastie who
>will help him with the requisite toughest case ever if he promises to
>let the beastie eat him at the end. This plot (among many of his others)
>makes me think that Zelazny should have read less sub-Chandler mysteries
>and more of just about anything else --- Regency romances would have
>made an interesting change.
As by Jane Austen, it features an alien who wants a human woman
to carry off to eat at some point and three single daughters of a poorish
but solid country gentleman who compete over who is to be carried off because
the alien is very very rich and the alternative is marrying the odious
minister. In the end, all is resolved happily (except for the one daughter
who finds an even worse choice than the minister or alien) because of
the meaning of 'at some point'.
In the movie, the alien is played by Alan Rickman, the father
by Jim Broadbent, the daughters by Kate Winslet, Julia Sawala (sp?)
a miscast Christina Ricci (For the US audience) and the mother is played
by Dawn French. The minister is played by Rik Mayall, and Hugh Grant
plays the ne'er do well MP from a rotton burough who runs off with the
giggly daughter.
--
"I think you mean 'Could libertarian slave-owning Confederates, led by
SHWIers, have pulled off a transatlantic invasion of Britain, in revenge
for the War of 1812, if they had nukes acquired from the Sea of Time?'"
Alison Brooks
Bill & Sue Miller
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> I'm not fond of it (though the scene with the haruspices is hilarious)
> because the bits (though some of them were individually excellent)
> didn't hang together.
>
Darn, I thought I knew this book pretty well. What are the 'haruspices'?
Bill
--
Home: wbmi...@ghg.net
Work: william....@jsc.nasa.gov
Homepage: http://www.ghg.net/wbmiller3
Nicholas Whyte
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>_The Mask of Loki_ (1990, with Thomas T. Thomas)
>
>I just couldn't take the co-author's name seriously, so I never read it.
>
>_Flare_ (1992, with TTT again)
>
>Ditto
You didn't miss anything.
Nicholas
Nicholas Whyte
<wbmi...@ghg.net> wrote:
>
>Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>
>> I'm not fond of it (though the scene with the haruspices is hilarious)
>> because the bits (though some of them were individually excellent)
>> didn't hang together.
>>
>
>Darn, I thought I knew this book pretty well. What are the 'haruspices'?
The readers of entrails.
Nicholas
P.D. TILLMAN
In a previous article, acwh...@optonline.com (Andrew Wheeler) says:
>Well, why should James have all the fun? Zelazny's an author nobody's
>gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
>read but can remember semi-coherently.
>
>
>_The Dream Master_ (1966)
>
>Nebula winner as a novella.
Title of which is better, but I can't remember it. But help
is on the way! [I hope]
>This is, IMHO, much stronger than
>_Immortal_, though the psychotherapy may seem dated now. Our hero --
>with the marvelous name of Charles Render
Render, the Shaper [!]
>-- is future psychiatrist who
>uses bafflegab machinery to enter his patients' heads and move the
>furniture around bodily. The ending is uncharacteristic of Zelazny's
>novels, but to say more would be a spoiler.
>
Need I add that the 'patient' who sucks Render in [so to speak]
is an extremely attractive young woman?
>_Lord of Light_ (1967)
>
>Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
>the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
>was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
>towards what would be his really great books.
>
>But it is one of the top twenty or so SF novels, with energy to burn and
>nearly boundless inventiveness. Far in the future, on a colony world,
>the rulers of the world style themselves after the Hindu gods, and have
>the power to back it up. But one of their kind decides to break their
>power by turning himself into the Buddha. It also seems remarkably short
>these days -- 245 pages in the edition I have --when I remember it as a
>huge, vast book full of marvels. (Potted "Good Ol' Days" speech deleted,
>since I'm still much too young for that sort of thing.)
>
Huh. I too had good memories of Great-Souled Sam, the Vasty Halls of
Death etc. -- but when I reread it a couple years back, it didn't
hold up. For me, anyway.
My nomination for Zelazny's masterwork is "A Rose for Ecclesiastes",
an impossibly romantic tale of a poet-laureate who's a remarkable
horse's ass. He goes to Mars, falls in love with a priestess,
sneaks into the Secret Sacred Ceremonies etc etc. Yes, there's
a Rose involved. Zelazny's hommage to Barsoom, and a far, far
better thing than ERB ever wrote. I love this story.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Book Reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3GHSD9VY8XS4Q/
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/iplus/nonfiction/index.htm#reviews
http://www.sfsite.com/revwho.htm
--
Nicholas Whyte
>
>On 2-Mar-2002, "A.C." <nomadi...@removethistomailmehotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > > I think Zelazny's very much underrated; he's easily an A-list sf
>> > > writer
>> > > who is too often eclipsed by his more famous contemporaries.
>> >
>> > Interesting. Who are these more famous contemporaries who eclipsed him?
>> > Did they get more Hugos and Nebulas?
>>
>> The Heinleins, Asimovs, Clarkes, Bradburies, Herberts, etc. Yes, I'd
>> place him on that level.
>
>All but Herbert and maybe Clarke were big names way before Zelazny started.
>I wouldn't call them contemporaries. I believe he has won about as many
>Hugos and Nebulas as those 5 authors.
Don't forget that the Nebulas in particular, and even to an extent the
Hugos, started too late to really catch the best of the Golden Age
authors. From my listings page at
http://explorers.whyte.com/sf/nh2.htm :
Heinlein: 6 Hugos (inc 2 retro-Hugos from last year), 0 Nebulas
Asimov: 5 Hugos (inc 1 retro-Hugo), 2 Nebulas
Clarke: 3 Hugos, 3 Nebulas
Bradbury: 0 Hugos, 0 Nebulas
Herbert: 1 Hugo, 1 Nebula
Zelazny: 6 Hugos, 3 Nebulas, ie more Hugos in his lifetime than any of
the above, and more Nebulas than any but Clarke.
The only authors with comparable or better records (ie 9 or more Hugos
and Nebulas) are:
Connie Willis: 8 Hugos, 6 Nebulas
Poul Anderson: 7 Hugos, 3 Nebulas
Harlan Ellison: 7 Hugos, 3 Nebulas
Ursula Le Guin: 5 Hugos, 5 Nebulas
Fritz Leiber: 6 Hugos, 3 Nebulas
Joe Haldeman: 5 Hugos, 4 Nebulas
Robert Silverberg and Greg Bear have both won 5 Nebulas but only 3 and
2 Hugos respectively.
Nicholas
Nicholas Whyte
wrote:
>In article <3c81bbb...@news1.on.sympatico.ca>,
>Chris Camfield <ccam...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>>>
>>>Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
>>>long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
>>>dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
>>>stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
>>>book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
>>>Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
>>
>>It should be pointed out, as far as "ambition" goes, that Zelazny
>>never intended it for publication - which is why it's got so many
>>experimental elements to it. Then his publisher got word of it, asked
>>to take a look, and offered to publish it. Nifty book.
>>
>Hot damn. My "scraps from the back of the filing cabinet" theory
>wasn't entirely false.
Not sure about this. Phil Stephenson-Payne's bibliography lists
various parts of the book as having been published as:
*Creatures of Light (New Worlds, July 1967, as "In the House of the
Dead; Worlds of If, November 1968)
*The Steel General (Worlds of If, January 1969)
*Creatures of Darkness (Worlds of If, March 1969)
So the story may be true, but exactly *which* publisher would that
have been?
Nicholas
A.C.
news:w9lg8.31789$0C1.2...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> But those guys were a generation older. Zelazny died young. Heinlein
> and Asimov and Clarke and Bradbury started publishing in the '40s;
> Zelazny started in the '60s.
I had chosen to say "contemporary" over "generation" because I felt that
publishing books in the same rough time period, i.e. the middle few decades
of the 20th century, would qualify them for that. Believe it or not I did
look up Zelazny's bibliography before sticking with contemporary, which
judging by the reaction here wasn't a good decision on my part.
> I don't think of them as Zelazny's contemporaries, purely on a
> chronological basis. His contemporaries would be the likes of Niven
> and Spinrad, maybe Philip K. Dick.
> And Herbert. Okay, I'll give you Herbert.
And, with the exception of Spinrad, those authors do get a lot more
discussion time on rasfw; look at how a "The Novels of" thread took to get
to Zelazny. Even an occasional sf reader would be more likely to have heard
of Ringworld or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Dune than This
Immortal or Lord of Light.
Of course, maybe my perception is totally wrong. I'm just saying how I see
it.
Nancy Lebovitz
P.D. TILLMAN <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>
>In a previous article, acwh...@optonline.com (Andrew Wheeler) says:
>
>>Well, why should James have all the fun? Zelazny's an author nobody's
>>gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
>>read but can remember semi-coherently.
>>
>>
>>_The Dream Master_ (1966)
>>
>>Nebula winner as a novella.
>
>Title of which is better, but I can't remember it. But help
>is on the way! [I hope]
"He Who Shapes".
Bill & Sue Miller
Ah, I suffered a vocabulary failure, not plot-memory-loss. Thanks.
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
<G...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>Bitstring <7Hjg8.142$s4....@news.uchicago.edu>, from the wonderful
>person P. Korda <ko...@midway.uchicago.edu> said
><snip>
>>A couple you didn't mention:
>>
>>_Jack of Shadows_ (1971)
>>
>>Which I've read, but remember absolutely nothing about.
One of my favorites. Lots of mythic power to it; also the setting
(with Shadowjack as the protagonist) of an early Graphic Novel, or
perhaps Graphic Short Story, with art by Gray Morrow (I have an
autographed edition).
>This is the one set, iirc, on the planet which has stopped spinning and
>has a permanent dark / light side, with some sort of shield generated to
>prevent one side from freezing and the other burning. Sundry immortals
>live / war on the dark side (Jack being one), while on the light side a
>'normal' earthlike culture reigns (with computers and everything). And
>there is the dragon stuck guarding the boundary, awaiting the dawn that
>never comes.
Ah, it's not a dragon, it's a creature with wings who Jack addresses
as "Morningstar".
ie, Lucifer.
* <- Oh, I get it - wasn't there edition of this book with a picture
of a dragon on the cover? That's probably where the confusion comes
from.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric D. Berge
(remove spaces for valid address)
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover
Breath's a ware that will not keep
Up, lad! When the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
- A.E.Housman, "Reveille"
------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Swartzendruber
> In article <3C819347...@optonline.com>, Andrew Wheeler
> <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
> > _The Changing Land_ (1981)
> >
> > Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
> > (Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
> > resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
>
> where one wizard reverse-engineers another's spell comes close to
> describing how I program computers.
Unfortunately, if you read TCL, it's glaringly obvious the story was not
finished. Not by a long shot. And the 3rd book never got written :(
John S. Novak, III
>>AMBER
>> Corwin
>>For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
>>lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
>>well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
>>then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
> It's not a series for somebody who demands rock-hard internal
> consistancy, but that's the only negative thing I can think to say
> about it. Corwin is one of my very favorite fictional characters of
> all time. It reads as if Zelazny only wrote down a fraction of
> everything there was to know about Amber and its Royal Family. One
> gets the impression that there's a lot lurking under the surface, and
> only occasionally do we get a glimpse of what it might be. It gives
> the reader a lot of room to speculate about the history of the
> characters, and such.
I'd read somewhere that Zelazny once wrote that one of his secrets of
characterization was always to know at least one thing about each
character that no one else knew. (I think he was referring to other
charcters in the novel, but it applies to the readers as well.)
If true, I suspect that this was the series where Zelazny decided to
up that count to five or ten things that no one else knew. To a
point, it works, because I do definitely get the sense that the
Amberites we see through Corwin's eyes are mere iceberg-tops of the
real characters.
On the other hand, there's that annoying consistency thing that Pam
mentions-- when I'm reading through the books for fun, I can just zoom
along, wondering at what I don't know. When I sit back and think
about it, I always have nagging doubts as to whether I'm picking up on
one of those things that Zelazny intentionally buried under the
surface, or if I'm picking up on one of those things he changed in mid
stream because he had come up with a better idea.
It's frustrating, sometimes.
It leads to arguments, even.
But for all that, I still love the first five Amber books.
They're too cool not to.
>> Merlin
>>Notice how the titles seem to be generated by a computer? This is the
>>first bad sign. Zelazny's sentences and paragraphs are still smooth and
>>pleasant, his dialogue is as sparkling as ever, and the magical
>>inventiveness is entertaining. But the books feel like yardgoods,
>>completely extruded and cut to order. They're not *bad* books, but
> The second series doesn't come near the excellence of the first one,
> by an order of magnitude, IMO. It does contain a lot of good _bits_:
> some excellent scenery, interesting concepts, some decent
> mysteries. But the bits are not combined particularly well-- not with
> one another, and not with the first Amber series. This series bums me
> out because it COULD have been good-- you can see the potential-- but
> it just wasn't.
And another point of complaint (coming from someone who hasn't
bothered to read the second series in at least five years or so,
probably longer) is that it doesn't so much seem to end, as merely
stop. There are vast numbers of plot elements (or so I recall) that
are just left hanging in space.
I don't know if Zelazny ever intended to resolve some of this stuff,
and if he did, I don't know if he had a plan or was going to wing it.
If the lack of consistency in the first five frustrates, this
maddens-- or it would, if I dwelt on it.
>>_A Night in the Lonesome October_ (1993)
> One of my favorite books. Good plot, interesting characters (or, more
> appropriately, interesting and original uses of stock characters), and
> just generally good fun.
Exactly what I was thinking:
"...And just plain fun."
> A couple you didn't mention:
> _Jack of Shadows_ (1971)
> Which I've read, but remember absolutely nothing about.
This has been on my read-in-progress stack for a while now.
When I finish it, I'll probably review it. It's short enough-- maybe
I'll try for it next weekend.
(Yes, I have a to-be-read stack which is taller than I am, and
read-in-progress stack, which, if I actually stacked those books
instead of leaving them strewn through my apartment, would be maybe a
foot tall. I get easily distracted....)
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Andrew Wheeler
>
> On Sun, 03 Mar 2002 03:06:47 GMT, Andrew Wheeler
>
> >_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
> >
> >Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in
> >a long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD
> >and a dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of
> >writerly stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a
> >playscript). The book that shows, more than any other, what kind of
> >ambition and balls Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber
> >books.
>
>
> It was boring, maybe partly because I was too dumb to understand it,
> but partly because the characters had way too much arbitrary power.
If I were writing a dissertation on Zelazny, I bet "arbitrary power"
would have a whole page in the index. Sometimes he made it seem less
arbitrary, and tied into the rules of the fictional universe, and
sometimes his hero was just Generic Zelazny Wisecracking God #58.
I mostly liked _Creatures_ for the ambition; I had a sense that he was
trying to do every odd thing that came into his head, and I thought that
many more of them worked than had any right to.
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
"Day One: Ringwraiths killed: 4. V. good.
Met up with Hobbits. Walked forty miles. Skinned a squirrel and ate it.
Still not King." -- from The Secret Diary of Aragorn son of Arathorn
Andrew Wheeler
>
> On 3-Mar-2002, "Luke Webber" <lu...@webber.com.au> wrote:
>
> > > How did you miss >>This Immortal<< in your review?
> >
> > Look again. He didn't.
>
> works, unfortunately. I don't know how I missed it the first time.
Well, it *was* an immensely long post (never gonna do one of those
things again, nossir -- I used to have a life on Saturday nights, and
now what do I do with my time?), so it would be easy to lose a novel or
two in the cracks.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> >His short story collections are all also well-worth reading,
> >especially the first (_The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth
> >and Other Stories_ -- the current edition also includes the bits of
> >_Four for Tomorrow_, a four-novella collection, that weren't already
> >there) and the last (_Front and Fire_).
>
Thanks for fixing one of the silliest typos I've ever made.
Anybody else think that _Frost_ is a much better collection than the
middle-period Zelazny _Last Defender of Camelot_? (Although, just by
having "Permafrost" at one end and "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai" at
the other, _Frost_ is immediately one of the great collections of short
science fiction.)
Dan Swartzendruber
dsw...@druber.com says...
Pfui. Brain cramp. I didn't mean The Changing Land. The two-book
series I was thinking of were X and Madwand (don't remember X offhand).
Andrew Wheeler
>
> A couple you didn't mention:
>
> _Jack of Shadows_ (1971)
>
> Which I've read, but remember absolutely nothing about.
I kept reminding myself not to forget that one (I was working from the
Clute-Nicolls _Encyclopedia_, and it didn't seem to be listed there),
but I just forgot.
_Jack_ is probably even more a dry run for Amber (or, given the time
sequence, an attempt to catch lightning again), since I can't think of
anything that differentiates Jack from Corwin. It's probably best read
after the first Amber Chronicles, before or instead of the Second Chronicles.
> _Psychoshop_, with Alfred Bester (1998)
>
> Published posthumously: Zelazny was finishing up an unfinished
> manuscript of Bester's, and was mostly done when he died. IIRC Greg
> Bear did the finishing touches. Premise: there's a sort of pawn shop
> where you can unload an unwanted aspect of your personality, in
> exchange for something else. It starts out like a typical Bester
> story, and ends like a typical Zelazny story.
I read a chunk of this, and had to put it down. Two authors died rather
than finish it -- shouldn't that be a lesson to us all? For the love of
god, don't pick up the killer book!
> >His short story collections are all also well-worth reading,
>
> Some of Zelazny's very best work was in his shorter stuff. I wish
> somebody would put together a final collection, of all the short
> stories he publised between _Frost and Fire_ and his death.
Ditto. I can only assume that the extended silence means that there
wasn't enough uncollected stuff since _Frost_ (though there seems to be
a fair number of unfamiliar story titles at ISFDB).
Oh, and this is as good a place as any to mention that I also missed
_Wilderness_ (1994, with Gerald Hausmann). I didn't read it, and I don't
know anyone who did, for what that's worth.
Doug Muir
> AMBER
> Corwin
...
> For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
> lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
> well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
> then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
I must raise a solitary voice of dissent. While I thought these were
rousing good fun, they're really much more fantasy than SF... and
they're overstocked with retcons, continuity bobbles, throwaway
plotlines, and forced plays.
They do keep us turning the page, Corwin is a fun character, and there
are lots and lots of neat sound bites. But at they end of the day, I
found them pretty frothy. Nothing wrong with froth, but I wouldn't
call them either his greatest achievement or a lasting legacy.
> THE CHANGING LAND
>
> _The Changing Land_ (1981)
>
> Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
> (Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
> resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
This was froth too, but in some ways I liked it better than the Amber
books, because it had no pretensions to be anything else. It did have
that peculiar Amber quality of making you think Zelazny knew much much
more about the worls than he was showing us. Lots of fun set pieces,
and you ended up wishing all the (surviving) characters well. As
someone else has already noted, a tribute to Dunsany and Hodgson, but
with glancing references to a variety of other authors from Tolkein to
Lovecraft.
> WIZARD WORLD
>
> _Changeling_ (1980)
> _Madwand_ (1981)
>
> An interesting new fantasy world that Zelazny seemed to be excited by,
> and willing to keep self-consistent. Everybody thought there would be a
> third, but Zelazny lived fifteen years after the second one without a
> peep.
Yes, that was odd. _Madwand_ was much better than _Changeling_, IMO
-- a rare and pleasing exception to the "sequals don't equal" rule --
and I remember hoping that the third one would be better still.
> STAND-ALONE NOVELS
>
> _Damnation Alley_ (1969)
Suffered from being a novella bulked up to novel length. Still, not
too bad. Hard to believe this was written in 1969 -- it reads like
early '80s proto-cyberpunk. IMS at least one c-punk novel (WJ
Williams' _Hardwired_) was quite deliberately derivative of it.
> _To Die in Italbar_ (1973)
>
> Maybe *this* is the one with the plague -- it sounds more right. Zelazny
> once said that this was based on somebody's classic plot -- "a good guy
> going down, a bad guy coming up, and they meet in the middle." Given my
> choice, I'd die somewhere else.
I liked this one okay (and I seem to be nearly alone in that opinion).
I liked the closer look at one of the Pei'an gods, and the guy at
solitary war with the (Terran?) Federation.
> _Coils_ (1982, with Fred Saberhagen)
>
> One of my favorite books for a while -- I was a *huge* Saberhagen fan
> for a while -- about a guy who can communicate with computers and, well,
> probably The Fate of the World (or, knowing Zelazny, All The Worlds).
> Has not stuck in memory much.
It's an hommage to John D. MacDonald, mostly; the protagonist is
basically Travis McGee with a psi power.
> _A Night in the Lonesome October_ (1993)
>
> Zelazny had seemed to have long-since slipped into a comfortable rut, so
> this was a happy surprise. Once again, style and writerly tricks --
> here, telling a novel from the viewpoint of a dog and over thirty-two
> daily chapters -- re-invigorated him and gave him one of the best books
> of his career.
Yah, this was fun. Romp romp romp, rimshotting off of a dozen
different standard tropes of the genre. And the Gahan Wilson
illustrations alone were worth the price of admission. Recommended.
Doug M.
Bill & Sue Miller
> Re:_To Die in Italbar_ (1973)
>
> I liked this one okay (and I seem to be nearly alone in that opinion).
> I liked the closer look at one of the Pei'an gods, and the guy at
> solitary war with the (Terran?) Federation.
>
I'm with you. I liked it, not as much as _Isle of the Dead_, well worth reading.
Did the original poster cover _Today We Choose Faces_? It's the only early Zelazny
I really dislike.
Dr. Faustus
> My nomination for Zelazny's masterwork is "A Rose for Ecclesiastes",
> an impossibly romantic tale of a poet-laureate who's a remarkable
> horse's ass. He goes to Mars, falls in love with a priestess,
> sneaks into the Secret Sacred Ceremonies etc etc. Yes, there's
> a Rose involved. Zelazny's hommage to Barsoom, and a far, far
> better thing than ERB ever wrote. I love this story.
I'd second that, despite some cheese near the ending. If nothing
else, this story shows what *really* lurks in the hearts of those
über-cool, sarcastic demigod protagonists that litter Zelazny's
work.
--
Doctor Faustus
fau...@pureevil.org
Ross TenEyck
>Bitstring <7Hjg8.142$s4....@news.uchicago.edu>, from the wonderful
>person P. Korda <ko...@midway.uchicago.edu> said
><snip>
>>
>>_Jack of Shadows_ (1971)
>>
>>Which I've read, but remember absolutely nothing about.
>This is the one set, iirc, on the planet which has stopped spinning and
>has a permanent dark / light side, with some sort of shield generated to
>prevent one side from freezing and the other burning. Sundry immortals
>live / war on the dark side (Jack being one), while on the light side a
>'normal' earthlike culture reigns (with computers and everything). And
>there is the dragon stuck guarding the boundary, awaiting the dawn that
>never comes.
Pretty much, although referring to Morningstar as a "dragon" is
perhaps missing some of the point...
>Sort of cross between _Lord of Light_ and _Creatures of Light and
>Darkness_, with shades of _Xanth_ thrown in. Worth a read, imo, but not
>really vintage Zelazny.
Xanth? Hardly. It's not Zelazny at his best, I'll grant you,
but I still quite liked it. It's got some of the atmosphere of
_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ about it, without being quite
so odd.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>_Jack_ is probably even more a dry run for Amber (or, given the time
>sequence, an attempt to catch lightning again), since I can't think of
>anything that differentiates Jack from Corwin.
Wow, do we see this differently!
I think _Jack of Shadows_ is the better book, and Jack the better
character, by a significant margin.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 3/2/02
My latest novel is THE DRAGON SOCIETY, published by Tor.
Pardoz
wrote:
> Pfui. Brain cramp. I didn't mean The Changing Land. The two-book
> series I was thinking of were X and Madwand (don't remember X offhand).
_Changeling_, which explains the brain cramp. Always wanted to read
the third in that series myself...
--
EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Thomas Yan
-much silent snipping throughout-
> AMBER
> Corwin
>
> _Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
> _The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
> _Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
> _The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
> _The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
>
> For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
> lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
> well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
> then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
I feel about this series much like I do with this year's Oscar nominees
for Best Picture: I liked them, but not enough to want them elevated
for special recognition, and don't understand why they are so highly
rated.
I must say I'm happy to see other people here also say they don't
consider this to be Zelazny's best.
> _Lord of Light_ (1967)
>
> Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
> the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
> was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
> towards what would be his really great books.
I liked this quite a bit when I first read it, but I have not yet
reread it. For a long time, I was scared to -- there was so much pain.
> (Since I want to end on a high note, I'm stopping there, ignoring the
> three books with Sheckley -- silly fluff, but useful for killing time --
> and the two books finished by Jane Lindskold after his death.)
I thought _Lord Demon_ was a good, solid book, but not comparable to
Zelazny at his best, so I was a touch disappointed by it. I *loved*
_Donnerjack_ the first few times I read it, but I just reread it again
recently and was not as enthralled as I was before. I'm not sure why.
--
Thomas Yan (ty...@twcny.rr.com) Note: I don't check e-mail often.
Be pro-active. Fight sucky software and learned helplessness.
Apologies for any lack of capitalization; typing hurts my hands.
Dan Swartzendruber
par...@io.spuckfam.com.invalid says...
> On Sun, 3 Mar 2002 16:51:42 -0500, Dan Swartzendruber <dsw...@druber.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Pfui. Brain cramp. I didn't mean The Changing Land. The two-book
> > series I was thinking of were X and Madwand (don't remember X offhand).
>
> _Changeling_, which explains the brain cramp. Always wanted to read
> the third in that series myself...
I remember sitting there for years thinking "when the H is he gonna
finish this story???"
uri
>
> I'd read somewhere that Zelazny once wrote that one of his secrets of
> characterization was always to know at least one thing about each
> character that no one else knew. (I think he was referring to other
> charcters in the novel, but it applies to the readers as well.)
>
> If true, I suspect that this was the series where Zelazny decided to
> up that count to five or ten things that no one else knew. To a
> point, it works, because I do definitely get the sense that the
> Amberites we see through Corwin's eyes are mere iceberg-tops of the
> real characters.
What he wrote is that he usually writes out short stories about things
that happened outside the scope of the book. Past events that happened
to both major and minor characters. Sometimes there would be
references to those events in the book. They helped him flesh out the
characters. He only published one of those - the Francis Sandow short
story.
> And another point of complaint (coming from someone who hasn't
> bothered to read the second series in at least five years or so,
> probably longer) is that it doesn't so much seem to end, as merely
> stop. There are vast numbers of plot elements (or so I recall) that
> are just left hanging in space.
>
> I don't know if Zelazny ever intended to resolve some of this stuff,
> and if he did, I don't know if he had a plan or was going to wing it.
>
> If the lack of consistency in the first five frustrates, this
> maddens-- or it would, if I dwelt on it.
He not only intended, he published five short stories that follow
"Prince of Chaos" - with various protagonists (1 Merlin, 1 Luke, 2
Corwin, 1 Frakir - not in that order) - they make for a good read, but
they don't provide resolution either. Collectively they're more like
the begining of something new, which he never got the chance to
finish. The last of the 5 was sent off to the publisher shortly before
Zelazny died.
They were a bit too fatalistic to my taste, but all things considered,
it's understandable.
Chris Camfield
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>Chris Camfield wrote:
>>
>> >His short story collections are all also well-worth reading,
>> >especially the first (_The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth
>> >and Other Stories_ -- the current edition also includes the bits of
>> >_Four for Tomorrow_, a four-novella collection, that weren't already
>> >there) and the last (_Front and Fire_).
>>
>> _Frost and Fire_.
>
>Thanks for fixing one of the silliest typos I've ever made.
>
>Anybody else think that _Frost_ is a much better collection than the
>middle-period Zelazny _Last Defender of Camelot_? (Although, just by
>having "Permafrost" at one end and "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai" at
>the other, _Frost_ is immediately one of the great collections of short
>science fiction.)
Well, while I like quite a few of the stories in Frost, the same
applies to Last Defender, so I personally wouldn't say "much better".
Chris
Chris Camfield
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
[snip]
>_Jack_ is probably even more a dry run for Amber (or, given the time
>sequence, an attempt to catch lightning again), since I can't think of
>anything that differentiates Jack from Corwin.
Well, Corwin has a conscience, for one thing. Jack doesn't have one
until he accepts his soul. While he is the protagonist, Jack is also
a pretty mean bastard. That may have been true in Amber's past, but
by the time we meet Corwin he's been mellowed by his life on shadow
Earth.
I've read _Wilderness_. I'd have to say it's one of Zelazny's best
collaborations, but other than _Coils_ I'd be hard pressed to name one
of his collaborations that I liked. _Wilderness_ is really two
separate stories about individuals trying to survive in the wilds of
the U.S. in the 1800s. Neat if you like that sort of tale.
Chris
Matthew Austern
> In article <3C819347...@optonline.com>,
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> >_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
> >
> >Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
> >long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
> >dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
> >stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
>
> I love this book. It ties straight in to my love of mythology of all
> sorts. It's about old gods being replaced by new ones. Furthermore,
> its about what IS a god, in the first place. Is it just a functional
> thing: has Powers Beyond Our Comprehension, controls the fates of
> worlds, dominion of some important aspect of human life (or death)? Or
> is there something more fundamental?
It also has one of the most quotable set pieces from all of Zelazny:
the agnostic's prayer.
Most people seem to have either _Lord of Light_ or _Creatures of Light
and Darkness_ as their favorite Zelazny. I'm in the former camp;
perhaps it's nothing more profound than that it's the one I read
first.
Morgan Lewis
Likewise; or, more accurately, since I only discovered the second after
his death, I spent quite a while trying to find out if there *was* a
third one.
From comments by those who knew him, I gather that he always intended a
third (always == after he'd written the second), but wasn't quite sure
what he wanted to do with it. He kept thinking about it, and kept doing
other projects instead, always intending to "someday" get back to it.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgan Lewis m...@efn.org mle...@cs.uoregon.edu
Morgan Lewis
>
> Chris Camfield wrote:
> >
> > >His short story collections are all also well-worth reading,
> > >especially the first (_The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His
> > >Mouth and Other Stories_ -- the current edition also includes the
> > >bits of _Four for Tomorrow_, a four-novella collection, that
> > >weren't already there) and the last (_Front and Fire_).
> >
> > _Frost and Fire_.
>
> Thanks for fixing one of the silliest typos I've ever made.
>
> Anybody else think that _Frost_ is a much better collection than the
> middle-period Zelazny _Last Defender of Camelot_? (Although, just by
> having "Permafrost" at one end and "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai"
> at the other, _Frost_ is immediately one of the great collections
> of short science fiction.)
>
> --
> Andrew Wheeler
While I like _Frost and Fire_, I have to disagree here. _The Last
Defender of Camelot_ has some pretty decent stuff throughout, and two of
my absolute favorites. The title story is one of the more interesting
divergences from the legends I've read; and "For a Breath I Tarry"...
pure beauty.
Note for the readers:
There is a publishing company that is republishing some of Zelazny's
stuff. For the most part, they're doing a reasonable job, few
alterations (_The Doors..._ has those added short stories, but that's
perfectly fine.) However, they are publishing a book titled _The Last
Defender of Camelot_ next. This is *NOT* the same short story
collection as the old one. It contains some of the same stories, but
not all of them, and contains some, but not all, of the stories from
_Frost and Fire_. It also contains one -- just one -- previously
uncollected story, "Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice My Love".
The question of why they are re-using the same title hasn't really been
answered.
Just thought those whose interest was piqued by this thread would like
to know.
Lee Ann Rucker
Swartzendruber <dsw...@druber.com> wrote:
The magic there does come close to being how I'd visualize programming
(pick a strand of this, link it to a strand of that) but _TCL_
describes the details better.
Lee Ann Rucker
III <j...@concentric.net> wrote:
[Second Amber series]
> And another point of complaint (coming from someone who hasn't
> bothered to read the second series in at least five years or so,
> probably longer) is that it doesn't so much seem to end, as merely
> stop. There are vast numbers of plot elements (or so I recall) that
> are just left hanging in space.
I hit a variation on the 8 Deadly Words on that one - I Don't Care What
Happens To *These* Characters, Now Where The Hell Is Corwin?
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Ross TenEyck <ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu> said
<snip>
>>Sort of cross between _Lord of Light_ and _Creatures of Light and
>>Darkness_, with shades of _Xanth_ thrown in. Worth a read, imo, but not
>>really vintage Zelazny.
>
>Xanth? Hardly. It's not Zelazny at his best, I'll grant you,
>but I still quite liked it. It's got some of the atmosphere of
>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ about it, without being quite
>so odd.
I actually prefer _CoLaD_. The _Xanth_ throw away comment was w.r.t. the
world containing both 'magic' on one side and 'normality' on the other
.. not suggesting RZ was into outrageous puns, and female underwear. 8>.
ISTR that denizens of Xanth, in one or other of the books, made it
across into 'the real world' just as Shadowjack did,
--
John S. Novak, III
>> If the lack of consistency in the first five frustrates, this
>> maddens-- or it would, if I dwelt on it.
> He not only intended, he published five short stories that follow
> "Prince of Chaos" - with various protagonists (1 Merlin, 1 Luke, 2
> Corwin, 1 Frakir - not in that order) - they make for a good read, but
> they don't provide resolution either. Collectively they're more like
> the begining of something new, which he never got the chance to
> finish. The last of the 5 was sent off to the publisher shortly before
> Zelazny died.
And they're damn near impossible to find, too, so this doesn't help
much. And frankly, I find myself powerfully uninterested in reading a
story from Frakir's point of view.
John S. Novak, III
> [Second Amber series]
>> And another point of complaint (coming from someone who hasn't
>> bothered to read the second series in at least five years or so,
>> probably longer) is that it doesn't so much seem to end, as merely
>> stop. There are vast numbers of plot elements (or so I recall) that
>> are just left hanging in space.
> I hit a variation on the 8 Deadly Words on that one - I Don't Care What
> Happens To *These* Characters, Now Where The Hell Is Corwin?
Big Hairy Spoilers:
You'll find out in the last ten pages or so of the last book.
You will almost certainly NOT like the answer. Or at least I didn't--
it was stoopid.
David E. Siegel
> Well, why should James have all the fun? Zelazny's an author nobody's
> gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
> read but can remember semi-coherently.
<much snippage in this response, won't indicate specific snips>
>
> AMBER
> Corwin
>
>
> For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
> lasting legacy in the field.
I also disagre here. This isn't even his 3rd best work, IMO. His
best, and his lasting legacy, is probably Lord of Light, at the novel
length. At shorter lengths, Rose and For a Breath i tarry, just to
name two, are much better IMO.
> THE CHANGING LAND
>
> _The Changing Land_ (1981)
>
> Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
> (Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
> resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
>
> _Dilvish, the Damned_ (1982)
>
> Fix-up of some very early swords & sorcery stories, with some new (new
> being 1982) materials at the end. I remember that the hero has a horse
> made out of black metal (possibly a demon?) and that these books were
> fun, but that's about it.
>
I liked these, the but change in tone whre there was a several year
gap in writing the Dilvish stories is all too evident. (It got far
more cynical and modern in voice.) i would have liked to read the
compelted work in the original tone. That might have ben a truew
classic of fantasy, worthy of Dunsany or Tolkien, although not quite
like either.
> _The Dream Master_ (1966)
>
> Nebula winner as a novella. This is, IMHO, much stronger than
> _Immortal_, though the psychotherapy may seem dated now. Our hero --
> with the marvelous name of Charles Render -- is future psychiatrist who
> uses bafflegab machinery to enter his patients' heads and move the
> furniture around bodily. The ending is uncharacteristic of Zelazny's
> novels, but to say more would be a spoiler.
>
I liked this very mucvh, although i think it was perhaps stronger in
the shorter version "He Who Shapes". The taling dog was just one of
the nice touches, and the openign scene with the politician (nicely
echoed near the end) was also very well done. I was able to really
see, or think i saw, the worlds bing constructed here. A good
exploration of the worlds of dream adn nightmare, IMO.
> _Lord of Light_ (1967)
>
> Another Hugo winner, and now retroactively seen as his masterwork. At
> the time (as much as I can tell -- I was -2 when it was published), it
> was seen as another very good Zelazny novel, and part of his building
> towards what would be his really great books.
>
What more can I say? But as serious as it is, there are lots of little
jokes buiried in it, including the early scene with Sam and the
provincial nobleman, which sets up a truly awful shaggy-dog pun.
> _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>
> Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
> long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
> dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
> stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
> book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
> Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
>
I dpon't thinbk this one worked as well overall, although it has many
neat bits.
> _Damnation Alley_ (1969)
>
> Hard-bitten old guy (and slightly stringy younger guy) drive across
> post-holocaust USA to deliver...what was it, medicine to the dying
> daughter of the President or something silly like that? Perhaps Zelazny
> was trying to channel Keith Laumer; I don't know why he wrote this. It's
> not bad, but it's silly and slight and probably left for the very end of
> one's Zelazny-reading life.
>
As I recall, the driver is alone for most of the trip. He is also the
last of the Hells Angels, and makes some effort to prove it. The
mnedicine was to stop a plague that might wipe out one of the teo
remaining civilized enclaves in a post-holacaust world -- he does it
because the other encalve tells him, "this or jail forever" (or was it
a death sentance? I forget).
> _Today We Choose Faces_ (1973)
>
> A great title, but memory is fuzzy on the inside. I think this is the
> one about the guy who's repressed most of his memories, and so, when he
> starts getting attacked (and, if I remember right, killed multiple
> times), he has to peel back the layers of forgetfulness to become again
> the wisecracking god he, of course, really is. If this is that book,
> it's one of his better less-known works. If not -- find that other book!
>
Yes. "Pull pin seven to release the demon within" one of the great
opening lines in SF IMO.
> _Doorways in the Sand_ (1976)
>
> Discussed extensively here recently. (Google is your friend.) Slight but
> fun -- pointing the way for pretty much all of Zelazny's later novels.
> Eternal student gets into trouble, and gets out of it by climbing around campus.
>
I thought it was a bit more than "slight" although not his very bvest
work.
> --
> Andrew Wheeler
-DES
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
>
>On 3-Mar-2002, Eric D. Berge <eric_berge @ hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Ah, it's not a dragon, it's a creature with wings who Jack addresses
>> as "Morningstar".
>>
>> ie, Lucifer.
>
>I wondered if that was the reference when I read it.
Oh, no question.
Morning Star = The planet Venus = "The Light Bringer" = (Latin)
Lucifer.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric D. Berge
(remove spaces for valid address)
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover
Breath's a ware that will not keep
Up, lad! When the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
- A.E.Housman, "Reveille"
------------------------------------------------------------------
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>AMBER
> Corwin
>
>_Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
>_The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
>_Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
>_The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
>_The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
>
>For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement,
Not for me. I was mildly well-disposed towards these on my first
read-through, but they haven't aged well for me.
>_Dilvish, the Damned_ (1982)
>
>Fix-up of some very early swords & sorcery stories, with some new (new
>being 1982) materials at the end. I remember that the hero has a horse
>made out of black metal (possibly a demon?) and that these books were
>fun, but that's about it.
Some of the component stories in this were absolutely terrific - I
remember them from back-issues of "Fantastic" that I acquired in the
mid-70s.
>WIZARD WORLD
>
>_Changeling_ (1980)
>_Madwand_ (1981)
>
>An interesting new fantasy world that Zelazny seemed to be excited by,
>and willing to keep self-consistent. Everybody thought there would be a
>third, but Zelazny lived fifteen years after the second one without a
>peep. The original edition was part of a flurry of illustrated SF books
>in the late '70s and early '80s, and the illustrations are quite nice.
>Perhaps created as an attempt at a "second Amber," but it didn't take
>off on that level. Well worth reading, though.
Thought both of them were minor.
>STAND-ALONE NOVELS
>
>_This Immortal_ (1966)
>
>Hugo winner. Pleasant, but not up to his best work.
Eh? This and "Jack Of Shadows" are my two favorite Zelazny novels; has
some terrificly powerful scenes, including the one in which the title
character's fight against a re-programmed practice-dummy wrestling
robot morphs into the struggle between Heracles and Antaeus. Helps to
have a feeling for Greek myth, I think.
>_Creatures of Light and Darkness_ (1969)
>
>Used to be my favorite Zelazny novel, though I haven't re-read it in a
>long time. Something between a re-run of _Lord of Light_ on LSD and a
>dry-run for Amber. Lots of gods, lots of conflict, lots of writerly
>stuff (at least one part of the book is written as a playscript). The
>book that shows, more than any other, what kind of ambition and balls
>Zelazny had before he settled down to write Amber books.
My mother, the archaeologist, likes this book quite a bit. It took me
a while to get some of the jokes, including the one about "...from out
of the darkness of Space come the thundering hooves of the great
horse, Bronze!"
>_Doorways in the Sand_ (1976)
My first Zelazny. I bought it in the book department of Sears in Fox
Valley Mall in Illinois, probably the year it came out, with my
$2/weekly allowance; read it in one sitting and went and borrowed
against next week's money to get another book by Z. Possibly My Name
Is Legion.
>(Since I want to end on a high note, I'm stopping there, ignoring the
>three books with Sheckley -- silly fluff, but useful for killing time --
>and the two books finished by Jane Lindskold after his death.)
Finally read "Lord Demon" recently; eh. Zelazny lite.
Loved Donnerjack, though - had some great characters, including Death
and the 'phant.
Captain Button
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message news:<3C819347...@optonline.com>...
[ snip ]
>> _Damnation Alley_ (1969)
>>
>> Hard-bitten old guy (and slightly stringy younger guy) drive across
>> post-holocaust USA to deliver...what was it, medicine to the dying
>> daughter of the President or something silly like that? Perhaps Zelazny
>> was trying to channel Keith Laumer; I don't know why he wrote this. It's
>> not bad, but it's silly and slight and probably left for the very end of
>> one's Zelazny-reading life.
>>
> As I recall, the driver is alone for most of the trip. He is also the
> last of the Hells Angels, and makes some effort to prove it. The
> mnedicine was to stop a plague that might wipe out one of the teo
> remaining civilized enclaves in a post-holacaust world -- he does it
> because the other encalve tells him, "this or jail forever" (or was it
> a death sentance? I forget).
WW3 not only killed most people and filled most of the landscape
with giant spiders, snakes, gila monsters, etc, it caused persistent
super-fast turbulent winds that make flying impossibly dangerous.
There are a number of widely seperated still inhabited areas in North
America: A large chunk of California, the Boston area, upstate
New York, Phoenix, and Las Vegas IIRC. The only feasible way to
travel throught the wastelands is in armored cars with a large
array of weaponry.
Hell Tanner was a sometime driver of these cars for the post office,
and other times a motorcycle gangster. He got caught at the latter
and sent to prison for life.
A plague breaks out in Boston, and they do not have the serum for
it. But California does have the serum. So they offer Hell a full
pardon if he get the serum to Boston in time.
Normally contact between California and Boston is by ship, but
sending the serum that way would take too long.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Nancy Lebovitz
Captain Button <but...@io.com> wrote:
>Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on 4 Mar 2002 07:05:08 -0800,
>David E. Siegel <sie...@acm.org> wrote:
>> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message news:<3C819347...@optonline.com>...
>
>[ snip ]
>
>>> _Damnation Alley_ (1969)
>>>
>>> Hard-bitten old guy (and slightly stringy younger guy) drive across
>>> post-holocaust USA to deliver...what was it, medicine to the dying
>>> daughter of the President or something silly like that? Perhaps Zelazny
>>> was trying to channel Keith Laumer; I don't know why he wrote this. It's
>>> not bad, but it's silly and slight and probably left for the very end of
>>> one's Zelazny-reading life.
>>>
>> As I recall, the driver is alone for most of the trip. He is also the
>> last of the Hells Angels, and makes some effort to prove it. The
>> mnedicine was to stop a plague that might wipe out one of the teo
>> remaining civilized enclaves in a post-holacaust world -- he does it
>> because the other encalve tells him, "this or jail forever" (or was it
>> a death sentance? I forget).
>
>WW3 not only killed most people and filled most of the landscape
>with giant spiders, snakes, gila monsters, etc, it caused persistent
>super-fast turbulent winds that make flying impossibly dangerous.
>
occasionally touches down, causing tremendous damage.
They don't make aftermaths like that anymore.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
Velveeta: So vegetarians can have spam, too
Captain Button
[ snip ]
>> _To Die in Italbar_ (1973)
>>
>> Maybe *this* is the one with the plague -- it sounds more right. Zelazny
>> once said that this was based on somebody's classic plot -- "a good guy
>> going down, a bad guy coming up, and they meet in the middle." Given my
>> choice, I'd die somewhere else.
> I liked this one okay (and I seem to be nearly alone in that opinion).
> I liked the closer look at one of the Pei'an gods, and the guy at
> solitary war with the (Terran?) Federation.
I like TDiI also.
Actually, Malacar Miles was for Terra, at least what was left of it.
Sometime after _ Isle of the Dead _ a big interstellar war broke out
between DYNAB (which included Earth) and the Combined Leagues. The
war eventually ended in a peace settlement, but not before Earth
was so thoroughly nuked that no humans were left alive.
Admiral (or was it General?) MM builds himself a fortress on Manhattan
on the poisoned and irradiated Earth, and takes advantage of a glitch
in the peace conference diplomatic immunity rules to wage a campaign of
sabotageand terrorism against the CL. Then he gets the idea of enlisting
an evil god to help him scale up the killing.
In the words of James Nicoll, "Like that was going to turn out well."
David Goldfarb
Dan Swartzendruber <dsw...@druber.com> wrote:
>In article <MPG.16ec4d578...@news.supernews.net>,
>dsw...@druber.com says...
>> In article <020320022049062248%lru...@mac.com>, lru...@mac.com says...
>> > In article <3C819347...@optonline.com>, Andrew Wheeler
>> > <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > > Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
>> > > (Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
>> > > resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
>> >
>> > where one wizard reverse-engineers another's spell comes close to
>> > describing how I program computers.
>>
>> Unfortunately, if you read TCL, it's glaringly obvious the story was not
>> finished. Not by a long shot. And the 3rd book never got written :(
>
>Pfui. Brain cramp. I didn't mean The Changing Land. The two-book
>series I was thinking of were X and Madwand (don't remember X offhand).
X was _Changeling_. The similarity of titles may have contributed
to your confusion. _Changeling_ and _Madwand_ clearly were incomplete,
but Zelazny had written no sequel for a long time before he died.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"The Uncertainty Principle allows particles
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | to travel faster than light over short distances."
|
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Stephen Hawking
John Johnson
> Well, why should James have all the fun? Zelazny's an author nobody's
> gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
> read but can remember semi-coherently.
>
> Corwin
>
> _Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
> _The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
> _Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
> _The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
> _The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
>
> well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
> then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
I hope they're not his greatest achievment, since I didn't think too high
of them. They're definitely in the pot-boiler category, so if you're
looking for internal consistency you might want to avoid them.
I do have to say that my opinion has changed since the last time I posted
on this subject (when I decided that Amber wasn't all it was cracked up
to be), and now I appreciate them more. Still haven't read the second set
of Amber books, and, based on numerous comments here, I probably won't.
Also based on numerous recommendations, it looks as if I should pick up
some of Zelazny's other works.
--
John Johnson
Andrew Wheeler
>
> On Sun, 03 Mar 2002 21:52:10 GMT, Andrew Wheeler
> <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
> >_Jack_ is probably even more a dry run for Amber (or, given the time
> >sequence, an attempt to catch lightning again), since I can't think
> >of anything that differentiates Jack from Corwin.
>
> Wow, do we see this differently!
>
> I think _Jack of Shadows_ is the better book, and Jack the better
> character, by a significant margin.
Though I do greatly enjoy reading the adventures of Standard Zelazny
Protagonist, I must admit that they all start to run together in the
brain after a while. Perhaps they've bled together too much in my mind,
and it's time to re-read. (Except, if I re-read some Zelazny, it would
probably be _Creatures_ or _Today We Choose Faces_, since my memories of
those are the most intriguing.)
His books are mostly short enough to go on a binge... <thoughtful pause>
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
"Day One: Ringwraiths killed: 4. V. good.
Met up with Hobbits. Walked forty miles. Skinned a squirrel and ate it.
Still not King." -- from The Secret Diary of Aragorn son of Arathorn
Andrew Wheeler
>
> In article <3C819347...@optonline.com>,
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
>
> > For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
> > lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
> > well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and
> > a then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
>
> I feel about this series much like I do with this year's Oscar
> nominees for Best Picture: I liked them, but not enough to want them
> elevated for special recognition, and don't understand why they are
> so highly rated.
>
> I must say I'm happy to see other people here also say they don't
> consider this to be Zelazny's best.
Since basically everybody has taken me to task for this (and have
presented some darn good reasons), perhaps I should try to restate my
case. ("You see, I *said* X, but I really *meant* Y, as I'll prove
through this convoluted logic...")
I don't consider the first Amber books to be Zelazny's most successful
work; his best short fiction is at the top, and I'd put the novels
_Dream Master_, _Lord of Light_ and maybe _Lonesome October_ -- though
the last has so much less ambition than the other two that I'm a bit
uneasy putting it in that company.
And I don't consider Amber Mk 1 to be his most ambitious work -- I'd say
_Creatures_ takes that crown hands-down.
But I do think Classic Amber is his most characteristic work; that it
shows all of his strengths and faults as a writer. And I do think that
Corwin's story is what he'll be remembered most for; _Lord_ gets revived
noticeably less often, and nothing else of his comes close. And Amber is
tremendously influential -- every wisecracking fantasy hero since then
is a distant descendant (via some unlikely Shadow) of Corwin. It's the
series where his desire to write about wisecracking gods worked best;
where the world-building was the most interesting; and where he rode the
line between SF and Fantasy straight into the (fannish, at least) zeitgeist.
whoever
"John Johnson" <john.j...@idf.centerpartners.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16edb0182...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> In article <3C819347...@optonline.com> Andrew Wheeler says . . .
> > Well, why should James have all the fun? Zelazny's an author nobody's
> > gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
> > read but can remember semi-coherently.
> >
> > AMBER
> > Corwin
> >
> > _Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
> > _The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
> > _Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
> > _The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
> > _The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
> >
> > For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
> > lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
> > well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
> > then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
>
> I hope they're not his greatest achievment, since I didn't think too high
> of them. They're definitely in the pot-boiler category, so if you're
> looking for internal consistency you might want to avoid them.
>
Zelazny was so weakly implausable in some areas.
For example I remember laughing over the size of the rooms in the
"Illustrated Guide to Castle Amber".
Here these people are royalty in the "one true world" and they have less
floor space than my smallest studio apartment!
No bathrooms! And the scale and design of the castle and city are so wrong.
Still he made you love the characters so much that even the implausable
became heartfelt. You wanted to visit there anyway.
> I do have to say that my opinion has changed since the last time I posted
> on this subject (when I decided that Amber wasn't all it was cracked up
> to be), and now I appreciate them more. Still haven't read the second set
> of Amber books, and, based on numerous comments here, I probably won't.
>
Actually I found I liked the characters in the second Amber books better
than
the first. There's a bit more humor in it as well.
> Also based on numerous recommendations, it looks as if I should pick up
> some of Zelazny's other works.
>
Zelazny was one of my favorites as a teen and I always got really interested
in the characters. I remember at one point after reading
"Doorways in the Sand" one summer I climbed out on the roof a few nights
in imitation of the protaganist..
LOL. Thanks to Roger for many fine summer dreams. ;-)
> --
> John Johnson
Dan Swartzendruber
says...
> >Pfui. Brain cramp. I didn't mean The Changing Land. The two-book
> >series I was thinking of were X and Madwand (don't remember X offhand).
>
> X was _Changeling_. The similarity of titles may have contributed
> to your confusion. _Changeling_ and _Madwand_ clearly were incomplete,
> but Zelazny had written no sequel for a long time before he died.
Yes, thanks!
Richard Horton
hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
>My first Zelazny. I bought it in the book department of Sears in Fox
>Valley Mall in Illinois, probably the year it came out, with my
>$2/weekly allowance; read it in one sitting and went and borrowed
>against next week's money to get another book by Z. Possibly My Name
>Is Legion.
Damn you, you should have bought it at Waldenbooks in Fox Valley Mall.
Because then you might have bought it from me!
(Actually, I didn't start at Waldenbooks until, I think, late 1977, so
maybe not!)
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Arms Longfellow
> In article <3C819347...@optonline.com> Andrew Wheeler says . . .
> > Well, why should James have all the fun? Zelazny's an author nobody's
> > gotten to yet, and one of the few whose entire works I have not only
> > read but can remember semi-coherently.
> >
> > AMBER
> > Corwin
> >
> > _Nine Princes in Amber_ (1970)
> > _The Guns of Avalon_ (1972)
> > _Sign of the Unicorn_ (1975)
> > _The Hand of Oberon_ (1976)
> > _The Courts of Chaos_ (1978)
> >
> > For good or ill, these are Zelazny's greatest achievement, and his
> > lasting legacy in the field. For good, since it's a great story
> > well-told, with lots of classic SFnal derring-do and adventure and a
> > then-unique blend of SF and the budding fantasy genre.
>
> I hope they're not his greatest achievment, since I didn't think too high
> of them. They're definitely in the pot-boiler category, so if you're
> looking for internal consistency you might want to avoid them.
I think a lot of people here are letting nostalgia get the better of them.
I've read a clutch of different Zelazny books, and "Nine Princes" was my least
favourite by a pretty wide margin (enough to turn me off the other Amber
books). Everything else I've read by him has been, if not excellent, at least
fun and well-written.
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"It is not an obscenity to be free. It is a divine right." --Annette Peacock
N.P.:nothing
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful person Jon Meltzer <jonme...@mindspring.com> said
>On Mon, 4 Mar 2002 14:07:25 +0000, GSV Three Minds in a Can
><G...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>
>
>>I actually prefer _CoLaD_. The _Xanth_ throw away comment was w.r.t. the
>>world containing both 'magic' on one side and 'normality' on the other
>>.. not suggesting RZ was into outrageous puns, and female underwear.
>
Only just the one.
Xanth runs to about two per paragraph in the later books.
LAFF
<lru...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> I hit a variation on the 8 Deadly Words on that one - I Don't Care What
> Happens To *These* Characters, Now Where The Hell Is Corwin?
Which is why I kept reading them nonetheless.
--
Lois Fundis lfu...@weir.net
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Cockpit/9377/handy-dandy.html
1851 W. WILSON Little Earnest Bk. upon Great Old Subject x. 137 (heading) Science-Fiction. Ibid., We hope
it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction, as we believe such works likely to
fulfil a good purpose, and create an interest, where, unhappily, science alone might fail. Ibid. 139 Campbell
says that ‘Fiction in Poetry is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanting resemblance.’ Now this
applies especially to Science-Fiction, in which the revealed truths of Science may be given, interwoven with a
pleasing story which may itself be poetical and _true_ thus circulating a knowledge of the Poetry of Science,
clothed in a garb of the Poetry of Life.
-- from the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of Science Fiction
(which notes that the 1851 citation is "an isolated use. The expression did not come into general use
until the end of the 1920s.")
Joe Pfeiffer
>
> Only just the one.
> Xanth runs to about two per paragraph in the later books.
Did Anthony get back into punning? The early Xanth were terrific,
then after half a dozen or so he made a conscious decision to cut back
on them (the author's note at the end of one of them talks about it);
they got so boring I quit reading them over ten years ago. If the
puns are back, I may start reading them again...
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
Southwestern NM Regional Science and Engr Fair: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair
J Greely
>For example I remember laughing over the size of the rooms in the
>"Illustrated Guide to Castle Amber".
I confess I was mostly busy cringing over the drawings of the
characters. Dierdre in particular stands out in my memory as "hit in
the face with a shovel, repeatedly".
The room descriptions and drawings were pretty dreadful, and I can't
blame Zelazny for explosively redecorating in the next novel.
>No bathrooms!
That's not terribly surprising, since the place was more or less the
first building ever designed outside of Chaos.
>And the scale and design of the castle and city are so wrong.
I don't accept anything in this book as canon.
>Actually I found I liked the characters in the second Amber books
>better than the first. There's a bit more humor in it as well.
Probably because the characters are, at least at first glance, closer
to "normal". The humor is a bit more obvious as well, although
occasional scenes were obviously added just for pun's sake ("it was
just one damned thing after another"). Nice Grimjack cameo, though.
-j
Hetta
> Captain Button <but...@io.com> wrote:
>
> >WW3 not only killed most people and filled most of the landscape
> >with giant spiders, snakes, gila monsters, etc, it caused persistent
> >super-fast turbulent winds that make flying impossibly dangerous.
> >
> *And* the high winds are full of boulders, and the boulderstream
> occasionally touches down, causing tremendous damage.
>
> They don't make aftermaths like that anymore.
There's trouble with the suspension of disbelief bit, though. I kept thinking,
"So how can they mine enough metals and minerals for their weapons, and make
enough weapons, _and_ grow enough food to feed their populace?"
Nah.
Nice tale, bad settings.
Cheers
Hetta
--
he...@saunalahti.fi Hetta Kress Helsinki, Finland
Best of RHOD - http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/rhod/main.html
Luke Webber
news:1belizs...@cs.nmsu.edu...
> Did Anthony get back into punning? The early Xanth were terrific,
> then after half a dozen or so he made a conscious decision to cut back
> on them (the author's note at the end of one of them talks about it);
> they got so boring I quit reading them over ten years ago. If the
> puns are back, I may start reading them again...
Ugh! I can't imagine ever wanting to subject yourself to such pathetic puns.
Cottage cheeses and brain corals? Virtually no setup, and the so-called
punchline totally lacking in punch. Awful!
If you really enjoy puns (you pervert, you), you should read Spider
Robinson's Callahan stories. They're pretty crappy in many ways, but the
puns are actually very good indeed. Almost bearable.
Luke
Nancy Lebovitz
Hetta <he...@saunalahti.fi> wrote:
>na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>> Captain Button <but...@io.com> wrote:
>>
>> >WW3 not only killed most people and filled most of the landscape
>> >with giant spiders, snakes, gila monsters, etc, it caused persistent
>> >super-fast turbulent winds that make flying impossibly dangerous.
>> >
>> *And* the high winds are full of boulders, and the boulderstream
>> occasionally touches down, causing tremendous damage.
>>
>> They don't make aftermaths like that anymore.
>
>There's trouble with the suspension of disbelief bit, though. I kept thinking,
>"So how can they mine enough metals and minerals for their weapons, and make
>enough weapons, _and_ grow enough food to feed their populace?"
>Nah.
>
>Nice tale, bad settings.
>
of boulders are *really* *cool*. I'd call it a great setting but horrendous
world-building.
Chris Camfield
wrote:
>"whoever" <well...@zdnetonebox.com> writes:
>>For example I remember laughing over the size of the rooms in the
>>"Illustrated Guide to Castle Amber".
>
>I confess I was mostly busy cringing over the drawings of the
>characters. Dierdre in particular stands out in my memory as "hit in
>the face with a shovel, repeatedly".
>
>The room descriptions and drawings were pretty dreadful, and I can't
>blame Zelazny for explosively redecorating in the next novel.
The book was ridiculously awful. Corwin looks like, I don't know,
Timothy Dalton or worse.
Aside from the trappings (a bit too medieval), I have a fondness for
the trump images in The Illustrated Roger Zelazny. You look at Oberon
and yes, that looks like someone who is the King of Amber.
>I don't accept anything in this book as canon.
Ditto.
Chris
Nancy Lebovitz
_Moonwise_ by Greer Gilman.
Luke Webber
news:Yd3h8.68154$nz4.6...@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com...
>
> On 5-Mar-2002, "Luke Webber" <lu...@webber.com.au> wrote:
>
> > If you really enjoy puns (you pervert, you), you should read Spider
> > Robinson's Callahan stories. They're pretty crappy in many ways, but the
> > puns are actually very good indeed. Almost bearable.
>
> best/worst things since sliced bread.
That, plus the obvious problem that he makes the setup too easy. Sure, some
of them are meandering and non-trivial, but they're almost always set up by
some character adopting a declamatory position and starting a supposed "true
story". Cheap, so cheap.
But the puns might still be worth the price, if you didn't have to put up
with the maudlin, cloying atmosphere of that thrice-damned pub. It's no
wonder so many people tried to demolish the thing, and a blessing that
somebody finally managed it. And a filthy bloody trick to rebuild it.
Luke
David Tate
As Inigo Montoya would say, "I do not think this word means what you
think it does...".
David Tate
Captain Button
> On 04 Mar 2002 23:09:13 -0800, J Greely <jgr...@corp.webtv.net>
> wrote:
>>"whoever" <well...@zdnetonebox.com> writes:
>>>For example I remember laughing over the size of the rooms in the
>>>"Illustrated Guide to Castle Amber".
>>
>>I confess I was mostly busy cringing over the drawings of the
>>characters. Dierdre in particular stands out in my memory as "hit in
>>the face with a shovel, repeatedly".
>>
>>The room descriptions and drawings were pretty dreadful, and I can't
>>blame Zelazny for explosively redecorating in the next novel.
> The book was ridiculously awful. Corwin looks like, I don't know,
> Timothy Dalton or worse.
I quite agree. Maybe it is just an issue of artisitic style but
I found that artist's portraits repulsive. And the the castle and
so forth was not well thougth out to put it mildly.
I don't have it to hand, but IIRC it has all of the city as being
halfway up Kolvir mountain. But Amber is a seaport city, wouldn't most
is not all of the city be down near tha water?
> Aside from the trappings (a bit too medieval), I have a fondness for
> the trump images in The Illustrated Roger Zelazny. You look at Oberon
> and yes, that looks like someone who is the King of Amber.
I liked this book also. And the portraits in the "Amber Diceless
Role-Playing" game and the "Shadow Knight" supplement are good,
IMHO. It doesn't try to show the Castle, it just has some
suggestions as to different ways it could be.
>>I don't accept anything in this book as canon.
> Ditto.
AOL
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
<rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 4 Mar 2002 17:06:12 GMT, Eric D. Berge <eric_berge @
>hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>>My first Zelazny. I bought it in the book department of Sears in Fox
>>Valley Mall in Illinois, probably the year it came out, with my
>>$2/weekly allowance; read it in one sitting and went and borrowed
>>against next week's money to get another book by Z. Possibly My Name
>>Is Legion.
>
>Damn you, you should have bought it at Waldenbooks in Fox Valley Mall.
>
>Because then you might have bought it from me!
>
>(Actually, I didn't start at Waldenbooks until, I think, late 1977, so
>maybe not!)
If it makes you feel any better, I bought _stacks_ of books in that
mall, in that time period. Probably from you.
Now that I think about it, that's probably where I bought "My Name Is
Legion".
David E. Siegel
> na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> > Captain Button <but...@io.com> wrote:
> >
> > >WW3 not only killed most people and filled most of the landscape
> > >with giant spiders, snakes, gila monsters, etc, it caused persistent
> > >super-fast turbulent winds that make flying impossibly dangerous.
> > >
> > *And* the high winds are full of boulders, and the boulderstream
> > occasionally touches down, causing tremendous damage.
> >
> > They don't make aftermaths like that anymore.
>
> There's trouble with the suspension of disbelief bit, though. I kept thinking,
> "So how can they mine enough metals and minerals for their weapons, and make
> enough weapons, _and_ grow enough food to feed their populace?"
> Nah.
>
> Nice tale, bad settings.
>
> Cheers
> Hetta
Well ISTR they were mostly living of the ruins, and perhaps were not
mining minerals or making new weapons? Perhaps even a fair part of
their food was old stored stuff? I definately got the impression that
the human species was doomed fairly soon whatever anyone did. In that
respect (but in no other), it reminded me a bit of Clement's _The
Nitrogen Fix_ in which there is a very different aftermath of a very
different disaster.
-DES
John DiFool
>
> > THE CHANGING LAND
> >
> > _The Changing Land_ (1981)
> >
> > Novel written as a sequel to the below, for no reason I can discern.
> > (Unless it was to be able to sell two books instead of one?). Memory
> > resolutely refuses to give me any details, but I do remember liking it a lot.
> >
> > _Dilvish, the Damned_ (1982)
> >
> > Fix-up of some very early swords & sorcery stories, with some new (new
> > being 1982) materials at the end. I remember that the hero has a horse
> > made out of black metal (possibly a demon?) and that these books were
> > fun, but that's about it.
> >
>
> I liked these, the but change in tone whre there was a several year
> gap in writing the Dilvish stories is all too evident. (It got far
> more cynical and modern in voice.) i would have liked to read the
> compelted work in the original tone. That might have ben a truew
> classic of fantasy, worthy of Dunsany or Tolkien, although not quite
> like either.
>
A pretty good fantasy turn-I like how it flips a number of EFP
conventions right on their collective head, especially in the 2nd
book (the first one listed as the stories in DtD were actually written
earlier). Nothing really deep but a rollicking good time if you
accept it on its own terms; someone upstream suggested that
Zelazny had a tendency to rewrite the same protagonist over and
over-I can see that but I still like his work because that is the
kind of hero I prefer-a wisecracking yet ultimately existentialist
loner with a hidden moral streak...
John DiFool
Arref
>
> > The second series doesn't come near the excellence of the first one,
> > by an order of magnitude, IMO. It does contain a lot of good _bits_:
> > some excellent scenery, interesting concepts, some decent
> > mysteries. But the bits are not combined particularly well-- not with
> > one another, and not with the first Amber series. This series bums me
> > out because it COULD have been good-- you can see the potential-- but
> > it just wasn't.
>
> And another point of complaint (coming from someone who hasn't
> bothered to read the second series in at least five years or so,
> probably longer) is that it doesn't so much seem to end, as merely
> stop. There are vast numbers of plot elements (or so I recall) that
> are just left hanging in space.
>
> I don't know if Zelazny ever intended to resolve some of this stuff,
> and if he did, I don't know if he had a plan or was going to wing it.
>
> If the lack of consistency in the first five frustrates, this
> maddens-- or it would, if I dwelt on it.
John,
Not that it really solves those dangling threads of plot, but he *did*
intend to carry on with the series. There are five short stories that
take the elements of the Merlin series further.
The Amber Mailing List FAQ has specific publish info for the shorts.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~eal/amber/FAQ.html
excerpt:
Roger Zelazny also wrote five Amber short stories:
"A Salesman's Tale", published in Amberzine #6. (Feb '94) (see G4
for
more about Amberzine). Rinaldo's POV.
"The Shrouding and the Guisel", published in the premiere issue of
"Realms of Fantasy" magazine (Oct '94), as well as Amberzine #8.
Merlin's POV.
"Coming to a Cord", published in Pirate Writings (Summer '95).
Frakir(!)'s POV.
"Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains", in the anthology "Wheel of
Fortune",
edited by Roger Zelazny, ISBN 0-380-77423-2. (Dec '96) Corwin's
POV.
"Hall of Mirrors", in the anthology "Castle Fantastic", edited by
John DeChancie and Martin H. Greenburg, ISBN 0-88677-686-4. (Mar
'96)
Corwin's POV.
Arref
Robert Carnegie
It sounds from this as though it's not the real Amber at all, but
one of its more distant Shadows? Perhaps...
Lee Ann Rucker
Webber <lu...@webber.com.au> wrote:
> But the puns might still be worth the price, if you didn't have to put up
> with the maudlin, cloying atmosphere of that thrice-damned pub. It's no
> wonder so many people tried to demolish the thing, and a blessing that
> somebody finally managed it. And a filthy bloody trick to rebuild it.
The health department closed it down, though.
J.B. Moreno
> And, with the exception of Spinrad, those authors do get a lot more
> discussion time on rasfw; look at how a "The Novels of" thread took to get
> to Zelazny. Even an occasional sf reader would be more likely to have heard
> of Ringworld or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Dune than This
> Immortal or Lord of Light.
>
> Of course, maybe my perception is totally wrong. I'm just saying how I see
> it.
I'd say you are, at least to an extent -- _Lord of Light_ is considered
a classic of the field, mentioned quite frequently even leaving aside
the fact that it comes up almost every time the "what's fantasy/sf"
discussion comes around.
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
William December Starr
acwh...@optonline.com said:
> _Dies Irae_ (1976, with Philip K. Dick)
>
> My memory is that is a not-very-successful miss-mosh of both
> writer's standard baggage, which makes me think it has amnesiac
> wisecracking gods on drugs and unsure about reality in it (which
> can't be right). But that's about all I do remember.
_Deus Irae_, actually, and nobody seems to be saying _anything_
about this one. Odd.
I remember starting it not long after its original publication, and
the only other thing I remember about it was that it was horribly,
unbearably awful -- I mean, The Worst, "handle only with tongs and
radiation-proof gloves" bad -- and I punted on it pretty quickly.
Oh, and a friend of mine said that he found it so terrible that he
threw his copy out the window of the family business on the fifth
floor of the Jeweler's Building in downtown Boston where, to his
delight, it was run over repeatedly. (This was back in the days
when Downtown Crossing had traffic; it's a pedestrian mall now and
therefore the book should by no means be defenestrated there today,
as it might hurt some innocent bystander. Besides the reader, I
mean.)
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Matthew Manley
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:a6c7np$gb9$1...@panix3.panix.com...
It does start out odd, but it does get better. I enjoyed it, but I doubt
anyone will say it is either Zelazny or Dick's best work. More than once it
leaves you wondering where that plot twist came from.
Scott Zrubek
"Matthew Manley" <mat...@prodigy.net> wrote:
That's one of the books that I have yet to try a second time. I will,
though, I will.
>
> >
> > -- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
> >
>
>
--
Scott Zrubek
Spring 2000 in Australia: http://www.itmm.com/australia
Zelazny & Amber: http://www.roger-zelazny.com
Simon van Dongen
>In article <3C819347...@optonline.com>,
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
>> (Since I want to end on a high note, I'm stopping there, ignoring the
>> three books with Sheckley -- silly fluff, but useful for killing time --
>> and the two books finished by Jane Lindskold after his death.)
>
>I thought _Lord Demon_ was a good, solid book, but not comparable to
>Zelazny at his best, so I was a touch disappointed by it. I *loved*
>_Donnerjack_ the first few times I read it, but I just reread it again
>recently and was not as enthralled as I was before. I'm not sure why.
Hmmmm. I find the two books Jane Lindskold finished closer to Zelazny
at his best than most of his own later efforts. Except 'Lonesome
October', of course.
--
Simon van Dongen <sg...@xs4all.nl> Rotterdam, The Netherlands
'Bear courteous greetings to the accomplished musician outside our
gate, [...] and convince him - by means of a heavily-weighted club
if necessary - that the situation he has taken up is quite unworthy
of his incomparable efforts.' -Bramah, 'Kai Lung's Golden Hours'
John S. Novak, III
Captain Button wrote:
> I don't have it to hand, but IIRC it has all of the city as being
> halfway up Kolvir mountain. But Amber is a seaport city, wouldn't most
> is not all of the city be down near tha water?
Basic problem with the Amberverse.
'Cause, see, Corwin is described as entering the city *after* climbing
all the way up the prodigious stairs of Kolvir, which from the text
description seem to go up for half a mile or so.
And yet, it's also a sea port.
Weird.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Ian A. York
John S. Novak, III <j...@cegt201.bradley.edu> wrote:
>
>'Cause, see, Corwin is described as entering the city *after* climbing
>all the way up the prodigious stairs of Kolvir, which from the text
>description seem to go up for half a mile or so.
>
>And yet, it's also a sea port.
Ever been to Vancouver, BC?
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
David Eppstein
j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) wrote:
> Basic problem with the Amberverse.
> 'Cause, see, Corwin is described as entering the city *after* climbing
> all the way up the prodigious stairs of Kolvir, which from the text
> description seem to go up for half a mile or so.
>
> And yet, it's also a sea port.
>
> Weird.
Maybe it sprawls down Kolvir to the sea in a different direction?
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
John S. Novak, III
>>'Cause, see, Corwin is described as entering the city *after* climbing
>>all the way up the prodigious stairs of Kolvir, which from the text
>>description seem to go up for half a mile or so.
>>And yet, it's also a sea port.
> Ever been to Vancouver, BC?
As it happens, no, nor have I ever seen a picture.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
John S. Novak, III
David Eppstein wrote:
>> 'Cause, see, Corwin is described as entering the city *after* climbing
>> all the way up the prodigious stairs of Kolvir, which from the text
>> description seem to go up for half a mile or so.
>> And yet, it's also a sea port.
> Maybe it sprawls down Kolvir to the sea in a different direction?
Difficult to maintain, given that Kolvir faces eastward against the
sea. If it sprawls in a different direction, it'd be hard to be a
port. (I have, for various reasons, spent way too much time thinking
about this.)
I imagine it currently as a city at the bottom, not literally at the
foot of Kolvir, but a bit southward on the beach, with a smaller Upper
City of the nobles and knights and all that at the top of the stairs,
along with the castle.
<Shrug>
It's Zelazny.
Luke Webber
news:eppstein-A7477C...@news.service.uci.edu...
> In article <a6mav8$fk6og$6...@ID-100778.news.dfncis.de>,
> j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) wrote:
>
> > Basic problem with the Amberverse.
> > 'Cause, see, Corwin is described as entering the city *after* climbing
> > all the way up the prodigious stairs of Kolvir, which from the text
> > description seem to go up for half a mile or so.
> >
> > And yet, it's also a sea port.
> >
> > Weird.
>
> Maybe it sprawls down Kolvir to the sea in a different direction?
More likely the port is effectively a separate small town. A bit like Athens
and Piraeus, or Perth and Fremantle..
Luke