Creatures of Light and Darkness
Chris Miler
years since I first encountered it. I had nearly forgotten it entirely.
I have to say, "Whoa."
What did I just witness?
A talented authors LSD trip committed to writing?
An act of genius?
I still haven't decided, and perhaps that is what the author intended.
Was this meant to be a vision of the distant future, or of the distant
Past? Perhaps it was the author's intention that this be left unclear?
I'll say it again.
"Whoa."
Since this is an older work (c) 1969, I'm sure many others here have read
it.
Comments?? Opinions, anyone??
Chris
Andrew Plotkin
> I just reread Roger Zelazny's _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ after many
> years since I first encountered it. I had nearly forgotten it entirely.
>
> I have to say, "Whoa."
>
> What did I just witness?
Zelazny had a tremendous number of ideas, and put them all down how
the hell he felt like it. I don't think it works as a novel, but I
appreciate the ballsiness.
I re-read it a couple of months ago. (To compare with _Lord of Light_,
which is a far better story, but less like sticking your head in a Van
de Graf generator.) It's hard for me to retain the book as more than
disconnected scenes. Man, that fugue duel, though.
> Was this meant to be a vision of the distant future, or of the distant
> Past? Perhaps it was the author's intention that this be left unclear?
Ambiguous, but it's consistent with a future where some of humanity
went strongly post-human. I can't come up with an equally sensible
interpretation that fits in the past.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Wayne Throop
: Was this meant to be a vision of the distant future, or of the distant
: Past? Perhaps it was the author's intention that this be left unclear?
: Since this is an older work (c) 1969, I'm sure many others here have
: read it. Comments?? Opinions, anyone??
It's one of my favorite Zelazys. Not totally clear to me why,
despite some introspection on this point. But a stab at why would
be because I appreciate the mix of the surreal and the very mundane
that it encompases, and in that sense, is typical of Zelazny.
Also contains some of my favorite Long Strings of Capitalized Words
Used as Names, such as The Hammer that Smashes Suns, and the Thing that
Cries Out in the Night. Plus nifty characters like Thoth, Typon, Horus,
Vramin, Madrak, and (inexplicably) the Steel General. Which, by the way,
seems to be a clear indication that it's far future.
But in a larger sense, for CoLaD, I follow Bugs Bunny's advice:
"I don't ask questions... I just have *fun*!"
I mean, how can you not love a scene were a guy walks up to a
massive fortification, asks admittance, is told condescendingly
to knock the door down if he wants in.... and so he does.
It's just *fun*.
Now if you want something that is ambiguous and *really* surreal, try
Jack of Shadows... which of course contains another of my favorite
Long Phrase Names: The Machine that Thinks Like a Man, only Faster.
Which of-also-course, it isn't, and it's only the superstitious
nightsiders that think it is, but it's a neat name.
Long String Names was a sort of fad for a while in the 60s.
So it goes.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
William December Starr
thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) said:
> Now if you want something that is ambiguous and *really* surreal,
> try Jack of Shadows... which of course contains another of my
> favorite Long Phrase Names: The Machine that Thinks Like a Man,
> only Faster. Which of-also-course, it isn't, and it's only the
> superstitious nightsiders that think it is, but it's a neat name.
Wasn't The Colonel Who Never Died in that one too?
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Wayne Throop
:: Jack of Shadows... which of course contains another of my favorite
:: Long Phrase Names: The Machine that Thinks Like a Man, only Faster.
:: Which of-also-course, it isn't, and it's only the superstitious
:: nightsiders that think it is, but it's a neat name.
: wds...@panix.com (William December Starr)
: Wasn't The Colonel Who Never Died in that one too?
Jryy, ol gur raq ur jnf "Gur Pbybary Jub Bayl Qvrq Bapr" vvep,
ohg lrf, gung'f gur bar, nyfb vvep. Gur nqivpr nobhg fyvggvat
bar'f jevfgf fgvpxf jvgu zr n ovg.
Abj jung jbhyq *V* qb jvgu gur Xrl gung jnf Ybfg?
Cbjre pbeehcgf, naq nofbyhgr cbjre znxrf Wnpx n qhyy obl.
Be fbzrguvat.
Chris Dollin
V guvax lbh'yy svaq gung'f "Gur Pbybary Jub Jnf Arire Fynva Ol Nabgure".
Two enormously fun bizarre romps - I wish he'd written more like them.
--
Chris "electric hedgehog" Dollin
C FAQs at: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/by-newsgroup/comp/comp.lang.c.html
C welcome: http://www.angelfire.com/ms3/bchambless0/welcome_to_clc.html
Robert Carnegie
206>, Chris Miler <cmile...@nospam.earthlink.net> writes
I suppose that with time travel around, the distant past can
also be the distant future, or the future can influence the past.
It wouldn't be the first fiction in which the life of the universe
is cyclic.
But despite coincidences of names, I don't think that this is our
actual past. It's a future where people have taken on some
names and attributes similar to ancient Egyptian gods - although
they don't seem to be conscious of that, and in fact maybe they
don't really have these names or anything that we'd recognise as
names, they're just given them as tags for our benefit, since I don't
recall that the action of the story corresponds at all closely to
Egyptian religion, although the atmosphere of it does, somewhat -
unlike _Lord of Light_, where characters are intentionally
mimicking gods and other figures out of the religions of Earth.
In particular, the characters do tend to have the single-minded
sense of purpose or personal motivation that you get with
characters in myths - although they do not necessarily fail to be
thoughtful, well-educated, polite. But they will pursue their end
and cannot be diverted from it. This business of having a
conversation with one or more personalities designed by ancient
storytellers to be allegorical representations of forces of nature -
it's always odd, and Zelazny does it so well.
Now, it's a universe where an organisation with superior
technology (including extraordinary powers of life and death) has
decided to use it to impose order on human civilisation - a
totalitarian system, of a sort - and the story concerns the
development of resistance to that control.
Also, the self-styled altruists who set the system up have been
overthrown in the past, by people who just wanted the power. But
isn't that always the way it goes? If you create the machinery of
oppression, but then you avoid, out of forebearance, using it to
oppress, someone else will take over the controls and do it
anyway. The only safe way is not to create that machinery in the
first place, which is why the Oppression of Terrorists legislation
so sucks; the guy who says he's defending freedom while he's
taking it away from people, is not defending freedom.
Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
--
I am fully aware I may regret this in the morning.
sunkinguk
I managed to track down a copy recently and I have to say I found
it a great read, but I'm not sure why. If pushed I'd have to say
it's because of the weird/cool concepts : Temporal fugue, The
Hammer That Smashes Suns, The Prince Who Was a Thousand,
the norns, the various agnostic prayers, etc.
sunkinguk
how...@brazee.net
novel.
Richard Horton
I found it close to unreadable. Frankly, I didn't get it. The fault
may well lie with me, mind you.
--
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)
steve miller
>I just reread Roger Zelazny's _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ after many
>years since I first encountered it. I had nearly forgotten it entirely.
>
>I have to say, "Whoa."
>
>What did I just witness?
>
>A talented authors LSD trip committed to writing?
>
>An act of genius?
>
>I still haven't decided, and perhaps that is what the author intended.
>
>Was this meant to be a vision of the distant future, or of the distant
>Past? Perhaps it was the author's intention that this be left unclear?
You might be interested to know that...
Creatures was written for relaxation and not originally intended for
publication, per se. There's likely a *bunch* of stuff in there that
could be read as a roman a clef about the Social Security
Administration at Woodlawn, Maryland at the time it was written -- if
we only knew the actors.
You'll note that it deals on mulitple levels with one of Roger's
favorite thematic elements, the conflict between hero as person and
hero as myth. See Damnation Alley, Jack of Shadows, Isle of the Dead
and etc...
Steve
Balance of Trade
Meet Sharon Lee & Steve Miller at Noreascon
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kinzel/
--
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
<rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 03:05:56 GMT, Chris Miler
><cmile...@nospam.earthlink.net> wrote:
>>Comments?? Opinions, anyone??
>
>I found it close to unreadable. Frankly, I didn't get it. The fault
>may well lie with me, mind you.
Really? Wow. For me it was the novel that turned me on to Zelazny
when I was 15-ish.
Karl Hiller
> Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Speaking of Whoa, I have just become aware that "sheol" appears as "furby"
in ROT13.
The implications are staggering.
Wayne Throop
: I have just become aware that "sheol" appears as "furby" in ROT13.
: The implications are staggering.
According to a Media Director at MIT in 1999, the processing power
in a FURBY toy exceeded the processing power in the first Lunar
Module to land on the moon.
The official language of FURBY was Furbish.
FURBY was once banned from the Pentagon
because it was said it could "learn".
--- www.furby.com
Help, help, I'm being perplexed.
Come and see the surrealism inherrent in the system.
Bill Miller
called "The Coming of the Steel General". And, I think most of the
background is given in the long blank-verse poem "The Thing that Cries
in the Night."
I think it's a superb book and there are scenes & phrases that have
stayed with me always.
...A eunuch priest of the highest caste sets tapers before a pair of old
shoes...
--
Bill Miller
"Remember Thor Five!"
http://home.houston.rr.com/wbmiller3
Richard Horton
Maybe it would have been different if I had read it earlier, but I
guess I was 42 or so when I read it.
anxious triffid
news:10gvjdd...@corp.supernews.com:
That is truly disturbing - but can we truly say we are surprised at
your finding evidence of a connection between Furbies and the Hell planet?
Pardoz
<chee...@starswarmnews.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 03:05:56 GMT, Chris Miler
><cmile...@nospam.earthlink.net> wrotD:
>>I just reread Roger Zelazny's _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ after many
>>years since I first encountered it. I had nearly forgotten it entirely.
> You might be interested to know that...
>
> Creatures was written for relaxation and not originally intended for
> publication, per se.
If my poor overworked neuron is still doing its job, didn't the
original submission of the manuscript involve a bet with...the neuron claims
it was either Sturgeon or Spinrad, but it's been unreliable lately; probably
needs a tune-up...that Zelazny had written a novel so weird as to be
completely unpublishable?
Chris Miller
> Here, Chris Miler <cmile...@nospam.earthlink.net> wrote:
> > I just reread Roger Zelazny's _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ after many
> > years since I first encountered it. I had nearly forgotten it entirely.
> >
> > I have to say, "Whoa."
> >
> > What did I just witness?
>
> Zelazny had a tremendous number of ideas, and put them all down how
> the hell he felt like it. I don't think it works as a novel, but I
> appreciate the ballsiness.
>
> I re-read it a couple of months ago. (To compare with _Lord of Light_,
> which is a far better story, but less like sticking your head in a Van
> de Graf generator.) It's hard for me to retain the book as more than
> disconnected scenes. Man, that fugue duel, though.
Agree. _Lord of Light_ was a much better book to read as far a the
story line went. Zelazny developed the plot and characters in a more
conventional manner, drew me in deeper and deeper...
And then hit me with that 'fuvg uvg gur sna' line. Anyone who has read
it should know which one I refer to. I (briefly) felt like throwing
it across the room at the time, and then nearly bust a gut laughing.
Possibly one of the most memorable single lines I've read in any book.
>
> > Was this meant to be a vision of the distant future, or of the distant
> > Past? Perhaps it was the author's intention that this be left unclear?
>
> Ambiguous, but it's consistent with a future where some of humanity
> went strongly post-human. I can't come up with an equally sensible
> interpretation that fits in the past.
**Possible minor spoilers follow***
This is what I thought throughout most of the book, up until the very
end. At the very end, there was the imagery of three kings bearing
gifts to the son of (a) god, which I thought hinted at a cyclical
nature of time/history. The old gods go, the new gods appear. Also,
just before this, Set, Typhon, & Co. had just succeeded in finally
banishing from the universe the regime that preceeded them. Wash,
rinse, repeat.
how...@brazee.net
On 5-Aug-2004, cmill...@earthlink.net (Chris Miller) wrote:
> And then hit me with that 'fuvg uvg gur sna' line. Anyone who has read
> it should know which one I refer to. I (briefly) felt like throwing
> it across the room at the time, and then nearly bust a gut laughing.
> Possibly one of the most memorable single lines I've read in any book.
I loved the whole book except for one stupid pun.
Shane Paul
great little in-jokes, and some truly mind-bending sequences, the duel in
temporal fugue being the standout scene.
This book, Jack of Shadows, and Lord of Light are my all-time favorite
reads by RZ. All three of these would make great films. The Amber series
started out great, but wore on after about the fourth book. Still better
than 90% of everthing else that was available at the time.
On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 03:05:56 GMT, Chris Miler
<cmile...@nospam.earthlink.net> wrote:
!I just reread Roger Zelazny's _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ after many
!years since I first encountered it. I had nearly forgotten it entirely.
!
!I have to say, "Whoa."
!
!What did I just witness?
!
!A talented authors LSD trip committed to writing?
!
!An act of genius?
!
!I still haven't decided, and perhaps that is what the author intended.
!
!Was this meant to be a vision of the distant future, or of the distant
!Past? Perhaps it was the author's intention that this be left unclear?
!
!I'll say it again.
!
!"Whoa."
!
!Since this is an older work (c) 1969, I'm sure many others here have read
!it.
!
!Comments?? Opinions, anyone??
!
!
!Chris
!
Luke Webber
> One of my favorites. Tight, elemental prose with cinematic imagery. Lots of
> great little in-jokes, and some truly mind-bending sequences, the duel in
> temporal fugue being the standout scene.
>
> This book, Jack of Shadows, and Lord of Light are my all-time favorite
> reads by RZ. All three of these would make great films. The Amber series
> started out great, but wore on after about the fourth book. Still better
> than 90% of everthing else that was available at the time.
Jack of Shadows? For me, that didn't really ring the bell. This Immortal
was much more my speed. Plus the Francis Sandow books.
Luke
stePH
Zelazny had something of a habit of doing that.
"Hold that ty'iga!" -- from one in the second series of Amber novels
stePH
--
"A lion will exert himself to the utmost, even when entering the tiger's
den to throw baby rabbits off a cliff!" -- Moroboshi Ataru
Nancy Lebovitz
My unsupported guess is that Zelazny had a bunch of cool ideas and
fragments in the back of a filing cabinet, and he combined them to
make _Creatures of Light and Darkness_.
--
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
"I went to Iraq and all I got was this lousy gas price"
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
Carl Burke
> In article <Xns9539EAF87E469cm...@207.69.154.206>,
> Chris Miler <cmile...@nospam.earthlink.net> wrote:
> >I just reread Roger Zelazny's _Creatures of Light and Darkness_ after many
> >years since I first encountered it. I had nearly forgotten it entirely.
> >Comments?? Opinions, anyone??
>
> My unsupported guess is that Zelazny had a bunch of cool ideas and
> fragments in the back of a filing cabinet, and he combined them to
> make _Creatures of Light and Darkness_.
I'd go along with that interpretation, but I'd also suggest he was
trying to do for Egyptian mythology what he did for Hindu mythology
in Lord of Light, just not quite as successfully.
--
Carl Burke
cbu...@mitre.org
Andrew Plotkin
Only superficially the same thing.
_Lord of Light_ was about people masquerading as gods. Zelazny came at
the idea from a bunch of angles -- most of which involved godhood not
turning out the way the people expected -- but it was firmly rooted in
the people and their stories.
In _COLAD_, the gods really are mythic figures. They have human-level
conversations sometimes, but you can't see through to people
underneath. At least, I couldn't. The protagonist lacks a past. The
Steel General sort of has a human past, but it's too big to make sense
of.
Brion K. Lienhart
news:10915...@sheol.org...
> : Karl Hiller <kren...@ySaPhAoMo.com>
> : I have just become aware that "sheol" appears as "furby" in ROT13.
> : The implications are staggering.
>
> According to a Media Director at MIT in 1999, the processing power
> in a FURBY toy exceeded the processing power in the first Lunar
> Module to land on the moon.
>
> The official language of FURBY was Furbish.
>
> FURBY was once banned from the Pentagon
> because it was said it could "learn".
Actually, they were banned because they would listen, then repeat what was
said later at random times. Something you don't really want in a classified
area.
Wayne Throop
:: because it was said it could "learn". ''
: "Brion K. Lienhart" <bri...@comcast.net>
: Actually, they were banned because they would listen, then repeat what
: was said later at random times. Something you don't really want in a
: classified area.
Hmmm. "Listen, then repeat what was said later".
Sounds like what passes for learning-with-scare-quotes these days, to me.