glassner (02/20/83)
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Too bad the stories Farmer writes under his own name aren't any better. Farmer is one of my least liked authors. The "climax" of his Riverworld series was particularly bad. I often wonder what would have happened if the Riverworld idea had been handled by someone like Clavell, Pynchon, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, I agree to a point. More specifically, though, the ending to Venus is about the worst ending of any book I have read in recent memory. When I read those final lines I really felt like the writer had just gotten tired of writing the story and stopped - sort of like, "...and then I woke up." Concerning Riverworld, I really like the first book in the series (To Your Scattered Bodies Go), but I really think it got much worse as it went on. The Magic Labyrinth (sp?) also struck me as a cop-out ... I should have guessed both would be written by the same guy. Totally aside from that subject, one of my favourite writers (from whom I have not seen anything in a while) is Roger Zelazny. He has a short story (I think in one of the Alpha anthologies (Bob Silverberg, ed?)) about the future of the Earth in which a robot attempts to really understand its former masters (all the people are dead in a nuclear war) by creating a new person ... very stylish, very clean, and very enjoyable. -Andrew decvax!cwruecmp!glassner
jss (02/22/83)
Let's not forget, when we talk about Venus-o-t-H-S, that it was "written" by Kilgore Trout, famous as one of the world's worst science-fiction writers. Has anyone read "Coils" by Zelazny and Saberhagen? I would say it was written by Z with plotting by S. The leading character is Z's usual persona. judith !decvax!brunix!jss
CAD:kalash (02/22/83)
#R:cwruecmp:-49700:ucbcad:17600008:000:160 ucbcad!kalash Feb 21 10:13:00 1983 The Zelazny short story you refer to is called "For a Breath I Tarry", and can be found in the short story collection "The Last Defender of Camelot". Joe
leichter (02/23/83)
Also recent by Zelazny - along with Fred Saberhagen - is Coils - a nice variation on some "worldnet" ideas, and well worth reading. My favorite Zelazny's include a short story "A Rose For Ecclesiastes", and a couple of novels, including particularly "To Die In Italbar" (which is actually in a common universe with a book written much earlier, and I think out of print until recently - "The Isle of the Dead", which isn't quite as good. I wish he'd write more books in this universe...) I also recommend the double Today We Choose Faces/Bridge of Ashes. I was unimpressed with Roadmarks, and I've never really been excited about his Amber stuff or other stuff in a similar vein (like Jack of Shadows). -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter
berry (02/24/83)
#R:cwruecmp:-49700:zinfandel:10800007:000:257 zinfandel!berry Feb 22 10:51:00 1983 If you have not seen anything from Roger Zelazny in a while, you have not been paying attention. How about 'Eye of Cat' and 'Coils', both available from the SF Book Club? Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (decvax!sytek!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900
mclure (03/09/83)
#R:cwruecmp:-49700:sri-unix:13200012:000:451 sri-unix!mclure Feb 21 00:05:00 1983 I also enjoy Zelazny. His AMBER series is well-known but declines in quality considerably. I found the first three books readable but the last two not so hot. His shorts in THE DOORS OF HIS FACE, THE LAMPS OF HIS MOUTH are pretty good. THIS IMMORTAL and LORD OF LIGHT are interesting. ROADMARKS is a well-worn path. There are a lot of others. He's prolific but maintains a reasonable quality; I believe Zelazny's latest is EYE OF CAT. Stuart
mclure (03/09/83)
#R:cwruecmp:-49700:sri-unix:13200013:000:7978
sri-unix!mclure Feb 21 16:18:00 1983
Since there's been a lot of interest in this list about Zelazny lately,
here's the entry from Nicholl's (THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA), an
excellent reference book on SF.
ZELAZNY, ROGER (1937- ).
American writer, born in Ohio, with MA from Columbia University
in 1962. With Samuel R. Delany and Harlan Ellison he is a lead-
ing and representative figure of the American "new wave" sf that
urged a shift of emphasis from the external world of the hard
sciences to the internal worlds explorable through disciplines
like psychology (mostly Jungian), sociology, linguistics and the
like. From 1962 to '69, RZ was employed by the Social Security
Administration in Cleveland, Ohio, and Baltimore, Maryland. From
1969 he has been a full-time writer, and from 1975 he has lived
in New Mexico. The external events of his life do not, there-
fore, show the restlessness characteristic of the other members
of the new-wave triad.
RZ's first published story was "Passion Play" (1962) in AMZ, and
for several years he was reasonably prolific in shorter forms,
for a time using the pseudonym Harrison Denmark when stories
piled up in AMZ and Fantastic; but more and more he concentrated
on novels. The magazine titles of his first two books are as
well known as their book titles, and the awards given them attach
to the magazine titles. THIS IMMORTAL (1965 FSF as "...And Call
me Conrad"; exp 1966) won the 1966 Hugo award for best novel; THE
DREAM MASTER (1965 AMZ as "He Who Shapes"; exp 1966) won the 1965
Nebula for best novella. Both books are remarkably intense, nar-
ratively experimental, explosively conceived new-wave efforts,
and with RZ's concurrent Nebula for best novelette for "The Doors
of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth" (1965) decisively signaled
the arrival on the sf scene of new styles and new concerns. All
are substantial works. THIS IMMORTAL features a favourite RZ
protagonist, the extremely long-lived or immortal (or somehow in-
vulnerable) human who lives a kinetically active but highly cul-
tured life, spending much of his time manipulating and protecting
his fellow Homo sapiens, in this case against a complex alien
threat. "The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth" depicts
with an unparalleled literate intensity the hunting of a huge
sea-monster. In some ways THE DREAM MASTER is the most interest-
ing of the three. Throughout his career RZ has had a tendency to
side, perhaps a little too openly, with his complexly gifted,
vain, dominating protagonists, and his treatment of neuropartici-
pant psychiatrist Charles Render seems no different. Render is
eminent in his new field of psychiatry, which involves his actu-
ally entering and controlling (for therapeutic reasons) the sub-
conscious experiences of his patients, and he does so superbly;
nor does his involvement witha congenitally blind woman, and his
attempt to give her dreams a visual content, appear to provide an
exception. But gradually his own deficiencies as a person, his
patient's character, and dovetailing crises in his own life subt-
ly and terrifyingly trap him in a highly plausible psychic cul-
de-sac. All the sf apparatus of the story, and its sometimes
overly baroque manner, are integrated into RZ's unveiling of the
nature of a character under stress. This reversal of emphasis
lies at the heard of what the new wave was all about.
RZ's two story collections are drawn mainly from these scintil-
lating early years. They are FOUR FOR TOMORROW (coll. 1967; vt
A ROSE FOR ECCLESIASTES UK) and THE DOORS OF HIS FACE, THE LAMPS
OF HIS MOUTH, AND OTHER STORIES (coll. 1971). His next novel,
LORD OF LIGHT (1967), which won a 1968 Hugo, is also richly con-
ceived and plotted dealing expansively with a group of men on
another planet who, aided by superior technology, impersonate
(and in a sense become) the Hindu pantheon of gods. However,
from ISLE OF THE DEAD (1969) and CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
(1969), some falling-off became evident; RZ's storylines became
simpler, somewhat coarser, darker. DAMNATION ALLEY (1969) is
perhaps the most savage of all, depicting a post-holocaust
motorcycle-treak across a vicious America; it has been filmed
with many changes as DAMNATION ALLEY (1977).
In 1970 RZ began his continuing "Amber" series - NINE PRINCES IN
AMBER (1970), THE GUNS OF AVALON (1972), SIGN OF THE UNICORN
(1975) and THE HAND OF OBERON (1976), with, it is understood, one
further volume projected, [final book in the quintology is THE
COURTS OF CHAOS], but no end as yet in sight - to a somewhat
mixed reaction. The land of Amber (like C.S> Lewis's Narnia) ex-
ists on a plane of greater fundamental reality than Earth, and
provides normal reality with its ontological base; unlike Narnia,
however, Amber (to date) is ruled by a cabal of squabbling si-
blings, whose quasi-Olympian feudings have provided a great deal
of complicated plotting; the climax (which must be forthcoming)
may resolve the somewhat aimless though often locally interesting
impression the sequence gives so far. More recently, RZ has made
something of a comeback. Though his collaboration with Phillip
K. Dick, DEUS IRAE (1976) finds him labouring somewhat in the
unstable Dick world. MY NAME IS LEGION (coll. of linked stories
1976), about another behind-the-scenes manipulator who has ob-
tained his invisibility from the omnipresent computers, contains
the novella "Home is the Hangman" (1975), winner of both a Hugo
and a Nebula, in which the protagonist is hired to protect guilty
programmers from the robot-cum-computer with a brain of human
complexity that has apparently returned to Earth to kill them
off. This turns out not to be the case, very interestingly.
DOORWAYS IN THE SAND (1976) is also a relatively successful sto-
ry, close to space opera in theme but expertly handled.
Through his career RZ has suffered the inevitable price of writ-
ing at the peak of intensity and conviction - that of slackening
into routine when his obsessive concerns have been given defini-
tive form. With RZ this happened early. His arduous investiga-
tions of "inner space", into the ways human beings respond to
deep psychic challenges, seemed to have exhausted him for several
years, a period during which he sustained his career by writing
competent but somewhat distant novels. Without the burning con-
viction of the first novels, his secret-guardian protagonists be-
gan to seem rather self-indulgent. But, as he is still a rela-
tively young writer, the recent signs of creative renewal are
good news indeed for the genre he has so invigorated.
-- John Clute, 1979
Other works: JACK OF SHADOWS (1971); TODAY WE CHOOSE FACES
(1973); TO DIE IN ITALBAR (1973), featuring the protagonist of
ISLE OF THE DEAD; BRIDGE OF ASHES (1976). As editor: NEBULA
AWARD STORIES THREE (anth. 1968) .
About the author: "Faust & Archimedes" in THE JEWEL-HINGED JAW:
NOTES ON THE LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE FICTION (coll. 1977) by Samuel
R. Delany; "Introduction" by Ormond Seavey to the 1976 Gregg
Press printing of THE DREAM MASTER; "Zelazny's DAMNATION ALLEY:
Hell noh" by Carl B. Yoke in Extrapolation (Vol. 15 no 1). Dec
1973
Several recent works: DILVISH THE DAMNED, COILS (with F. Sa-
berhagen), THE CHANGING LAND, THE CHANGLING, EYE OF CAT.