A few here and there will know who I am talking about if I drop the name of Roger Zelazny. Maybe if I allude to Amber and Chaos, or to shadow-shifting, or perhaps to Damnation Alley someone's ears will perk up; but none too often. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that there are Zelazny fans at Daily Kos, perhaps a lot. I have read diarying and commenting on some pretty excellent works around here. It was Dom9000 that spurred this one on; with his diary Friday Books That Changed My Life; Childhood's End By Arthur C. Clarke. That one changed my life too, and I really enjoyed both reading that diary and participating in the conversation. Of course I love Art, as science fiction goes he's, like, the boss. I mean the guy thought up the communications satellite, how epic is that? But truth be told I've always thought he was a little stuffy, his characters IMO were rather wooden (except for a few notables, Dave Bowman ftw!). And his prose, well, let's just say I don't think Art ever killed anybody with a joke. Enter Roger Zelazny; and lose your mind a little, maybe you'll get yours made into a margarita like I did; but you'll love the ride.
On the whole I feel Roger's astonishing imagination has for the greater part gone unnoticed. This is why I'm throwing this out here, hopefully others will pick up and experience some of Roger's crazy universes; I certainly found them excellent.
It's a fact, this guy could spin one helluva yarn.
His collection The Last Defender of Camelot includes a few gems; the title story, For a Breath I Tarry (up there with the finest works of fiction I've ever read, bar none), Damnation Alley, but I was pretty bummed when they left out The Game of Blood and Dust (sorry I couldn't find a better link) from the 2001 reprint; and I have found the rest of his works, those I have read, to be bearable at the very least, while strange. Lord of Light, Doorways in the Sand, the collection The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth including A Rose for Ecclesiastes; all very very good. But the real gems are his Amber stories. I first picked up my dad's copy of Nine Princes in Amber when I was about 10; and it grabbed the point of view I had had on my world, threw it in a blender, hit stir and left it there until this day. Most definetely it changed my life, and I've never looked at the universe the same way since. The man wrote about completely fantastical places and situations in a prosy and casual tone that makes the pages just flip themselves; while developing an entourage of starkly drawn and down-to-earth characters to make Tolkien envious. I finished the first half of the 10-book series The Chronicles of Amber, of which Nine Princes is the first book; putting down the 5th book, The Courts of Chaos, probably two weeks or so later. Maybe 900 pages all told. I inhaled it. It blew me away, and it still does. Whenever I consider that I myself might someday figure out how to shadow-shift, or that I might receive a Trump call, or that I might get to see Tir 'na nogth, or the Pattern, or the Abyss on the edge of Chaos; or if I simply allow myself to believe that the universe could possibly be as metaphysically thick as the one Roger envisioned in these stories; I take a moment and with awe and love think on the Imagination that penned them. It's a pretty strange read, pretty far out there, but despite the just-this-side-of-unbelievable things going on around them and to them and by them the characters remain utterly vivid and natural. What's more, in my opinion, being a long-time fan of all "out there" writing, be it science-fiction or fantasy or both or other; if it depicts a strange world peopled by real people, I love it, and the stranger the better. This one is pretty strange. And yet the people are about as real as it gets.
The premise of the Amber stories is this, in part (mild setting spoilers here):
The universe we know is one of an infinity of semi-parallel universes that make up existence. These universes, or "shadows", each obey distinctly different natural and metaphysical laws, ranging from very slightly different from ours to extremely different from ours. These shadows are cast, so to speak, by either of the two poles of existence, the two "real" worlds; Amber and Chaos. These two represent reason and emotion; Apollo and Dionysus; order and entropy. The shadows closer to Amber, of which the Shadow Earth is one; obey more familiar laws; while those approaching Chaos get increasingly more and more, well, chaotic. Like huge boulders the size of houses which rampage around over flat lands, seemingly flowing like water. Or like a world where the sun blazes across the sky with a crown atop it, complete with glinting jewels. It's crazy stuff; but really really cool too; beyond my imagination, that's for sure. Roger may have had a small bit of trouble juggling his various characters' personalities (later on in the series that was), and he may have dropped a consistency or two here and there (who can blame the guy, this story is absolutely sprawling), but his imagination was absolutely top-flight. I highly recommend all of his works, and most especially The Chronicles of Amber, to anyone who is into stories that take your world and flip it upside-down and then somehow get you to connect with it anyway.
The following is a small taste, from The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10:
I am part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometime fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. I destroy Melkins when I find them, and on that Great Day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever.... Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.
Damn, gives me a shiver every time.