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Lord of Light 100

Posted by timothy from the no-not-my-family dept.
Danny Yee wrote this review of a classic work (from way back in 1968) from one of the classic science fiction authors, Roger Zelazny. A third of a century later, Danny seems to think it holds up pretty well.

Lord of Light
author Roger Zelazny
pages 261
publisher Methuen
rating 10
reviewer Danny Yee
ISBN 0-413-58250-7
summary epic science fiction using Hindu and Buddhist themes

Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods, ruling over their descendants within a framework set up in imitation of Hinduism and ancient India. But even as the "Deicrat" consensus firms, there is dissent: Sam, one of the First, the crew of the original spaceship, remains an "Accelerationist," wanting to spread scientific knowledge to everyone. He starts a one-man crusade to bring down Heaven, a crusade that will lead him to the depths of Hellwell and to Nirvana and back.

Lord of Light is a lively novel with plenty of action -- duels, battles, confrontations, defiances, and repartee. Following the structure of Indian epics, elaborated sub-stories adorn a simple overall plot, with each chapter an episode in Sam's war against Heaven: his taking up arms against Heaven, his revival of Buddhism and the attempts to kill him, his loosing of the demons and possession by one of them, his capture and imprisonment in the Celestial City, his escape and defeat in a climactic battle, his return from Nirvana, and his final victory. (The first chapter is chronologically the second-last, which is a little confusing at first.) While few of the characters have much depth, they manage to be both human and (when they take on their Aspects and wield their Attributes) embodiments of fundamental forces. Sam himself is a crotchety old-timer and a con-man and a trickster - but also an embodiment of military prowess and defiance against odds.

The scientific scaffolding always remains visible -- Shiva's trident is a device, "reincarnation" is done through body farms and mind transfer machinery, the Christian heretic Nirriti uses guided missiles -- and Lord of Light is clearly science fiction rather than fantasy. This is affirmed explicitly within the story by Yama, engineer and god of Death, explaining that demons are "malefic, possessed of great powers, life span, and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape" - but not "supernatural".

"It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy - it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either."
Which is a sentiment to warm the hearts of hard science fiction devotees, even without the "technology good, theocracy bad" plot elements.

Despite the underlying epistemology, however, the dominant "mode" of Lord of Light is mythic rather than scientific. Zelazny does more than raid Hinduism and Buddhism for props - he ends up touching on the genuinely numinous, evoking through language and mood something of the power of real religion and myth. Buddhism, for example, is introduced by Sam as a counter to Hinduism, but his own beliefs are ambiguous and when one of his disciples (originally an assassin sent to kill him) attains enlightenment, it is obvious that Buddhism has taken on a life of its own. Lord of Light sports quotations from Indian scriptures at the beginning of each chapter and uses themes and language and ideas taken from them throughout. At one point Sam delivers a three page sermon, for example, and the penultimate paragraph of the novel is

"Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty."
This could easily have been tedious or trite but in Zelazny's hands it actually works. Myth and religion never actually break free from the scientific scaffolding, but they manage to make it irrelevant -- one could almost consider Lord of Light a demonstration that their symbolic power does not rest on their metaphysical claims.

Despite its serious approach to religion and its success as epic, Lord of Light is at the same time rather light-hearted, sometimes verging on the flippant.

"It was early morning. Near the pool of the purple lotus, in the Garden of Joys, at the foot of the statue of the blue goddess with the
veena, Brahma was located.

The girl who found him first thought him to be resting, for his eyes were still open. After a moment, though, she realized that he was not breathing; and his face, so contorted, underwent no changes of expression.

She trembled as she awaited the end of the universe. God being dead, she understood that this normally followed. But after a time she decided that the internal cohesiveness of things might serve to hold the universe together for another hour or so; and such being the case, she thought it advisable to bring the matter of the imminent Yuga to the attention of someone better suited to cope with it."

Zelazny also includes a few truly terrible puns.

Somehow all the disparate components of Lord of Light -- humour and epic, science and religion, action and philosophy -- come together in an successful novel. The result is my favourite Zelazny work and indeed one of my favourite science fiction novels of all time. Though it won the Hugo award in 1968, it has I think been relatively neglected; it can bear comparison with the much better known Dune (and I suspect Zelazny was inspired by Frank Herbert's use of Sufism in that work).

Purchase this book from FatBrain. Check out Danny Yee's other book reviews, especially the science fiction and India sections.
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Lord of Light

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  • ...Buddhist writings are approaching that same worldwide kind of influence, being that they haven't been around as long?

    Religion nit. Buddhism predates Christianity by centuries, although some of the earliest stuff in the Bible is about the same age. Many of the sects Westerners are familiar with like Zen[1] are quite recent, but the religion itself is very old.

    The Qu'ran has a better chance of "outinfluencing" the Bible over the long haul: Islam is growing much faster than Buddhism.

    [1] Although Zen, Nichiren, Tibetan and other well known sects are so far removed from Theravada tradition that calling them "Buddhism" is stretching it.

    Eric

  • I started reading the Amber novels when the first one appeared, and the complete set of ten (two sets of five is more accurate), accumulated over the years, still sits on my shelves. For a long time, I worried that Zelazny would die mid-way through one of the two sets of five. I know it's childish and petty of me, but I still resent him dying before he could write a third set with Corwin, Merlin, the GhostWheel and Corwin's pattern unraveling some intrigue...
  • I used to collect Zelanzy and Vance, back in my SMOF days.

    While Lord of Light was a refreshing retelling of many Indian themes, and a masterwork of its time, it probably affected far fewer people than Jack of Shadows did.

    Jack of Shadows gave a lot of young people a path that they could really follow, one connected more closely with the change in Western society from mythic fantasy and our belief in supernatural beings to the scientific, rules-based approach. Due to its influence, many of the gaming engines of both RPG and Computer games were created, and I've noticed most authors who came to prominence in the decade following invariably listed it amongst their favorite works.

    It may have been juvenile in its characterization, never one of Zelazny's strong parts, but it was earth shattering in its impact on a number of writers, similar to the influence of the new breed that Moorcock belonged to.

    However, in recent years we've seen a number of Western authors get in tune with Veddic writings and their own personal search for meaning has led them to rediscover Lord of Light. It's more of a reflection of their changing religious beliefs than the strength of the actual work, and thus a modern redefinition says that Lord of Light was the masterwork, when in actual impact any serious author of the time would have claimed Jack of Shadows as the true masterwork.

  • Also by Z: Creatures of Light and Darkness. Life, death, robots, sorcerers, and other heavy stuff in an Egyptian-mythological mode. Baaaaaad Aaaaaaaassssss!
  • . . . P.C. Hodgell's long-unavailable Godstalk, Dark of the Moon, and Seeker's Mask. The first two books have been recently republished in a combined volume called Dark of the Gods, and the third saw mass printing for the first time this year. They always seemed to me like a cross between Zelazny and fantasy author Robin McKinley, with a bit of Thieves' World and a tinge of the Cthulu mythoi for flavor.

    If you're also into roleplaying, the game Nobilis [rpg.net] might also interest you. It's hard to describe it in one sentence (which is why I linked to a review, instead), but it cites Zelazny, and particularly Lord of Light, as one of its influences. It's out of print and hard to find just at the moment, but an expanded second edition is coming out soon. It's a very sweet-looking game.

    And as always, Alexlit [alexlit.com]'s collaborative filtering recommendation system can look at the books you like and love, and suggest more you might enjoy.

    --

  • I read Coils when I was in college. A man who can talk to computers. For the late '70s that was an incredible book.
    I suggest you read Coils (co-wrote by Fred Saberhagen) and then all of the Amber series.
    Vertical
  • In the manner of Fahrenheit 451 this book is worth memorizing! If ever forced to commit a novel to memory for future generations, this would be my first choice. (Martian Chronicals is second and Dune is third)

    I read this novel at a tender age of 14 and always return to it when I need 'psychic renewal'. We even covered this book in a high school sci fi lit class.

    My favorite line is "The dawn emerged pink, like the newly bitten thigh of a young maiden".

  • Well. . . yes and no (Score:4)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @09:45AM (#104518)
    Part of the impact of reading the book for the first time is the slow realization that this is NOT a work of fantasy, but SF.

    RZ does a masterful job of messing with the readers head through much of the book, leaving one with a sense of satisfaction realization.

    This is the key, powerful subtlety of the work, and the mark of the true master story teller. You see, during much of the book the reader is ignorant and RZ gradualy opens their eyes and brings them to " Enlightenment." The readers own thought processes mirror the theme of the book. It's simply marvalous.

    I'm afraid that those who read your review before reading the book will be denied that experience, and it is that experience that makes this work not just one of the great works of SF, but one of the great works of literature.

    KFG
  • If you enjoy reading these types of works which weave religion and mythology into their stories, you might want to read some of Joseph Campbell's works, such as Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell was one of the world's foremost scholars on mythology before he died a few years ago and his books are definitely worth a read, even if they are a bit dry at times. In them he often talks about the re-use of old stories and myths in newer works, and I think this would certainly apply to LOL, along with other works, like Star Wars.
  • Seeger may in turn have been inspired by Woodie Guthrie [subvertise.org].

    Like so many of Zelazny's protagonists (Conrad from This Immortal and Sandow from Isle of the Dead being just two examples), Sam is very, very old at the time of the story, hinting that he may have been around long enough to actually know who Seeger was. No doubt Sam is to a certain extent Zelazny himself, projected into the future...as a vehicle for commenting on the present.

    One of those books you can talk about all night long. :)

  • Zelazny was known to work in some mysterious government job, i.e., in the intelligence community. A friend of mine, an ungrad at U. of C., once did some translating work for the NSA and was in contact with his supervisor only by mail. His name: R. Zelazny. BTW. Michael Dirda, the books editor at the W. Post writes about one of his prize books being a copy of some novel owned by Z, picked up in an area used-bookstore.
  • yup, one of my favorites too - I reread it every few years - it's one of those books that's a joy to read and can be reread again and again. Personally I found the Amber series started off OK but got repetive and confusing over time ("who are all these characters again?"). Just before he Zelazny was working on a book "Donnerjack" with Jane Lindskold - she finished it after he died - if you liked Lord of Light you'll probably like this one - it's basicly VR/sumerian-celtic mythology done in a similar sort fo style to LOL
  • Agreed. I like this book.

    When I first read it, in high school, I didn't like it! But it has improved with each re-reading, so I think the problem was with me and not with the book.

    steveha

  • Aren't the Nine Princes in Amber also akin to Greek Gods? In some ways. They were also much like (but not entirely parallel to)the Plantagenets -- the Norman-English ruling family that repeatedly made war upon each other over several centuries, from Henry II's war with some of his sons to the Wars of the Roses in which the two main branches exterminated each other.

  • Re:Zelazny ... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actaully, Zelazny did write some continuation to the Amber saga in 5 Ambert Short Stories.

    In that he wrote:
    1. the spikard rings are as ancient as pattern and lorgus
    2. the spikard rings are sentient
    3. Corwin's blade (grayswild) and Brand's blade (forgot the sword's name, was a while ago), is forged from a spikard ring
    4. there is a mirror world (mirros are all interconnected)
    5. there is a new powerfull magician who is using mirror world and tries to offset the balance (seems to go after Merlin the most)
    6. Dworkin and Suhoy (pattern and lorgus) are preparing for some another grand battle, and real Corwin will be tied into this

    There was not much mention of either Ghostwheel nor new Corwin's pattern in those 5 short stories.

    You can find the shorts floating online actually 3 or 4 of the short stories actually follow directly after the last Amber book (one or two are positioned between books of the second saga).

    too bad we will never know where all this leads to... When I found out about the short stories I said to myself ' great, mysteries will be resolved', but after reading them I was just angry that I ended up with more puzzles waiting to be solved.

    ps: sorry for previous post, I hate html default formatting... and I hate having account..
  • Jack of Shadows made nowhere near the impression on me that Lord of Light did. I wonder if it's a generational thing? That is, it sounds like you grew up with D&D style games, and some access to computers, while when I was in college (the first time) D&D was just getting started and the first hobbyist computer was still in the future.
  • I've read some of Campbell's fiction, never even knew about his non-fiction. Nor am I going to seek it out now. It is truly amazing how such a great editor could be such a bad writer!
  • The horrid "Damnation Alley" movie starred Jan Vincent as "Hell Tanner", perhaps the worst casting since one of the early Stephen King movies (try "Salems Lot" and (shudder) "Return To Salems Lot" to see REAL bad casting).
  • Charlemange was the first rich guy. Ever. Sure.
  • I like alot of Card's books... his three big series are what everyone seems to think about when it comes to him (ender's game, the one with the satelite orbiting the earth warping people's minds, and the alvin maker's series), but my two favorite books from him were "Lost Boys" which i actually somehow read for the first time on christmas eve (the book takes place over christmas) and it just freaked me out... and a short story he wrote, about a man who tried to kill this freakish baby looking thing in a toilet... and it starts following him, never stopping. To this day that story freaks me out.

    To get more to my point though... when i would read his earlier work, I would be drawn to these fantastic ethical delimmas he would come up with, which would make the book stay in your mind. I was never really impressed with alot of his imagery and writing style until his later works, he just reminds me a LOT of speilberg sometimes, knowing just how to tap you for an emotional response, while zelazny would remind of kubrik (much more analytical, and making you work for your supper right from the start).

  • I fondly recall reading the Amber chronicles, perhaps some of my most treasured books.

    I always felt badly, because I have some friends who really enjoy them... but i could never get into the Amber Chronicles. I liked some of the images he would pop into my head, but it always seemed so... hokey?

    Yes, I know they're old... and he often has a lot of "hokey" stuff in his books, stuff that just feels a little "off". But I just finished reading his last book, that he co-authored with someone else, "DonnerJack" and for some reason the hokey images worked (the mastadon sucking on power ups he picked from trees while riding on a giant copper war locomotive) and stuck in my head... the amber chronicles never did that for me.

    I always felt guilty reading them, like if someone came up and laughed that i was reading a SCI-FI book, i wouldnt be able to explain why it was a valuable piece of work (like donnerjack, or lord of light).
  • That said, Lord of Light can be taken as an exemplar of the sort of scifi that can hold up for a long time. The key is to avoid futurism;

    I really agree with this- I read somewhere that "fantasy is easy, because you can make the rules up as you go along. If you need the character to be able to wield fire, make up a ring that does that, etc... but science fiction is so much harder because you have to be able to explain why the hell your character can wield fire."

    All the sci fi I've read (probably not as much as 50% of the people here, but quite alot) that seemed dated was when the tech was the story (although it can still be a great read).

    When i've read things like "the final encyclopedia" I could tell that parts might seem dated, but at the whole it is just a damn good story, with rich protagonists and the tech was used as a device to put them into situations for great story telling about character that would be difficult to do in a normal setting.

    Ie, "the lord of the light" deals with issues of humanity, greed, power, hubris, and the sci fi aspect is there to just let that story happen, not take it over. The same with Dune.

  • "In the grand scheme of things, a third of century isn't that big of a deal."

    Genre counts. Science fiction, among other things, deals with futurism. And futurism is probably the worst-aging element imaginable. (That, not just in fiction but anywhere.) So for a science fiction work to hold up even 1/3 century is pretty amazing.

    That said, Lord of Light can be taken as an exemplar of the sort of scifi that can hold up for a long time. The key is to avoid futurism; rather, take the Asimovian truism to heart, and turn all your tech into magic, and simply remove any tech that may prove troublesome to predict. LoL's contemporary Dune is a great example. There are no serious machines to speak of because of a jihad (how handy!).

    Most of the scifi of the sixties and seventies, though, today strikes a reader as rather strange due to the lack of computers. The real future has a terrible way of being unpredictable.

  • I was originally pointed to this book by a friend of mine who is interested in eastern religions. Although I am more of a sci-fi guy I took it up. And it turned out to be one of the most amazing science fiction books i ever read.

    Not only is this a great science book it manages to be religious deep without sounding pretentious or overblown. Mahasamatman (sam) is a pacifist and bhuddist in a culture that is primarily fire and brimstone hinduist. He attempts to change the way the word works, spiritually as well as politically by assuming the role of the budda. Along the way he attracts many people who seem to him to be a lot more suited to the role of the budda, and eventually lives up to his own creation.

    This story is truly epic, it spans thousands of years and is a fast and lively read. I would recommend it to everyoneone.

    But on to the original reason for my post. If you have not read Zelazny before you should also read some of his other works. Most notibly the Amber series. If you can find 'The Great book of Amber' (a compilation of 10 of his books) you will be very lucky. I beleive that this is the best dimension-hopping sci-fi book ever created. Zelazny is a master of creating new and realistic worlds. And unlike some authors, like niven who I love but can recognize faults in, he can write excellent emotional characterizations as well.

    Amber is a series about a family of immortals who have the ability to move from dimension to dimension and modify reality around themselves. But mostly its about the tyranical machinations of the heroes immortal brothers who attempt to take over their homeland after their father disappears and eventually the entire universe. Just read it.

    Regards,
    R. George Davison

  • Quite simply the best... (Score:3)

    by Jeremy Allison - Sam ( 8157 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @07:47AM (#104535) Homepage
    Novel I've ever read. I keep having to buy new copies as I keep giving them away to friends :-).

    My favourite quote : "So that's what they're playing on their fascist banjo's these days..."

    after Yama lectures Sam on the "true" meaning of being a god to the populace :-).

    I wish the reviewer hadn't given away the fact that none of the "gods" are real, and that" Niriti the black" was the ships chaplain :-). I discovered these wonderful suprises myself whilst reading the book.

    I spent the first third of the book wondering what the hell was going on, then immediately had to re-read it once I'd finished it (after going "oh... that's what it all meant").

    A *perfect* book !

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • My favorite Zelazny work is the lesser known "A Night in the Lonesome October".

    It takes place in and around London in the late 1800s, and is narrated by Snuff, a huge sheepdog.

    Snuff's master is Jack, who has a way with knives.

    There is also the Count, who sleeps by day, the mad monk Rastov, the Great Detective and his assistant, a witch, a vicar, a druid, and a couple others. All will take part in the Game...

    This work I think best shows Zelazny's excellent and warped sense of humor.

    --Stafford
  • Zelazny often experimented with different ways of telling stories; it's one of the reasons his work is so interesting. And he almost always pulls it off, which makes it so amazing.

    "Creatures of Light and Darkness" is a really experimental work, where almost every chapter is told in a different style, from prose to poetry to screenplay. And, like I said, it mostly works.

    But my favorite little gem of his is "Doorways in the Sand". Every single chapter begins in medias res, in the middle of the action, and the rest of the chapter is devoted to explaining how our protagonist got into this situation and how he works to get out of it.

    Read it, if for no other reason than the first chapter, which is one of the funniest openings of any book, ever.

  • The thing I always liked about OSC is that his novels and stories have very strong morality (or sometimes a strong lack of morality) without forcing religion down your throat. Actually his novels have been critical of organized religion before.
  • And Buddhism, as in the book in question, was a "reformation" of Hinduism, whose *written* scriptures are about twice as old as the bible.

    I agree with the parent posters premise. Being released in '68 hardly makes LOL an ancient tome whose "modern" relevance is surprising, because the *bible* itself is only somewhat middle aged in the pantheon of the written word.

    KFG
  • The amber series was my first contact with Zelazny, and I must say that he is still my favourite fantasy author. He also has a wit and style that noone else have managed to match.

    Think about it: Which other author could pull thhe following off (not correctly quited, I dont have the books with me) without sounding ridiculous?

    "I shall not rest, until I have smitten thee!"
    "Hey, whats your bitch!?"

  • Jack of Shadows (Score:3)

    by Wreck ( 12457 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @07:55AM (#104541) Homepage
    My favorite Zelazny piece is still Jack of Shadows. Lord of Light is at heart a mythic restatement using fantasy dressed with elements of science fiction. That is to say that the "science" is not important, but rather, the fictional world is at the surface level scientific, while the plot and theme of the novel are (IIRC) purely uninterested in the mechanisms. (This allows Zelazny to concentrate on the human story of Sam, and to concentrate on reworking the myth to suit his authorial desires.)

    In Jack of Shadows the opposite is the case. On the surface the fictional world is purely fantasy, but the plot itself is scientific: the main character is concerned (among other things) with finding out the rules that his world obeys, to use them to gain power. In this sense it is truer to science fiction than Lord of Light is.

    It is also a very good read.

  • Havn't a clue, I've only got the first edition I bought when it came out. Maybe I'll need to pick up a newer version and compare them.

    If nothing else I get to reread the book a couple of times, hardly a punishment.

    KFG
  • My first brush with Zelazny was a short story of his I read in a 7th grade english class. I think it was Devil Car. Since then he has become one of my favorite authors of all time, and I've read anything of his I can lay my hands on.

    Lord of Light is one of his best novels, in my opinion. Many would say the Amber books were the pinnacle, and in the beginning they were, but I thought they became to formulaic later, epecially the Merlin series.

    Here is a fantastic bibliography of Zelazny work:

    http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb-bin/exact_author.cgi?R oger_Zelazny [sfsite.com]

    I heartily recommend his short stories. Zelazny can develop a marvelous character and setting in just a couple of paragraphs, making his short stories quick, delicious and to the point.

    I had the opportunity a number of years ago, to meet Zelazny while I was in Albuquerque, and I always regret not doing so at the time. Now that the supply of Zelazny has been cut off, I must spend my time hunting for that last elusive work that I haven't yet read, and obtaining it.

    A short list of my recommendations:
    • Frost and Fire
    • My Lady of the Diodes
    • And I only am escaped to tell thee
    • Unicorn Variations

    Now, if some Amberite can just tell who exactly Corwin's "Carmen" was, I'd be thrilled...
  • Yeah, the way he phrased that threw me too, and I nearly wrote a post similar to yours, but then I went and read it again.

    I think he got it right, but did a rather poor job of conveying his thought. It happens.

    KFG
  • take the Asimovian truism to heart, and turn all your tech into magic

    Sorry, dude, but that's Clarke, not Asimov. The full text (I believe it's Clarke's Third Law) is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

  • My favorite by Zelazny (Score:3)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @10:16AM (#104546) Homepage
    Lord of Light is my favorite single book by Zelazny. It's brilliant, nearly perfect.

    Personally, I call it "science fantasy". There is a lot of magical stuff going on, but a handwaving explanation of machines and psi powers doesn't really convince me to consider it hard science fiction. This isn't a problem, of course, and in fact is a large part of why the book aged gracefully. Describing in detail how the tech works is usually a recipe for looking quaint later. (Remember the Heinlein novel that described the "computer" that used elaborate 3-dimensional cams inside its mechanical guts? One of the characters was wishing he could put in some 4-dimensional cams to make it more powerful... overclocking, kinda sorta.)

    The book would have been awesome if it had just been a straightforward telling of that incredibly brilliant plot. But Zelazny had his own style of writing, and his use of language puts the frosting on top. Where other writers use words as bricks and mortar, to build the story, Zelazny also plays around artistically with the words themselves. At times this leads to pages that are poetically beautiful, at other times this means bad puns and outrageous dialog. In this book, the playing with words is not done too little or too much; it works.

    A must-read.

    steveha

  • Two different Campbells. The Campbell you're thinking of was John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding (now Analog) and author, commonly called the father of modern science fiction. He died in 1971. The Campbell we're talking about is an academician, a well-known scholar in comparative mythology, who died in 1987.
  • As I remember it (and I admit it's been a decade and a half since I read it), there are no native inhabitants on the planet... the inhabitants are the colonists and the rulers are the crew. The colonists were in cold storage or some such, and when the ship arrived the crew who ran the ship made themselves gods and the colonists (when they took them out of cold storage) their subjects.

    Speciesist. The Rakshasa, demons, "the Glow", and other energy beings were the native inhabitants of the planet. Physical body or no, they had feelings too, you know! The human colonists either destroyed them, imprisoned them, or drove them into hiding. That sounds pretty subjugated to me.

    The ordinary human inhabitants of the planet are referred to more than once as the descendents of the original colonists, whether or not they were the crew. We actually meet only two characters positively identified as crew members: the captain Jan Olvegg, and the chaplain Nirriti. The rest of the gods and "First" are simply those who arrived on the ship Star of India, whether crew or not, or their near descendents. Their descendents at greater remove were relegated to a more primitive existence outside the Celestial City, to which they can aspire by building up enough "karma." Cold storage is never mentioned.

    Not that I've reread it recently or anything....

  • I remember chatting in the #amber channel on efnet when the news of Roger's death broke. I cried real tears that I'd never sent that fan letter I always meant to. His books resonated so strongly with me in my formative years. I also hung out a bit in alt.books.roger-zelazny. It was a nearly universal experience, that everyone put this book down the first time they tried reading it. It was also a consensus that it is by far his greatest work. I think its the big flashback that throws most people. I missed it the first time through and was thoroughly befuddled.
  • For the record, the reason why each chapter in "Doorways in the Sand" ends in a cliff-hanger is partially because, in Dickens-like-fashion, Zelazny was writing the book in serial form for a magazine. Each month printed a new chapter, so he had to start each chapter with a little background, add some fast-paced action, and end on a cliff-hanger to get the reader's attention. Even with this "restriction", it's a very good book.
  • All of Zelazny's work is very good. Lord of Light is definitely the greatest. And I say that even though he started the book with a literary device that I have detested ever since first encountering it in James Joyce's most famous book: the first chapter that makes no sense until you've read the rest of the book. (Although with Joyce, it didn't necessarily make that much sense even then...) But when Zelazny wrote it, it worked well.

    That said, I have one quibble with the review:

    Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods, ruling over their descendants within a framework set up in imitation of Hinduism and ancient India.

    I interpreted things a little differently. WARNING: YET ANOTHER PLOT SPOILER COMING

    The colony ship carried a very technically competent crew of mostly American or NW European extraction (the chaplain was Christian with an anglo-saxon name, Captain Jan Olvegg was maybe Dutch, and Sam Kalkin certainly seems American), and a large cargo of Hindu Indians with apparently no technical knowledge at all. (This is the one way in which the book has aged -- while India still has plenty of ignorant farmers, they've got very good engineers and coders too and I can't imagine any Indian government loading up the most ignorant of their people on a ship crewed by foreigners.) The destination world turned out not to be completely uninhabited, although a survey from space wouldn't have spotted the inhabitants (beings of pure energy and sea-dwellers), and the crew had to lead in many wars to make the world safe for humans. In the process, they forgot to educate the farmers, or even many of their own children, and the new world settled into the old pattern of peasants, princes, warriors, and Brahmans. There was one big piece of technology made available early and to all who could afford the fees: "re-incarnation" through copying your mind into a tank-grown body. (If you want to populate a world fast, immortality helps. And this particular technology fits right into the Hindu religion -- although having your next life depend on cash rather than how well you've acted doesn't fit, Christians accept much bigger discrepancies.)

    The original crew meanwhile had not only kept their grip on technology, but been reincarnated so many times that their particular talents grew into god-like powers. They lived off by themselves in particularly favored real estate ("heaven" -- maybe like Boulder Colorado?), and argued about how to re-introduce the rest of the world to technology without gross disruptions. Of course, the longer they sat and argued, the larger the gap became -- but it did maintain their privileged condition. Sam Kalkin eventually became disgusted with that and set himself up as Prince Siddhartha in some remote area. The story actually begins (chapter 2?) with Sam coming into a town for a new body after a long absence and discovering that things have changed very much -- the First (and some favored descendants) are now officially gods, the body merchants are "the Lords of Karma", and you get karma by feeding coins into "prayer machines" which are slot machines with no payout. Obviously Accelerationism lost, and Accelerationists have the choice of persuading the "gods" to let them into the club, or being reincarnated as dogs, epileptics, or whatever. So Sam insults "Brahma", has his troops overrun the Temple of Karma, gets his new body (and one for Captain Jan Olvegg also), and hauls away some critical machinery. Only after thus using violence to provide for his own present and future reincarnation does he then become the apostle of a non-violent religion. 8-)

  • That line may well have been, ( and may well not have been), a subtle reference to Pete Seeger, who in early sixties created his "anti-fascist banjo."

    Inscribed on the head is the phrase:

    "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."

    As for your point about the review being a spoiler Danny has been taken to task over that elsewhere in the thread, and partially defended himself. You can see my post to him, but at the risk of being redundant I agree with you fully. The reader is intentionally left "ingnorant" and thus full of "illusion" about just what is going on in the story and Zalazny masterfully leads the reader to an "enlightenment experience." This enlightment experience is key to properly enjoying the book and, and is what elevates it from meerly a masterful piece of story telling into a masterful piece of literature.

    KFG
  • In this case not may have been, but absolutely was. Pete was traveling with Woody at the time he put the sign on his guitar, he liked the idea, but wanted to put forward a more positive message. Nobody ever accused Woody of moderation.

    Zalazny was quite familiar with Guthrie and Seeger and not a bad folk performer himself, which is what leads me to believe the quote in question was indeed a reference.

    I'm friends of friends of all three and have heard the odd story or two, not to mention the fact that all three have given us an extensive body of written work.

    KFG
  • I still have my Sci-Fi book club edition of this book. I recall reading it the first time and being thoroughly mystified about what was going on; the further I read the more confused I got. Zelaney's writing was so good, though, I still enjoyed the book. I reread it a few years later, and, having broadened my horizons a little, I realized what an excellent story this was.

    It's like an onion with layer after layer; every reading reveals a little more. In fact, I'm going to have to look for that thing now and give it another read.

    But, please, no Phil Dick. After half a dozen readings, I never did figure out The Three Stigmata of Palmer Aldritch. And I refuse to drop acid to get it to make sense!

  • "Lord of Light" is also a title of Ahura Mazda, the chief good-guy deity who, with his opponent Ahriman, comprised the deities of the Zoroastrian religion. Scouting for a putative film about that in Iran would make perect sense.

    Was Zelazny mentioned in this context?

  • Hey, my wife hit on me after I first gave her this book. ;)

  • Excellent! All we need now is Phil Dick (Score:4)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @06:35AM (#104557)
    Slashdot! First you run a story on Jack Vance, now Zelazny! If you do a review on Phil Dick's work you'll be batting a thousand.

    I read Lord of Light when I was 16, and I went out and bought everything else I could of his, especially the Courts of Chaos series. By coincidence I rered Dilvish The Damned the other week, it is still as good as I remembered it.

    Zelazny had (he died a couple of years ago as I recall) a unique tone to his work; he wasn't afraid to stitch in some poetic stuff amongst the swords and wizardry. Again like Vance he had an eye for sketching credible women in his stories.

    Pleasant to see him mentioned here where he might posthumously gain new readers!
  • I remember being awestruck by this book when I read it many years ago (though not 1968, I was a bit young then :-). I'm not sure if this was the first of the set, but Zelazny actually did a few of books based on various religious themes/styles. Eye of Cat covers American Indian themes (don't recall being able to get into it though), and Creatures of Light and Darkness uses egyptian mythology in a similar way and really rocked.
  • Orson Scott Card weaves religion into some of his works in a similar manner. He is a Mormon, which holds Jesus Christ to be the center of the universe, with an American spin to it.
  • I am really happy to see older books that I may have overlooked in the past get a review and perk my interest. What's even better is I can probably run across this one in a public library or used bookstore. Thanks /.

  • Hi.

    I began my notorious career in trolling because I thought it would be fun to get reactions out of the regular Slashdot readers. To doing so I've posted trick links to corpses, written paranoid, homoerotic articles on members of the Open Source community, and in general made a pest out of myself by violating others' good taste and personal value.

    Probably the most immediately disturbing of my habits, as I noted above, is posting articles that detail a false gay homosexual past for members of the software community, such as ESR, Rob Malda, Alan Cox, RMS, and others. Usually in these stories I create, the main character is a desperate homosexual who commits acts of sodomy left and right, without remorse for his actions. I make people who truly care seem like vice-ridden, unconsciousable monsters!

    This stuff just is not funny; in fact, my own son stumbled across my comments one day and has been leary of me ever since and won't call or visit. I'll never forgive myself for the chasm between us.

    I now realize how disgusting and even damaging unintentionally looking at a gutted human corpse or reading graphic descriptions about anal sex with men can be.

    It is my sincere hope that CmdrTaco, the other Slashdot staff, and you, the reader, can find it in your conscience to forgive me for the awful things I have done to the Slashdot community.

    Thank you.
  • I fondly recall reading the Amber chronicles, perhaps some of my most treasured books.

    If you've never read the amber series, and you need something to do this summer, there is a "Complete collection" that can be had fairly cheaply. It will keep you engrossed and interested for a very long time ...

  • I recently re-read Lord of Light for what must have been the fourth or fifth time. I also re-read his books Creatures of Light and Darkness, which features characters who take on the roles of Egyptian deities, and Isle of the Dead, wherein a human become a sort of avatar of an alien god. If you enjoyed any of these, check out the others too.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • So for a science fiction work to hold up even 1/3 century is pretty amazing.

    I've read it twice, a few years ago now. The second time I read it, it wasn't quite how I remembered it. One friend told me that Z rewote the second edition to better match the more recent research into the original myths. Anybody know any more?

    Measure Twice.

  • Spoilers in the review... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe par for the course, but you probably should warn folks -- the book starts out with the reader very much in the dark.
  • Machine enabled Telepathy..clikidty clack ticker tock, an excellent book. But like several have pointed out The Nine Princes in Amber is in my opinion his best work and well worth reading. RZ has MANY books worth reading.
  • My introduction was A Rose for Ecclesiastes, and I bought the next thing I saw with his name on it -- which happened to be Nine Princes in Amber. I've since read through almost everything he wrote.

    One of my favorites (as should be obvious from my nom de Slashdot) is Creatures of Light and Darkness, which is fairly weird but has awesome imagery.

    TSG

  • Coils was co-written with Fred Saberhagen. It's a good 'un.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • The reviewer wrote:
    Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods

    As I remember it (and I admit it's been a decade and a half since I read it), there are no native inhabitants on the planet... the inhabitants are the colonists and the rulers are the crew. The colonists were in cold storage or some such, and when the ship arrived the crew who ran the ship made themselves gods and the colonists (when they took them out of cold storage) their subjects.

    This makes sense when you think about it... The crew are awake when they arrive at the new start system, and therefor have complete power over the frozen colonists. Earth and authority are beyond reach (or if I recall correctly, maybe even destroyed) and so there is no one to prevent the crew from doing as they like. It's actually a pretty likely scensario!

    --jürgen
  • yep, just read isle of the dead last week. i've been reading zelazny off and on for a few years now, and pretty much everything i've read has been great.
  • I found Donnerjack to be one of my favorite Zelazny novels, after the Amber series. He tackles some pretty crazy technological material, and also displays some of the humor from A Night in the Lonesome October. I definitely recommend picking up this novel, and giving it a good read.

  • Re:hmmm.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What about the Bible? It's remained the same for century upon century and still is a 'best seller'.
    not really, the bible was edited by the Council of Nicea to get rid of all the inconvenient bits that didn't support the zealotry of its editors. Since then the bible has been edited, redited, mistranslated, and generally manipulated to suit the interests of demagogues over the ages, mostly to protect to corporate interests of the world's first franchise: "Holy Roman Emperor".

    Unless you are reading the unexpurgated source material in greek or hebrew, you have a dumbed and watered down copy, which is usually too much even for the tiny brains of most american xtians. eventually, the catholic church cut out all the confusing stuff with all the hierarchies of angels and demons and streamlined the bad guys and good guys to a few notable main characters in order to prevent the mass confusion resulting from tiny-brained worshippers trying to comprehend a complex and philosophical theological system. Try reading a few history books and you might begin to get an idea.

    Even more copies of it exist in more languages than all the books you name above, put together
    more unsubstantiated babble. I am well aware that many xtian propaganda groups try to fob off meaningless "factoids" like this one to influence the gullable. Now, which books have outsold the bible?

    here comes my favorite:

    Now that's longevity no matter how you look at it, even if you don't believe it to be valid as the source for an entire religion. I wonder if the Khoran or Buddhist writings are approaching that same worldwide kind of influence, being that they haven't been around as long?

    With this kind of ignorance, you could only be an American. Buddism and Hinduism (Hinduism being one of the oldest religions in the world, Judaism doesn't even come close unless you count the years when they were ripping off the Sumerians) outdate the fledgeling xtianity by quite a bit. The Koran is younger than xtianity, but the book itself is older than the version most commonly misquoted from by semi-literate bible thumpers, and far less adulterated from the original source.

    Of course, all of this is immaterial. why don't you take your mindless yankee bible-prattling to some other forum where it might be more likely to influence the gullable: like alt.fan.richard-nixon?

  • Bear in mind that, as Danny pointed out, part of the experiment in this case was to write it in the style of the ancient Indian texts, thus its episodic nature, with each episode told in a somewhat different style and voice.

    In that frame of reference the experiment becomes rather natural.

    KFG

  • I found the three-page sermon delivered by Sam to be very compelling. It actually makes a strong foundation for a value system that does not conflict with rational thought. I know because I read it as an young teen, and promptly adopted it.

    "Down with Ugliness!"

  • It was really cool to find out that Mudge's favorite book is Jack of Shadows; now it seems Jeremy Allison's fave may be Lord of Light!

    Two of my all-time favorites, also, incidentally. I recommend Creatures of Light and Darkness to those unfazed by the mythic imagery of LOL, and This Immortal (aka Call Me Conrad) to those who found the philosophy a bit daunting.

    Jeremy, I agree that the review is a spoiler. I liked being suprised by Nirriti's motives.

    --Charlie

    "Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."
    --Marduk, in Zelazny's "Creatures of Light and Darkness"

  • Coils was also the first place I read anything like the visual representation of "cyberspace" so common in todays scifi. The only difference was, if I remember aright, the protagonist jacked in through some psychic power or other, rather than via a mechanical device.
  • The colony ship carried a very technically competent crew of mostly American or NW European extraction (the chaplain was Christian with an anglo-saxon name, Captain Jan Olvegg was maybe Dutch, and Sam Kalkin certainly seems American), and a large cargo of Hindu Indians with apparently no technical knowledge at all.

    There is absolutely nothing in the book to support this interpretation. Sam states explicitly when speaking to Kali about midway through the book that the current low-tech human inhabitants of the planet are the descendants of themselves, by which he meant the original colonists, or the "First" as they were called. Those of the First who were still living, if not gods of the Celestial City, were "prince[s] among men," as Hawkana declares. The racial stock of the humans on the planet would thus have been a blend of the races represented by the First. What this was exactly is impossible to determine since we aren't generally told the gods' original names and their current bodies have been sujbected to extensive genetic engineering. The names we are told are "Jan Olvegg" (Norweigian, not Dutch), "Renfrew" (no given surname, but Germanic I think), "Sam" (actually Hebrew in origin, so he could be from almost anywhere, by intent I imagine) and a run-of-the mill (to American ears) female name that escapes me for the moment, but who was incarnated as Brahma at the beginning of the story. This is pretty inconclusive about the what the racial mix of the First was supposed to have been. It's hinted that the use of Hinduism was inspired by the name of their ship, The Star of India.

    And where the hell are you getting "Sam Kalkin" from? Kalkin was the name of Sam's Aspect, borrowed from Hinduism like the others. In this case it's the name of a future avatar of Vishnu. His real name was Sam; we aren't told his original surname.

    It ought to have been clear to the attentive reader that most of the gods were not all that technically competent. The vast majority of their most effective weaponry was designed and built by a single individual, Yama, and his loss crippled them. The City was designed by Vishnu, and Sam seems to have been a fairly competent engineer in his day. Other than that, the gods didn't look to be any more competent than the average inhabitants of any technically advanced culture who are well able to operate the sophisticated machinery around them but who have only the dimmest understanding of how it all works. How many Americans are able to repair their own TVs? Microwave ovens? Automobiles? Toasters?

  • Was cowritten by Zelazny and Dick. Its also the only Zelazny book I was unable to get through. For some reason, it was too bleak and depressing for me, but one of these days...
  • Couldn't resist posting, given my nick. Needless to say, Nine Princes in Amber is one of my favorite books. If you liked LOL, you might also like The Mask of Loki, by Zelazny and Thomas T. Thomas. My Name is Legion is another excellent Zelazny book.
  • The science/fantasy division is hardly revealed to the user gradually. Right at the beginning of the novel we have a pray-machine offering "high frequency" prayers - and that kind of balance is maintained throughout.

    And I think it's a good enough book that it's not dependent on a particular intellectual progression by the reader. Different people will find different things in it (I started off thinking of it as "SF" - which is what my copy is labelled as - and ended up reading it more as an epic). So I'm not convinced that telling the reader it's an sf/fantasy science/religion mix up front is going to spoil their enjoyment much. I was more worried about the minor plot spoilers.

    Danny.

  • Campbell was one of the world's foremost scholars on mythology before he died a few years ago and his books are definitely worth a read, even if they are a bit dry at times. In them he often talks about the re-use of old stories and myths in newer works, and I think this would certainly apply to LOL, along with other works, like Star Wars.

    It had better apply to Star Wars. Lucas used Campbell's work as the outlines of a paint-by-number set to construct the story. That's probably why it resonates so well with so many people despite it's numerous -- and to an objective observer, possibly fatal -- flaws. The motifs are ones we are accustomed to see as the framework of a great myth, so we're inclined to see Star Wars that way even though it is patently not such.

    I can't say I was ever a great admirer of Campbell. I never got through any of his books because they annoyed me so much. He seemed so focused on what he saw as the basic equivalence of mythic motifs across cultures that he often seemed to miss the things that made the legends essentially unique. It's undeniably true that there seems to be a limited palette of mythic motifs (and Campbell was hardly the first to notice this either; check out Jung sometime) but IMO each culture used that palette to paint very different pictures.

    No doubt this was a reflection of Campbell's own personality more than anything else. I watched a couple of the Bill Moyers interviews. I have never in my life seen someone so acquainted with so many stories who nevertheless seemed to miss the point of so many of them, and then to suck the soul out of them in the telling. He managed to make every single story he related boring as hell, and nothing the producers of the show did by way of illustration or background music could make them interesting again.

    ObZelazny: Yes, Lord of Light was one of his best.

  • A bit late for the Slashdot story, but I've added a "mild spoilers" warning to the version on my own site [dannyreviews.com]. And I made some other minor changes following comments here and my email.

    When one's read a novel so often, it's easy not to think about people reading it for the first time!

    Danny.

  • I've liked the book since first reading it quite awhile ago (1973 I think)...but I've always wondered what Hindus thought of it.

    At least in the early '60's, there weren't enough Odinists in America to mount a really big protest against "Thor" comics---although the "National Lampoon" did a great job on the subject with their "Son o' God Comics".

  • His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.

    This is one of my favorite science fiction books. Zelazny always married the mythic to the scientific. Aren't the Nine Princes in Amber also akin to Greek Gods? Pantheistic religions have always believed that earth is a reflection of heaven.

    Lord of the Light is his most extended fugue on that theme. The book isn't very politically correct, though. The bad guys are Hindu gods and a follower of Christianity. The hero follows the path of Buddha on purely pragmatic grounds.
  • If you do a review on Phil Dick's work you'll be batting a thousand.

    Is this just TOO much to ask ?

    I also read Lord of Light at about 16. This book has to be in the top 10 "required" science fiction books (along with Foundation, Stranger in a Strange Land, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, ... ). The portrayal in this book of the inherent conflicts in religions set me on a lifelong study of religion. The quotations in the book of Hindu and Buddhist religious texts were my first exposure to Eastern religions, after reading it, i ran out and bought a copy of Dhammapada. If you haven't read it, read it; regardless of what religious point of view you come from, it will change the way you view religion. I can't say enough good about this book ... Oh just get a copy and read it.

    -- Rich
  • Good review. I'm just about to bounce down to Waterstone's bookshop to order a copy. It seems just my can of cola.
  • During the BBS years my handle was Dworkin. Very few grasped the reference. :( My current nick is still an extension of Dworkin, the mad hunchback.
    I had named my machines ghostwheel, logrus and pattern, and for a year used Dilvish in muds and d&d sessions. For a great read, check out _Unicorn Variations_ if you haven't already.
    HIs characterization was supreme. If any characters could be alive, his would. But what I most enjoyed were the incredible worlds he would create. I've never had a problem separating fiction from reality, but his worlds were so real that I often imagined myself cursing Stryggaldwir. In some passages he'd seem an Impressionist, in others Cubist...
  • I've re-read lol every few years since I first encountered it in the early eighties, and the themes wriggle around on me each time. The bit that struck me when I read it last year, perhaps because I read Age of Spiritual Machines about the same time, was the denial of reincarnation for political/religious beliefs.

    Sure, there is the religious/secular, technologist/antitechnology, Buddhist/Hindu, stuff going on, (and check out Creatures of Light and Darkness, for his treatment of the Egyptian pantheon), but the aspect that I find chilling and relevant these days, and why I still buy copies of this book for friends, is the exploration of what it means to have a winner-take-all society (like ours), when winning means god-like powers and eternal life while losing means a life of hardship followed by ashes to ashes.

    Incidentally, iBooks (http://www.ibooksinc.com/) is in the process of reprinting all (they say) of Zelazny's books, in nice-looking trade editions. Lord of Light is out yet, though.
  • this book being reviewed. For a long time I've held it as the very best sci fi book I've ever come across; I can't even count the number of times i've read it over the years (another that comes close is "Omnivore" by Piers Anthony, another oldie).
    Yama is one of the coolest characters, along with the demon lord (Taraka, was it?). The overall characteristics/personality/beliefs of the demons was really interesting. But Zelazny's integration of Sci Fi and religion was the real masterpiece of this novel (yes, I suppose I'm repeating a lot from the review, but whatever...).
    Zelazny was such a unique and versatile author; I've never read anything by him that wasn't likeable. The whole Amber series (how many were there?) was just fantastic.
    If you like Sci Fi and haven't read Zelazny (especially this book), then you are missing out on something great.

    amosley
  • Hey no problem, next week I'm gonna review The Old Testament. You know, the one with the angry vengefull God. Check it out!
  • A third of a century later, Danny seems to think it holds up pretty well.

    Yeah, you know; every now and then and we have a book that remains popular...Shakespeare, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, Homer's The Odyssey (not not Duff Beer), go even earlier, to the first known story, the Epic of Gilgamesh [evansville.edu].

    In the grand scheme of things, a third of century isn't that big of a deal.
  • Ahh yes, the diceless RPG. Before finding it, my group had tried several non-AD&D (yuck) games (including weird ones like Lace and Steel, and Monoxide Amazon). We had gotten rather bored with most of them.

    Then Amber came along. Origionally there were only three of our 8-person group who had any clue about Amber, one was our GM. We came up with an epic game that ran for the entire school semester, and it was by far the best game I've ever been a part of.

    Ahh memories....

    Great review too, LoL has been on my (way too long) reading list for a while now, ever since I read the Chronicles of Amber and Jack of Shadows. I'll bump it up a bit now :)

    - kazin
  • You know.. I didnt look at the information on who the post was written buy and I saw all the smileys and your name popped into my head about the time I finished your post.

    Jeremy (Allen)

  • My copy of the paperback (one of those black covered ones they did all his titles in) had several pages at the beginning of the book misordered, which made an already confusing beginning even more so. The next time I read it a few years later it was a different edition that had the correct page ordering.
    I would also recommend "Creatures of Light and Darrkness" which uses the Egyptian deities (among others) as its starting point.
  • That's cool... This book is #24 on the [geocities.com]
    Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List.
  • I'm going to preface this by saying that Mr. Card and I have met on several occasions, having friends in common and whatnot (and these friends knowing that I'm such a huge sci-fi reader). I'm a Zen Buddhist... he and I have had some amazing discussions about religion over beers at a local bar before.

    The point? That I believe that this is really his view on religion; that it is an allegorical history more than anything else; an integral part of society. And I think he would agree with the statement that all religion has some truth in it.

    All that said, he is a devout mormon! I have a lot of respect for someone who can reconcile a fundamentalist religion with these kinds of beliefs; not that I think they're contradictory, just that it takes an amazing amount of will and conviction to continue to hold beliefs like this in that kind of an environment.

  • Zelazny had a on going series of novel with the ever present theme of man developing or imbued with supernatural powers via technology.

    This is his best work in this vein, although Creatures of Light And Darkness is also excellent.

    It is certainly entertaining with the thousand and one details that come to mind to make a coherent world.

    I recall with amusement the prayo-mats (think arcade like devices with flashing lights, etc. that send your prayers to heaven for a few coins), and someone filling a bunch of them with slugs.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • The native inhabitants play an enormous part, actually -- they're the demons (Taraka and his ilk) that Sam originally helped bind in Hellwell.

    Zelazny is one of my absolute favorite authors; I was quite upset to hear the news of his death. (Ironic, in a way, since nearly all of his protagonists are immortal or at the very least extremely long-lived. I've occasionally wondered whether the screenwriters for Highlander (there was only one!) were influenced by his stuff.)

    I'd have a hard time picking a favorite RZ book. They're all excellent. Something else to check out (next time you're in the used bookstore, they're damned hard to find new) are the collections of shorter works, such as The Last Defender of Camelot, Unicorn Variations, The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth, , etc..

  • A nit:

    As I remember it (and I admit it's been a decade and a half since I read it), there are no native inhabitants on the planet...

    The original inhabitants of the planet play a significant role. They most definitely are not human, though.

    OBPlug: Brust is the literary heir to Zelazny.

    Kind Regards,

  • Once, I was reading this book in the bar (only place you could smoke) at an airport. As I was leaving, the waitress gave me a napkin with something written on it. I was a bit groggy, so I was out the door and down the hall before I read it and understood what it said.

    "I too am an enlightened individual. Nice brand of smokes!"

    I had no idea what she was talking about for the longest time. Then I searched around on Amazon and found that there is a book called "Lords of Light" by Deepak Chopra (who is a "new age" writer). Apparently, she had misread the title. :)
  • Since when is the late 60's the classic period of science fiction? I would call the classic science fiction era the 30's - early 50's. This Zelazny hobbit wannabe stuff has it's merit, I suppose, but classic science fiction? Heinlein is rolling over in his grave.
  • Yeah, I think I knew there was something not quite right about the first sentence, but I couldn't work out how to reword it. I thought about s/native/alien/, but the Rakshasa et al. are hardly alien to the world! Maybe "non-human"...

    Danny.

  • Zelazny's "mysterious" government job? Zelazny worked as a claims representative for Social Security. While I admit that I'm not sure what a claims representative does, I'm betting it doesn't involve epsionage.
  • (The first chapter is chronologically the second-last, which is a little confusing at first.)

    This same structure is found in Homer's Odysee. IIRC from freshman literature in high school (a disturbing number of years ago), the term for this was in media res or "in the middle" (someting like that anyway).

    Rather effective for a heroic work as you see the penultimate part of the plot and the character's struggles to reach that point, with the final segment providing the climactic resolution / bad-guy-smiting. This yields a sense of inevitability to the character's actions, as they are drawn to their fate in the future. This "charmed life" atmosphere is of course fitting for a heroic character/story arc. So the use here could be a deliberate nod to Homer.

    OTOH, this device is used everywhere in literature (and things derived from literature such as TV shows and movies, eg. how many times has a Star Trek episode gone like this: two minutes of stuff from the 'end' of that show's plot, intro/credits, back to the beginning...). Consider that this meme has had a few millenia to propogate through the writing culture and it's no wonder that this device is so frequently employed. So maybe RZ wasn't thinking in particular about Homer at the time.


    --
    News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
  • Corwin's blade is Greyswandir, Brand's Werewindle

    William

    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use

  • Re:Spoilers in the review... (Score:3)

    by danny ( 2658 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @07:10AM (#104606) Homepage
    You're right, maybe I should have added a warning about spoilers (the rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator added one). It's not the kind of book where they do much damage, but even so.

    Danny (who feels he should post if only to stop himself using some spare mod points on this story)

  • "Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants --"

    From what I can remember, ALL the human inhabitants were descended from the spaceship crew

    The planets original inhabitants were the demons (in the form of "fire elementals")

    Correct me if I'm wrong, it's 30 years since I read the book
  • What about the Bible? It's remained the same for century upon century and still is a 'best seller'. Even more copies of it exist in more languages than all the books you name above, put together! Now that's longevity no matter how you look at it, even if you don't believe it to be valid as the source for an entire religion. I wonder if the Khoran or Buddhist writings are approaching that same worldwide kind of influence, being that they haven't been around as long?
  • Nice to get a review of a less well known Zelazny. Unlike most fantasy authors, Zelazny actually knows how to write. If you liked Lord of Light, you might want to hunt down a copy of Zelazny's "Isle of the Dead" which may or may not still be in print. It has a similar framework and has one of the most interesting alien races from a psychological standpoint. The book is not perfect, but parts of it are pure poetry (as is Lord of Light - especially Sam's confrontation with his ex-girlfriend). It also discusses futuristic shaping of solar systems (and terraforming) which is no dissimilar to what has recently been discussed to save the Earth from frying in the heat of a more energetic sun.
  • I've never read anything other than the Chronicles of Amber - well worth purchasing in the omnibus form since it comprised of 10 books originally. Lots of great ideas, nasty characters with plenty of backstabbing. Zelanzy is the master of the retrofitted plot - things are rarely as they seem. The Amber series is fantasy fiction as it should be, not the tired swords and sorcery dribble that has come from every post tolkien wannabe with a fetish for elves, dwarves and orcs.

    Slightly off topic, Zelazny/RPG fans should definitely check out the Amber Diceless Roleplaying game published by Phase Press (dunno if it is still in print though) - revolutionised our RPG group's perspective of gaming. Why be a 1st level fighter on a dungeon crawl or a poe-faced vampire pretending to be human when you can instead be a demi-god who can reshape the fundamental nature of reality.

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