Skip to main content

The Best of Roger Zelazny (SF) - Roger Zelazny ****

If there was an A to Z of SF greats, while even younger science fiction readers could probably come up with A for Asimov, far fewer are likely to make Z for Zelazny - which is a shame. Unusually, Zelazny spanned science fiction and fantasy - although a touch pulpy, his Princes in Amber series of books were a genuinely different fantasy series - but he was also, without doubt one of the leading SF writers of the twentieth century.

Here we get collected what should be some of his greatest short stories and novellas, starting with the classic and poignant A Rose for Ecclesiastes. For some reason in the intro we are told about a story that's not included that should be - 24 Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai - why isn't it here, then? In some ways, the experience of reading the book was a disappointment, because I think I prefer the lowbrow version of Zelazny's writing in those Amber books, rather than his new wave, more intellectual work, which mostly features here.

I did enjoy Home is the Hangman where a mysterious character tries to intercept a killer AI robot with unexpected consequences (doubly interesting as AI is so much more a real thing now than it was when Zelazny wrote this), while LOKI 7281 is a fun little in-joke story where well-known (named) SF writers' work is being rewritten without their knowledge by AI PCs. He Who Shapes is also impressive: a long story about an analyst who Inception-like goes into and shapes people's dreams, facing the ultimate challenge of a blind subject. On the other hand, even the intro has a bit of a downer on Damnation Alley, which I agree hasn't aged well, and typically of new wave SF, too many of the shorts were miserable: for example, Corrida featuring a kind of human bullfight and the tedious Permafrost. 

Tellingly, three of the best here were really fantasy. One of his best-known is The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, which has a touch of Melville and Hemingway about it, but despite the pretentious title is an engaging tale of a sea monster hunt on a fantasy, inhabitable version of Venus. And A Rose for Ecclesiastes is set on a fantasy inhabitable Mars, where Martians are biologically human. The short story chosen to close the book is another of Zelazny's best, a pure fantasy about three figures from Arthurian legend in the present day: Last Defender of Camelot.

In his intellectual mode, Zelazny has a tendency to go into lectures, or characters' thought processes, where he can drop names of intellectuals of the period and what they thought - for me this too doesn't age well. The book hasn't put me off Zelazny. I still love Roadmarks, Doorways in the Sand, A Night in the Lonesome October, the Amber books (which I must re-read) and more. And there's some really good material in here. But it wasn't quite as enjoyable an experience as I expected it to be.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more