In Praise of Roger Zelazny
Posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 in: Writing
I’m sometimes asked who my favourite writers are. And, while the list is long and extensive, Roger Zelazny has never yet not passed my lips. I am more than happy to be a one-woman fan club for Zelazny, and sing his praises in all things. Although dead now (most of my favourite writers are dead, damnit), he turned out a mass of work, ranging from extremely geeky science fiction of the guns-ships-aliens-in-space kind through to fantastical monsters and epic battles of the swords-and-cloaks variety. His imagination ranged from sentient rocks with a thing for spontaneous nuclear fusion, through to battles between order and chaos for the control of the known (and unknown) universe, to tourist trips across futuristic earth, the misdeeds of gods, alien and human, and the personal lives of lizard-emperors who need a hundred years to frame a sentence. Even if all this were not impressive enough, Zelazny wrote with a mixture of poignancy and wit that could turn on a five pence; somewhere between Raymond Chandler met Jane Austen met Terminator. His most famous, and probably most easily discoverable works, were the ten volume Chronicles of Amber, but if you’re looking for a quicker, shorter read, you could try Damnation Alley, the story of the last Hells Angel left on a ravaged Earth, or This Immortal, or, if you have a weakness of Hindu/Buddhist mythology taken to a new level, Lord of Light. His short stories are well worth reading too – To Die in Italbar or The Last Defender of Camelot are both packed with a mixture of the surreal, the comical, the tragic and the frightening.
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Sue GedgeMay 24, 2009
Hello, Kate! I haven’t read a great deal of Roger
Zelazny, but I do admire ‘A Rose for Ecclesiastes’—this was recommended by the writer Joanne Harris in an article I read once–interesting, as she doesn’t write sc-fi herself.
I’ve just found your brilliant website—and have just begun reading ‘A Madness of Angels’…
AdrianHAugust 12, 2009
It’s always nice to come across an author who’s book(s) you enjoy and admire who also has a real love for authors and books who you also love. I can’t remember when I discovered Roger’s books, it was rather a long time ago! There are many of his books I’ve read, but I guess ‘Today We Choose Faces’ is not only my favourite of Roger’s, but probably one of my all-time favourite books. I truly can’t count how many times I’ve read it, and I now have a hard back to replace my decades old paperback. I’ve noticed his influence in other writer’s work, in particular Charles Stross, who has the gift of really ‘painting pictures with words’, and creating characters you identify with, while giving them the most wonderful dialogue, full of wit and humour, while still getting across extraordinary concepts in a manner that looks just too simple. I’m seeing the same ability in ‘Madness Of Angels’, too, and I can’t begin to express how much pleasure it gives me to say that.
May 5, 2009