The Magic: (October 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny

by Roger Zelazny

There was a period, from 1961-1967, when Roger Zelazny was magic, and every new story of his was an event. He was a tremendously variable writer. The heart-wrenching “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” (written October 1967) was nothing like the passionate “Graveyard Heart,” which was completely different from the mind blowing “The Ides of Octember,” serialized in Amazing as “He Who Shapes,” which was altogether different from the post-nuclear holocaust romp, “Damnation Alley,” published in Galaxy and released as a film ten years later.

Zelazny had style, his language sang, his prose flowed like poetry. There was really no one else quite like him when he exploded onto the scene. Collected here together in one volume are the ten long stories that made Zelazny a legend. The impact of these ten stories cannot be denied. Reading them together gives one a sense of how rare an accomplishment Zelazny’s early career was.



Samuel R. Delany is the author of more than 20 novels including Nova and Dhalgren. He has won two Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, two Lambda Awards, and the Stonewall Book Award. Delany is an SFWA Grand Master and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. He is widely regarded as one of our most important science fiction authors.

Roger Zelazny was a science fiction and fantasy writer, a six time Hugo Award winner, and a three time Nebula Award Winner. He published more than forty novels in his lifetime. His first novel This Immortal, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the title ...And Call Me Conrad, won the Hugo Award for best novel. Lord of Light, his third novel, also won the Hugo award and was nominated for the Nebula award. He died at age 58 from colon cancer. Zelazny was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fantasy

620 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 13, 2018

About the author

Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American fantasy and science fiction writer known for his short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966), and the novel Lord of Light (1967).

Reviews

[Ty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten great tales by the master of SF short stories. I'd read all of these other than Damnation Alley but that was many years ago. This is even better than Frost and Fire which until this was my favorite SF single author collection beating out one by David Brin by a hair. What really makes this stand out is the insightful and knowledgeable commentary after each tale that added an extra dimension to my perspective and my appreciation for the deep knowledge that Zelazny had from so many sources. At the beginning you have your various introductions and at the end there are some great interviews worth reading. I found it interesting that Roger had read Hamlet's Mill as a young person like I did. I can't recall meeting anyone who has read or even heard of that weird titan sized book that my young teen mind soaked up along with Moberg and Campbell. My grandfather had a dozen Campbell books for me to read as an elementary kid and those terrible pseudoscience von Daniken books as well. Anyway, I can't recommend this book enough. There is a few typos but in Damnation Alley the "hikes" instead of bikes is probably the worst one. I purchased the Kindle version.

[M.H. Thaung]

I’ve enjoyed reading Zelazny’s works after borrowing Nine Princes in Amber from my local library some forty years ago. Some of the novellas in this collection of ten were old friends, and I enjoyed revisiting them while discovering new-to-me works as well.

Setting each work in perspective, the novellas are interspersed with brief commentaries, author’s notes and explanatory notes. (I didn’t pay much attention to the last. On the one hand, they might be handy, but on the other they felt rather condescending.) I liked learning more about the context (eg what else was being published at the time, and by whom).

Zelazny’s protagonists are unapologetically exceptional. We don’t (generally) follow them through a story that challenges their abilities. The opposition they face is not usually from equally competent people. Instead, they may strive against forces of nature (as in “This Moment of the Storm” or “This Mortal Mountain”). Their challenges—or maybe, the challenges the reader perceives—are moral or philosophical problems, such as the dying population in “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”. Perhaps because I binge-read the collection, I found myself hankering for a touch more human fallibility, but I guess then the stories would lose their mythic tone. It would also have been nice if the women had more than walk-on roles.

Overall, a handy collection for completionists, but new readers might want to start elsewhere.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because I heard that Zelazny was a poet. From "The Chronicle of Amber" I would not have known, but it does come through in his short stories. This collection was assembled by Samuel R. "Chip" Delaney and include commentary from him and other authors, as well as from Zelazny himself. It also includes notes explaining some of the historical and literary references in the short stories.

The stories come in a range of qualities from "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (salvation and despair in one provocative gulp) to "Damnation Alley", which I thought was clumsy compared to the rest of the anthology and which was made into an even clumsier motion picture. But they're all good in some way.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This turned out to be a collection written as a textbook of some sort. Ten of his more bizarre tales, each heavily footnoted explaining what historical, literary or mythological terms he was referring to throughout. Not necessarily a bad thing, as you can just skip over these if you're not interested in such, but these are Zelazney's more literati works, not his best fiction.

[Rocky1927 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zelazny Never Disappoints...

These stories are great. If you are expecting Amber style stories, you will be disappointed, but if you are looking for good, solid stories that captivate your imagination, you have come to the proper place.

[Jane Nash · Rating 2 out of 5]

got bored - not my cup of tea - dyed in the wook sci fiction readers should like him

[John Cottingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zelazny

There's nothing like a Roger Zelazny story. Those included here are exceptional good. I highly recommend this book to you.