Written Gems discussion

Sorry for the long hiatus everyone but we'll be cranking up the Written Gems discussion group in early April with a discussion of the sci-fi/fantasy/urban fantasy/paranormal/mystery/comic/thriller oh hell, it's a bit of everything classic tale "Nine Princes in Amber" by Roger Zelazny.
If you haven't read it, you've got plenty of time for this page-turner before our discussion begins. Don't miss it, this tale is a tremendous example of all that's right with genre fiction. In fact, all the fiction tales you've ever read are all included in it!

William wrote: "...all the fiction tales you've ever read are all included ..."

Can't wait, Will! I've never read it, but I can already tell I'm in for a treat.

This is a great book! It was my introduction to Roger Zelazny way back in the ninth grade. I've been reading his books ever since. Wish he was still alive to write more of them for us.

A quick reminder for the reading group. Written Gems will discuss the first book of Roger Zelazny seminal Amber series, "Nine Princes in Amber" in a couple weeks. Still plenty of time to absorb this page-turner if you haven't already. Talk to you soon!

Thanks for the reminder, I hadn't picked up a copy yet.
Amazon had the Kindle edition for $5.39.

Great choice

Ya. I'm only 4 or 5 chapters in, but it's gripping, for sure.

For any who prefer a good audio edition, I ran up on this one on YouTube. Excellent production, really. Multiple voice actors, sound FX, the works. Professional sounding production at a cost against which none may argue: FrEe.

https://youtu.be/3fovIbH4eT4

HERE THE DISCUSSION OF NINE PRINCE IN AMBER BEGINS:

Profile- Roger Zelazny
Author of one of the most easily-recognized and accessible sci-fi/fantasy series of all time, there’s much to admire in the life of Roger Zelazny. Born to Polish immigrants he edited the high school paper, got degrees in English and clearly loved to write. But Zelazny took regular jobs like one with the Social Security Administration for years, while writing on the side and gradually shifting over to full-time writing work at age 32.

According to the bios I see Zelazny worked his way up right, starting with shorter tales first and becoming a pro only when his novels started to do well (Wiki says he focused on novels from 1969 on in order to help sustain himself). There’s something rational and satisfying about that career path: and it’s not like he became a billionaire but clearly he had a good life with plenty of awards and success (three Nebula and six Hugo awards, just the start of the list).

I wish I had started early enough to be eligible to join the kind of group he did, the Swordsmen and Sorcerers Guild of America. It was a who’s-who of guys whose stuff I wanted to read in high school, and they all gave each other cool nicknames, which is probably half the reason men get into such clubs in the first place.
I try to think of what it is that makes the Princes in Amber series so fabulous and to my mind it’s two things. His scope was cosmic, an All-That-Is premise that could make my head spin as a younger man (and even today!). It’s quite one thing when, for example, Sauron threatens the world, which is to say, this particular continent or portion of a single planet that Tolkien had imagined. And JRRT HAD a cosmos behind Middle Earth, yes, but the shadows of Amber that Zelazny lobbed at the reader could put Middle Earth in its pocket. There’s room for the fantasy world of absolutely every book ever written if you walk through enough shadows.

It should have taken forever to describe that. Zelazny made the entire explanation fit on the back of a postcard. And that’s the second thing. Key to his accessibility is that he had a mastery of such concision, that elegant short-ness everyone admires and so few can imitate. When reading about him it came as no surprise at all to me that he loved those detective noir books; you know the ones, and boom there it is-- first-person perspective, ripping along with the hero through the action, and piecing it together as you both go along. Corwin of Amber is basically Sam Spade, and they both smoke and use guns just fine.

If you’ve read the book, think back and slap a fedora on Corwin. Right? History with dames, always a bit edgy with the law, knack for meeting the wrong kind of people. Corwin is nothing if not autonomous, close to a loner, but he’s loyal to those who treated him fairly. If only he could remember…

This is the series we’ll be delving into this time around and I’m sure you’ll enjoy this book, and hopefully the conversation too. I’ll lob out some specific questions about the first book in the series soon (and we’ll try to limit ourselves just to Nine Princes in Amber). But if you have recollections or learnings about Zelazny the writer, his other activities and things he’s written you’d like to share, now’s the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Z...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordsm...
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...

This "Pattern" thing is a bizarre... Where I'm listening on my commute, all it takes is for me to focus on a semi for 2 seconds, and Corwin has gone from being underwater with Moire to sword fighting in Amber with Erik, and I'm like, what just happened?

😂

Amber is one of the greatest concepts of all fantasy and sf. I've read the original 5 at least a dozen times and I have on audio cassette Zelazny's own reading of the series. Got involved in two long roleplaying games based on Amber, the second of which resulted in tons of my own (unfortunately unpublishable) fiction writing about the next crisis. It's a series that has inspired me for decades and I'm so glad you chose Nine Princes for our next discussion book.

First topic I'd like to bring up is the theme of Corwin as the ignorant (and possibly untrustworthy) narrator.
Frankly I think this is one of the purest and most effective uses of the ignorant narrator I've seen. Spoilers ensue (but seriously people if you haven't read it yet what are you doing here?):
-To inflict amnesia on a character puts them on a level plane with the reader, and draws you in to figure things out as quickly, or perhaps quicker than he does. Notice how certain things, like fencing words with Flora or having a smoke, come naturally to him? They are casual details but they all gain importance because you are almost trying to HELP Corwin remember!
-It adds to the menace of everything that happens early in the book. He's in a hospital, limbs in casts, he doesn't know any names-- yet he instinctively decides he's leaving (though it means having to fight and hurt people) and you're on board emotionally, whereas I think normally you wouldn't be.
-That leads to my final point. You can't know, if Corwin remembers nothing, whether he's a good guy or not! The ignorant narrator could always be an untrustworthy one. And that's EXACTLY where Zelazny wants you to be. Corwin is not a Boy Scout, but you want him to succeed, you care even though he's rough and at least to begin with amoral. His entire family would sell their mom for a pack of cigarettes, and Corwin only looks better-than-average by comparison. Yet how could the author have gotten you to care so much if he'd started the story with "once there was a group of powerful bastards, and one of them was not actually the worst..."

I'm interested in your thoughts around Corwin's early amnesia and how it affected your enjoyment of the opening.

Any story that opens with an amnesiac as the main character is always interesting because this adds such an element of mystery to them. You don't have any more idea of what or who they are than they do.

One of the greatest sci-fi/fantasy heroes of all-time suffered a form of amnesia, that being John Carter of Mars who could not recollect most of his life, only his more recent experiences, like Corwin.

I enjoyed the opening sequence at the hospital. Although he quickly figured out that he had no idea who he was, we were shown several clues as to the type of person Corwin is--strong, determined, an opportunist, a man with a highly unusual constitution and one who is absolutely not above blackmail. And I loved that part--where he took the hospital manager dude for everything he had in his safe.

Certainly, before the novel dove headlong into the bizarreness of Corwin's origins, it was fun as he stumbled about in his amnesiac state trying to remember and trying to figure things out and doing an admirable job of managing to make seeming calculated decisions on basic instinct and muscle memory alone.

After he meets Flora and all of the ensuing curfuffle one begins to get a better sense that Corwin is part of something big, and important, and his mystique at this point makes for some delicious reading for the first-time reader, which I was. Very glad to have read this one; good choice, Will!

By the way, that audio version I posted earlier is awesome. The cast does an excellent job with this novel.

Glad you liked it Chris! I think him letting Random "try some things" while they were in the car was incredible!'
Trying to think of an ignorant narrator in fiction I DIDN'T like...

William wrote: "Glad you liked it Chris! I think him letting Random "try some things" while they were in the car was incredible!'
Trying to think of an ignorant narrator in fiction I DIDN'T like..."

Lots of incredible parts in this story. It was quite bizarre trying to get the sense and feel of the shadows and Amber and the patterns initially, and the trumps are just strange ... some very odd concepts are going on here.

I think we most often identify with these ignorant narrators because they're most frequently the protagonist... It would be curious to see if we feel the same way if someone were to write a story from the POV of a Jack the Ripper suffering amnesia and just doing what Jack likes best to do.

Actually, I just thought of one. Well, he's not ignorant in that he's not suffering from amnesia. But it is 1st person POV of a necrophiliac... blech...

"...It is midnight. Before dawn they will find me and take me to a black cell where I shall languish interminably, while insatiable desires gnaw at my vitals and wither up my heart, till at last I become one with the dead that I love..."

~ The Loved Dead
~ C. M. Eddy Jr. with H. P. Lovecraft

Corwin might be the first amnesiac character I ever encountered in fiction. (I first read this book in the ninth grade.) I think the thing that caught me right from the start was his touch of paranoia.

"Yes, now, though I was feeling halfway decent. They'd have to stop.

Wouldn't they?

The thought came to assail me: Maybe not."

Right from the beginning we know that Corwin lives in a world very different from ours. It's hard not to be a bigger underdog than a guy with his legs in cast waking up in a hospital bed and not knowing who he is. But Corwin never wastes a moment on despair, he just starts taking control of his life again. (Admittedly, later in the book he spends a few years feeling self pity, but not now.) It's hard not to cheer for a guy like that.

And it gives Zelazny many chapters to start to introduce us to his fascinating concept of the true reality.

So Chris' comment really hits on my next topic: walking in Shadow and the Pattern.
If Corwin doesn't remember much, it isn't just about recovering what he knows, the story immediately becomes about "The Truth" in tall letters. What's really real? His strength? The coolness of the tarot deck in his hand? How cagey Flora and Random are acting all the time? If Nine Princes were a game it would have to be poker. Probably strip poker.

What were your impressions when Corwin and Random start driving and things change beyond all reason? The first steps through Shadow are enough to convince you the reader--if not Corwin-- that "we're not in Kansas anymore". I'm filled with admiration for the way Zelazny rolls out this concept, as a process of remembering one thing at a time about the place where everything is fully real. And of course that puts Corwin in even more danger! If the game is to remember... ack.

Well, if it was Poker, and Strip Poker at that, I'd rather see Flora or Moire on the losing side than Corwin or Erik!

Just sayin'.

Ack is right. The transversing of shadows and the way to Amber was just utterly bizarre--especially so because poor Corwin had to act like it was normal when he could recall nothing of how his brother was doing what he was doing (Ie modifying the landscape en route as they were traveling along).

Kudos to Zelazny for coming up with these fantastic concepts.

Memory--or the lack there of--is the overriding mechanism for understanding what is happening for the first half of the novel and I think it's most important to introducing the concept of shadow. At the same time, I read this book my freshman year in high school (something like forty years ago) so it's also difficult to remember what it was like to discover shadow through Nine Princes in Amber that first time.

The things I remember most looking back is how Corwin's extended period of amnesia helped him evolve into a better person. He doesn't need or desire to senselessly kill people over petty slights. And he also (later) encourages Random to act with basic decency toward a woman.

I think that anyone evaluating Corwin would come to the opinion that he benefited from forgetting who he was.

I must agree Gil, and there's something to this concept that I see now really drove the book. Think about it- he gives us a character who cannot remember perfection (which is Amber). He slowly sets about getting back his memory of the one, true kingdom. And WE ALL do that, right? It's like Sokrates with his students, for crying out loud- he's after the ideal form of things. I mean, blows my mind but the important thing is- by giving us this notion of a perfect world that we (and the hero) cannot quite yet envision, Zelazny reels us in.

This is another way of establishing the authority of the world, kind of like the epistolary style (where you get us to believe the world is real by showing us newspaper articles, letters, diaries, etc.). Clever fox!

I was almost disappointed when Corwin walked the Pattern.

Walking the Pattern is certainly the turning point of the story. It's almost two different novels before and after the Pattern. I've described the whole book as a "Who Am I?" tale but really, Nine Princes become more of a classic adventure story after Corwin walks the Pattern. Of greater interest, I think, is that his personality really doesn't change after he walks it and gets his memories back. We learn in book 3 that in many ways he is unrecognizable by his siblings in terms of his new value system. I'm tempted to say this is great writing--centuries on earth without memory have taught Corwin to be a new and better man--but it's also possible that Zelazny blew it here. I guess to some extent it depends on whether or not you think people are the sum of their experiences.

(A little late to the game but... I started listening to the YouTube read-through mentioned above: it's excellent!)

It's never too late to chime in. Glad you're enjoying that. I thought it was fantastic.

It's good to hear from you, Alex, and quite flattering that our discussion has interested you in this great series. And never worry about being "late to the game". One of the great things about these Goodreads discussion groups is that you can read a book ten years after it was discussed and still comment on it. We'll always jump in to talk about great novels. What's your impression of Corwin so far?

I've read the book (it's been a while) but I recall then and even now as I revisit the characters via the YouTube reading it's a funny thing they all appear in my head as people from the 70's!

That is funny! But I also find that the first reading influences all the others, so I guess it makes sense.