The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

Feel free to discuss Roger Zelazney's works. The link to his author page is here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

I recently read the Masterworks version of Zelazny's Roadmarks. Thankfully it came with an introduction by Alexander Glass that warned me that Zelazny was an improvisational writer who didn't go in for detailed plans. It felt like it too. Stick in a guy named Adolf over here. Introduce the Marquis de Sade over there. At times it felt like a stream of conscious narrative written by a writer who was indulging his every whim, and may or may not have been writing with the aid of chemical support (although to be fair his only addiction appears to have been tobacco).

That said, it was a nice little story that deals with alternative universes / time jumping. I found it interesting, probably memorable but a little unsatisfying. The storylines for some of the minor characters, although relevant to the main storyline, just seemed to stop. The historical characters were a nice novelty but added little else. The main storyline also ended with a fairly contrived ending that I found a bit disappointing. I found some of the action sequences to be boring, and, while probably necessary given the context of the story, they upset my connection to the book and made me want to skim to the more interesting parts.

In summary, I will read more of Zelazny's books because of his reputation but this one only left me interested but not chomping at the bit for more.

Does anyone have any Zelazny recommendations?

I found out I'm not a natural fan of Zelazny. But I still want to read more because he sure has a lot of people enthousiastic and certainly has a sort of mystical attraction in his books. In this group we read Doorways in the Sand, which I found was ok. I read Creatures of Light and Darkness, which I found both interesting and impossible to read (which I managed to do anyway). Last summer I had time to learn more about Amber, the series that I think Zelazny is most famous for, so I read the first three parts in a row: Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon and Sign of the Unicorn. Not being a big fan of fantasy, I was a bit surprised that I liked these books. Although Amber has 10 parts, three in row was enough for me.

When I was very young I had a copy of his novel Lord of Light, which won the 1968 Hugo. I liked it a lot but I haven’t read it in a long time. I also really liked the ‘90s fantasy A Night in the Lonesome October, which I just read for the first time a few months ago. A couple of years ago I read the ‘60s book Creatures of Light and Darkness, which is unconventional and I believe experimental, a sort of writing exercise that Samuel R. Delany had a role in getting published. I found it readable and enjoyable.

I read the first few Amber books in the ‘70s as they came out. I thought the series started strong but tailed off pretty quickly and I never finished it.

I read Lord of Light a couple of years ago and enjoyed it immensely. The book felt way ahead of its time in how it synthesised Eastern mythology with sci fi, in its treatment of gender and identity, and its explorations of advanced computation and transhumanism. In 60s sci fi I only know of Herbert and Le Guin rivalling that breadth of perspective.

Since then I happened to stumble upon almost the entire Amber chronicles on a friend's bookshelf in Berlin. I asked to borrow them and found space in my suitcase to bring them home. Amusingly only the first and one of the other books were missing, so I actually started from #2 and bought for myself the later missing one. To this day #1 is the only one I haven't read! Anyway I enjoyed these as well, and found the world-setting very creative, although I found it didn't have the same level of inward exploration that Lord of Light does. The books have some great names, and I found a delightful irony reading "Trumps of Doom" while feeling hungover and delicate in the stomach.

I'm keen to explore more Zelazny and would like to try A Rose for Ecclesiastes at some point.