Remembering Roger Zelazny
His First Three Novels
“Who wants to live forever?”
© Queen Music Services
As with the albums of Tom Waits, when I think of the literary works of science-fiction author Roger Zelazny, I am drawn to his first three major works: This Immortal, The Dream Master, and Lord of Light. These novels (some of which were originally serialized as novellas) garnered major awards for the author, including two Hugos and one Nebula. In fact, Zelazny’s …And Call Me Conrad (the original title of This Immortal), won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 1966 tied with Frank Herbert’s Dune.
New Wave Science-Fiction, with which Zelazny is often associated, reflected the changing, younger society of the 1960s interested in individualism and character over technology, and viewed the world in shades of grey, rather than in the black and white of their parents. New Wave authors valued spirituality over religion and were interested in myth and exotic, particularly Eastern, faiths. Reflecting the times, they favored protagonists who rebelled against authority, creating a new kind of flawed, rebellious hero, an anti-hero, who mirrored the attitudes of the Baby Boomers who held sway in the 1960s and ‘70s.
A personal, anecdotal example illustrates this attitude. As a first-year graduate student in English Lit, I took a course on Milton’s Paradise Lost. On the day we were to discuss “Book II,” detailing Satan’s fall from grace and subsequent revolt against Heaven, sensing the mood of the class, the Professor admonished us (in modern parlance), “If you think Satan is the hero of this book, you’re doing it wrong.” Yet, most of us did think exactly that and it was in that spirit we avidly consumed Goethe’s Dr. Faustus and Byron’s Manfred, while virtually canonizing Prometheus, the god who gave knowledge to mortals.
While Zelazny defined and reflected much of the New Wave movement, he also imbued it with his own special gift of mythmaking and his fascination with immortality and what it means to be human. Moreover, he beautifully realized all of this with his love of and skill with language, creating a romantic lyricism that harkens back to Keats and Fitzgerald.
During this time, certain books and philosophies dominated the young, literary scene. For example, one could hardly be considered a serious student of the humanities having not read Joseph Campbell’s works on mythology, particularly his detailing of the archetypal hero’s quest in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Really serious students had also read Campbell’s precursor, Sir James George Fraser, and his discussions on the naturalistic origins of myth and religion on the shores of Lake Como, as well as Jesse Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, an interpretation of Grail legend that shaped Eliot’s The Wasteland. In this literary world, myths were routinely interpreted in psychological terms, often as Jungian archetypes, and the literary scholar’s job was often to interpret the protagonist’s character arc in terms of those archetypes.
In the realm of fiction, the works of the German author, Hermann Hesse, grew dramatically in influence. His Siddhartha, the story of the young Buddha, popularized views on Buddhism and spirituality and was a primary source for Zelazny’s Lord of Light, while Steppenwolf, a novel recounting the solitary life of Harry Haller, validated the drug culture of the time while providing a character template for many anti-heroes.
It was into this Zeitgeist that Roger Zelazny published his first novel, This Immortal.
This Immortal
1966 Hugo Award Winner — Best Novel
This Immortal firmly established the foundation of the Zelazny protagonist who would accompany the author throughout his career. Konstantin Nomikos, or as he prefers, Conrad, the wise-cracking anti-hero, immediately assumes mythic proportions in the novel’s first line as his new wife, aptly named Cassandra, exclaims, “You are a Kallikanzaros.”
She thereby associates Conrad with creatures from Balkan folklore who spend their year underground, attempting to cut through the tree that supports the earth. But, when Christmas arrives, the distracted Kallikanzaros come to the surface for the twelve days of Christmas, during which time the tree repairs itself. On the day of the epiphany, they return underground to their task of attempting to destroy the world in an eternal cycle of destruction and renewal.
The tradition of the Kallikanzaros echoes Fraser’s view of the origins of death and renewal myths interpreted through the seasons, and specifically through the lengthening of days following the Winter Solstice. On the year’s shortest day, the Kallikanzaros pause in their task of destruction, returning to the surface to observe the impending doom. But, from that point on, the days become longer, beginning the Earth’s journey toward renewal and the oncoming Spring. Zelazny purposely associates Conrad with this mythic background as he, in his dual nature, as the novel reveals, controls the survival or destruction of the planet.
This Immortal is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth with a remaining population of only around four million survivors who primarily live on the islands of the world, as the mainland is inhabited by mutants and areas of deadly radioactivity. The world has become a tourist attraction run by aliens, the blue-skinned Vegans, who uae it to illustrate the results of a civilization’s self-destruction.
Conrad, who a generation before had led an armed resistance to the Vegans, has now ensconced himself as Earth’s Commissioner of Arts, Monuments, and Archives, and is tasked with playing tour guide to an important Vegan journalist. The plot revolves around his attempts to protect the Vegan against assassination by rebellious groups of humans, with the denouement coming as the Vegan’s true mission is revealed.
Zelazny toys throughout with Conrad’s true nature — mutated human or Greek god. The novel opens with him inadvertently revealing his antiquity to his new wife and her despondent reaction. Throughout the work he is associated with the mythic Pan, by his surname, Nomikos, a name that echoes one of Pan’s titles, his distorted features, including a limp, and his playing of the pipes. Moreover, Conrad throughout the novel recalls episodes from ancient Greece, including tales of the Argonauts (his son, whom he meets in the novel, is named Jason), as well as the famous beauty contest that sparked the Trojan War.
Zelazny wanted Conrad’s true nature to remain ambiguous, but the evidence of his immortal status is overwhelming. Nevertheless, the ambiguity strengthens the tension that exists in most of Zelazny’s novels, that between humans and gods, establishing a trope that was central to his work throughout his career.
The Dream Master
1966 Nebula Award Winner — Best Novella
Zelazny’s protagonist in The Dream Master (originally, He Who Shapes) achieves a different type of immortality found in the life of dreams. While showing no signs of personal immortality, he has the ability to shape dreams into recreations of any historical event of which he has knowledge.
The Dream Master is a tale of a world-renowned psychiatrist who takes a beautiful, but highly disturbed young woman as a patient. As the two become romantically involved, the psychiatrist dedicates more and more time to her case, struggling to maintain his position of psychic guide in the face of the woman’s burgeoning individuality. Eventually, the patient assumes the dominant role, destroying the doctor’s faith in his abilities and relegating him to a world of failure. And it’s all set in the south of France.
Oh. Wait! That’s the story of Dr. Richard Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s semi-autobiographic novel, Tender is the Night. Zelazny’s is a similar story of Dr. Charles Render, set in Earth’s future, a mixture of extreme overpopulation and advanced technology.
Render specializes in “neuroparticipant therapy” during which, with the aid of advanced technology, he enters the patient’s mind, acting as a psychic guide through dreams he has specially shaped to address the patient’s psychological issues.
Render encounters an intense young woman, Eileen Shallot, who aspires to also become a neuroparticipant therapist, but has been blind from birth, a condition that renders her incapable of the complex visualization needed in the profession. Confident in his abilities while also captive to his own hubris, Render agrees to take Eileen as an apprentice to, minimally, show her the physical world through his own perceptions.
As the treatments progress, Eileen’s appetite for visual sensations becomes stronger, forcing Render to struggle to maintain control over her dreams. Eventually, her will dominates with disastrous consequences for Render. The novel ends with a session in which he is the patient, reliving Theseus’ tragic return to Athens aboard a black-sailed ship, sails that Render insists are white.
Render’s immortality lies in his ability to live any dream he can imagine, no matter what time period, or even world, the dream occurs in. In an oft-quoted passage, Render neatly describes this version of immortality in a comment that reveals the hubris that will be his downfall:
She said: “What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?
…He replied without hesitation: “The sinking of Atlantis.”
“I was serious.”
“So was I.”
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“I sank Atlantis,” he said, “personally.”
-Roger Zelazny, The Dream Master
While Render is more Shakespearean hero than typical Zelazny protagonist, he still exhibits many attitudes and personality traits that came to characterize Zelazny’s characters. The novel details his dramatic fall as directly stemming from his immense pride. While many of the author’s characters share this trait — Jack of Shadows comes to mind — Render’s story comes straight out of Elizabethan drama in which Zelazny took an MA at Columbia.
Lord of Light
1966 Hugo Award Winner — Best Novel
In the character of Mahasamatman, the Great Souled Sam, or, as he preferred, simply Sam, Zelazny fully realized the wise-cracking, mythic anti-hero presaged by Conrad and Render. The author gives us a clue as to his nature in the novel’s prologue, a quote derived from the Buddhist collection of wisdom, the Dhammapada:
He whose desires have been throttled,
who is independent of root,
whose pasture is emptiness –
signless and free –
his path is as unknowable
as that of birds across the heavens
Dhammapada (93)
From Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
The novel is set upon a distant planet, inhabited by descendants of humans who landed there centuries prior. Thanks to advances in technology, those original humans are mostly still alive, having perfected the capability of artificially growing new bodies into which they transfer their brain patterns. Access to this immortality is controlled by the original crew members who have assumed the persona and powers of gods from the Hindu pantheon.
The story begins in medias res, with the re-awakening of Sam by Yama, God of Death, and his compatriots, the Goddess of Night and Tak, once of the Bright Spear, now trapped in an ape’s body. The majority of the novel documents Sam’s prior failed revolt against the “Gods,” as he assumes the identity and the methods of the Buddha.
Upon his defeat, Sam’s soul is transferred not to another body, but to the magnetic field that surrounds the planet, where it exists in a state of eternal union with the cosmos (Nirvana). Zelazny’s description of Sam’s return illustrates the beauty and sheer fun of his prose used in this case to immediately elevate Sam’s return to mythic heights:
“Thereafter to be portrayed in murals at the ends of countless corridors, carved upon the walls of Temples and painted onto the ceilings of numerous palaces, came the awakening of he who was variously known as Mahasamatman, Kalkin, Manjusri, Siddhartha, Tathagatha, Binder, Maitreya, the Enlightened One, Buddha and Sam. At his left was the goddess of Night; to his right stood Death; Tak, the ape, was crouched at the foot of the bed, eternal comment upon the coexistence of the animal and the divine.”
-Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
In his original conflict with the Gods, Sam had cynically mixed Buddhist philosophy with martial tactics. Along the way he took on a disciple who, it is suggested, may have been an actual reincarnation of the Buddha, but who is sacrificed so that Sam can continue the fight. Through this and other devices, Zelazny maintains the tension between Sam and Mahasamatman, the conflict between humanity’s human failings and our divine aspects. This is his legacy and his gift to his readers.
Remembering Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny died in 1995 from colon cancer at the age of 58, having won six Hugos, three Nebulas, and two Locus Awards. His immense influence on science fiction and fantasy is still visible in the works of such authors as Samuel Delany, Andrzej Sapkowski, and Neil Gaiman, who named Zelazny as the author who had most shaped his work.
While he is best known today for his Amber series, Zelazny preferred short stories and novellas over full-length novels. Among those, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” “Last Defender of Camelot,’ and “24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai” stand out, but there are many.
While the promise of Roger Zelazny was cut far too short, he left us with his own elegy (or I like to think as much) early in his career, in Lord of Light:
“But look around you… Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they
begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is
the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty.”
- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
