The Road to Amber (71 page)

The movie
Dragonheart
premiered, and some moviegoers commented that the story contained recognizable elements of Zelazny’s “The George Business,” including a business deal between dragon and dragon slayer in order to scam the public.
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Zelazny received no acknowledgment in the credits; had he been alive, or had the Estate been more effective at the time in guarding its intellectual property, either could have challenged this lapse. It is ironic that “The George Business” was the same story plagiarized by a high school student in 1985 to win a state-wide contest in Michigan.

Zelazny had worked intermittently on the first
Donnerjack
novel since 1992, and the Zelazny Archives at Syracuse University contain handwritten drafts of complete sections dated 1993 and later. When he realized that he might not be able to finish the trilogy, he discussed it at length with Jane Lindskold. “At the end when he realized he wasn’t going to make it, he asked me to finish the two books he had pending. He said I was the only person who had a shot at doing them in a spirit near to what he intended. He never outlined. There was nothing except conversations we’d had. He’d written about a third of
Donnerjack
and somewhat less of
Lord Demon
.”
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Lindskold had the trilogy’s original proposal, and using the details that they had discussed, she finished one volume that encompasses the trilogy’s scope. This is why the book is longer than the typical Zelazny novel.
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but it is impossible to tell how much of the trilogy survives in it. Only Zelazny knew the full story, if he knew it at all.

After
Donnerjack
‘s publication, readers pressed Lindskold—sometimes rudely—to pinpoint exactly where she took over. Some of them “knew” the precise location by a perceived change in style. Lindskold has declined to answer. Some readers declared that the break point must have been when John D’Arcy Donnerjack, Sr., abruptly died, believing it unlikely that Zelazny would kill him off. But Zelazny’s handwritten sketch of the trilogy shows that Donnerjack, Sr. would die exactly as described, and the story would then focus on his son. Author William Sanders, who knew Zelazny and Lindskold quite well and had first-hand information about the book’s creation, said, “Jane boldly disassembled Roger’s beginning chapters and rearranged the whole structure of the novel. This is another reason it is so hard to tell who wrote what; Roger’s original text is not printed as an integral whole but is distributed in hunks and chunks through the present book. More boldly still, she completely rewrote certain parts and threw out bits that didn’t work. She acted, that is, as a genuine collaborator, not just a posthumous amanuensis—which was exactly what Roger had asked her to do.”
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It wasn’t easy, mourning her closest friend while trying to complete his novels. “If I had to make the same choices I’d still do it [complete the novels], but it was rough, and made harder by the fact that on some level his typeface was like his voice.”
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“More than anything else, I wanted those last two books to be worthy of Roger. I had already read just about everything he had published when I wrote the biography. Now I remembered something he had said about how he went about writing his part of
Deus Irae
, a novel he wrote with Philip K. Dick. He hadn’t tried to write like Dick; instead he had studied Dick’s prose until he could manage what he called a ‘meta’ style, blending his own and Dick’s. I followed Roger’s lead, studied his tricks, remembered his story values—which were sometimes quite different from mine. I’m too close to both projects to say if I succeeded, but readers and reviewers seem to like the novels. What I can assuredly say is that the entire thing was a tremendous learning experience.”
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An anthology of original stories and essays paid tribute to Zelazny in 1998. Contributor William Sanders suggested the title
Roger, Over and Out
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—it would have been entirely in keeping with Zelazny’s penchant for puns, but the editors and publisher worried that it might seem disrespectful. Many of the contributing authors reminisced about Zelazny in afterwords to their stories; a sampling of quotes follows:

Fred Saberhagen spoke intensely. “Avoiding quarrels as he did, he also disliked confrontations; and a further extension of this principle led him to steer clear of saying or doing anything that might produce an unpleasant reaction in whoever was around him, particularly friends and loved ones. This behavior made him an unfailing pleasant companion. But it also had a downside, when it denied people information they would have deemed of great importance, however unpalatable—such as the fact that Roger Zelazny was dying of cancer. When he died I was angry with him, and now, almost two years later, I think I still am, not only for leaving us all here Rogerless but for keeping the imminence of his departure such a secret.”
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Walter Jon Williams said, “He was gracious, soft-spoken, witty, and (when he wanted to be) screamingly funny. He gave the two funniest guest-of-honor speeches I’ve ever heard, and it is my eternal regret that no one ever thought to record them. He spoke with eloquence—in long, spontaneous, unrehearsed, grammatically correct complex sentences—on subjects ranging from poetry to philosophy to particle physics…He was at heart a very shy man and did not seek out company… It was clear that in his last year Roger was a happy man, and it was a joy to watch him.”
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Robert Silverberg wrote, “I lament him because he was such a sweet and completely lovable man… I knew him for almost thirty years…in all those three decades I never heard him utter an unkind word about anyone.”
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After
Donnerjack
Jane Lindskold completed Zelazny’s other unfinished novel. It is unclear how much Zelazny actually drafted; the Syracuse University Archives contain no fragments of handwritten manuscript. Some have speculated that Lindskold wrote
Lord Demon
entirely, but this was not the case. Zelazny had finished complete sections, and for an interval in 1994 and 1995, distracted from
Donnerjack
, he’d worked instead on
Lord Demon
.
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Lindskold said that, compared to
Donnerjack
, Zelazny had written “somewhat less of
Lord Demon
.”
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ibooks planned to reissue Zelazny’s collections and novels, and their 2001 version of
The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth
combined the original collection with the remaining two stories from
Four for Tomorrow
. The publisher asked Robert Silverberg to assemble a “best of” collection of Zelazny stories and to write an introduction. In 2002
The Last Defender of Camelot
, Zelazny’s sixth collection, came out, unfortunately bearing the same title as an earlier publication which had completely different stories. Only one story in the new book (“Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love”) was not previously collected. New editions of
This Immortal, Damnation Alley
,
The Dream Master
,
Changeling
, and
Madwand
were released, as were odd two-in-one pairings:
Eye of Cat
with
Isle of the Dead
, and
To Die in Italbar
with
A Dark Travelling
. ibooks commissioned John Betancourt to write the Amber prequel novels described earlier in this monograph, and four of five appeared between 2002 and 2005 before the publisher’s bankruptcy.

A fan (Scott Zrubek) assembled the seventh collection,
Manna from Heaven
, intermixing previously collected tales with uncollected stories from the 1960s to 1990s. The title resembles the included (and previously collected) short story “Mana from Heaven.” Zrubek (whose name was misspelled on the title page) submitted the collection under his preferred title
Mana from Heaven
, but the publisher changed the spelling.
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Many readers concluded that
Manna from Heaven
was a typo, but the change produced a pun that Zelazny would have enjoyed.
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Mana
is a supernatural force;
manna
is food from the heavens or unexpected help. Zrubek included “The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker” and the short-short “Tunnel Vision,” but the publisher removed both without telling him.
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John Betancourt (Wildside Press) and Warren Lapine (DNA Publications) were joint publishers of the book; in conversation with this biographer, Lapine took credit for the pun
Manna
and indicated that Betancourt was responsible for the dropped stories and other problems with the book’s printing overseas.
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Lapine chose Bob Eggleton’s cover artwork because it suited the deleted tale about Jeremy Baker’s descent through a singularity; without that story the choice of cover art seems incongruous. Rumors that the collaborative tale “Come to Me Not in Winter’s White” was reprinted without Harlan Ellison’s permission appear unfounded; Lapine said that he obtained permission directly from his friend Ellison.
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Moreover, the editors of
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny
discovered that the version of “Come to Me Not in Winter’s White” printed in
Manna from Heaven
included revisions made by Ellison specifically for that edition.

The Internet now abounds with quotes both rightly and wrongly attributed to Roger Zelazny. Confusing the message and the messenger, extracts from his fiction appear out of context as if they were Zelazny’s own beliefs. For example, “While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant was that in my oId age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love,” was not about Zelazny himself; it was Corwin’s sardonic remark in
The Guns of Avalon
. “Life is full of doors that don’t open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don’t want them to,” came from Merlin in
Blood of Amber
. Warrior-priest Madrak, not Zelazny, uttered “The Agnostic’s Prayer”—but it is arguable that Zelazny shared Madrak’s beliefs.

Fans and colleagues have attributed other aphorisms to Zelazny, recalling them from convention speeches, writing seminars, correspondence, and private conversations. It is often unclear whether he originated the quote, such as his 1970s anecdote about Schenectady, NY, being the source of a science fiction writer’s ideas. Zelazny may have said, “Before you can write well enough to publish, you have to write a million words of shit,” but apparently so did Raymond Chandler, Norman Mailer, and Stephen King. In other cases, Zelazny admittedly was not the first. When he said, “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal,” he was stealing from one of his favorite poets, T. S. Eliot, who wrote, “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” Pablo Picasso stole from T. S. Eliot—or vice versa—when Picasso reportedly remarked, “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” Zelazny stood in good company with that adage.

Unlike the Internet entries, all Zelazny quotations in this monograph come from his interviews, correspondence, and essays; in a few instances, his colleagues and friends recalled his words from personal conversations.

Publication of a new novel often prompts reissue of an author’s previous works. An author who stops publishing or who dies can disappear from store bookshelves, fading from view and memory. The works of only a few, including Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, and Philip K. Dick, remain popular and undergo ongoing adaptations for film and television. The 1998 Locus Poll ranked Zelazny’s
Lord of Light
#14 for all-time best sf novel prior to 1990, and
Nine Princes in Amber
ranked #9 for all-time best fantasy novel prior to 1990. In the 1999 Locus All-Time Poll, Zelazny finished #5 on the list of best all-time short fiction writers; six of his classic novellas and novelettes ranked highly, as did his first two short story collections. In a 2008 poll, over 3,000 readers ofthe UK magazine SFX voted Zelazny #30 of the top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy authors of all time. His “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” was one of the pieces of classic “Martian literature” included on the DVD
Visions of Mars: First Library on Mars
, attached to the Phoenix Mars lander and brought safely to the Martian surface on May 25, 2008.
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Also in 2008, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Rover project named a large crater on Mars after him.
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