The Road to Amber (88 page)

But to hell with regret. He lived through it. I lived through it. And years later, even though I wasn’t actually reading his work, we were able to talk about creativity, specifically music and writing. It was great. The man seemed to know everything, or at least something about anything. As we had these almost nightly conversations, me sitting on a stool, him lying on the couch, I grew to understand how great and important he was; and once I had read his books and stories—him being my father aside—he became one of the biggest influences on my own work. I have many influences, but when people ask me who the biggest are, I typically list three: Donald Westlake, Joe Lansdale, and Roger Zelazny.

I touched upon this in another piece I just wrote, as yet unpublished, but I think it is important to share again. When we are kids, our parents are the most important people in the whole world. They are our providers. They take care of us. In a sense, they are gods. However, at some point, when we enter into our all-important teenage years, some inane part of us comes to this bizarre understanding that our parents are not cool. They become, in a sense, dorks. I don’t know why this is, do you? If you did not have this view as a teenager, you are a very special, rare breed. Most every kid I know did this.

Fortunately for me, even if I had this outlook, my father and I still had a connection. A connection of creativity (that and, somewhere inside, I did actually know that he was totally cool). We talked more and more about life and what it meant. We talked about anything, really. When I got into the Beatles and the Monkees and Led Zeppelin, he already knew all about them. We philosophized, joked around, and drank too much Pepsi. He read me bits from the musical he wrote, read me excerpts from
A Night in the Lonesome October
while it was still scribbled on legal pads.

When he passed away and I began truly experiencing his work, I got in touch with him like I never had before. It was clearly Roger, but it was a Roger like I’d never seen. It was a Roger that not only knew about all the wonders, but had created a lot of them himself. It was so totally cool.

As time goes by, I’ve learned that, at least in my life, things often come full circle, because my father is still the most important person to me in the world. He is my hero, and I miss him dearly.

I still have the dreams. I often ask myself if it is just a dream, or is he dropping in to say hello. I guess, really, it doesn’t matter. I get to see him every now and then, and from time to time we’re back on the stool and the couch, chatting it up.

I’m pleased that the work he created has influenced so many other writers and has entertained so many people. I sometimes wonder, if I had been truly aware of how cool and important he was when I was a self-centered doofus teenager, would things have been different?

I regret to say I’ll never know…

But to hell with regret.

Roger, here’s to you, man.

Cheers.

H
e was a poet, first, last, always. His words sang.

He was a storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen.

But most of all, I will remember his people. Corwin of Amber and his troublesome siblings. Charles Render, the dream master. The Sleeper, Croyd Crenson, who never learned algebra. Fred Cassidy climbing on his rooftops. Conrad. Dilvish the Damned. Francis Sandow. Billy Blackhorse Singer. Jarry Dark. The Jack of Shadows. Hell Tanner. Snuff.

And Sam. Him especially. “His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god.”

Lord of Light
was the first Zelazny book I ever read. I was in college at the time, a longtime reader who dreamed of writing himself one day. I’d been weaned on Andre Norton, cut my teeth on Heinlein juveniles, survived high school with the help of H. P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov, “Doc” Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, and J. R. R. Tolkien. I read Ace doubles and belonged to the Science Fiction Book Club, but I had not yet found the magazines. I’d never heard of this Zelazny guy. But when I read those words for the first time, a chill went through me, and I sensed that SF would never be the same. Nor was it. Like only a few before him, Roger left his mark on the genre.

He left his mark on my life as well. After
Lord of Light
, I read every word of his I could get my hands on. “He Who Shapes,”
…And Call Me Conrad
, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,”
Isle of the Dead
, “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth,”
Creatures of Light and Darkness
, and all the rest. I knew I had found one hell of a writer in this fellow with the odd, unforgettable name. I never dreamed that, years later, I would also find in Roger one hell of a friend.

I met Roger several times in the mid-70s; at a writers’ workshop in Bloomington, Indiana, at cons in Wichita and El Paso, at Nebula banquets. By then, I had made a few sales on my own. I was surprised and thrilled when Roger knew my work. He was at first blush a shy man, always kind, often funny, but quiet. I cannot say I knew him well…not until the end of 1979, when I moved to Santa Fe, fresh from a divorce, near broke, and utterly alone.

Roger was the only person I knew in town, and him not that well. We were colleagues and con acquaintances, no more, but from the way he treated me, you would have thought we had been the closest of friends for years. He saw me through the worst months. We shared dinners and breakfasts and endless shoptalk. He drove me to Albuquerque for the monthly First Friday writers’ lunch. When a local bookstore asked him to do a signing, he made sure that I was invited as well. He took me with him to parties and wine tastings, even asked me to share Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family. If I had to fly to a con, he drove across town to pick up my mail and water my plant. And when my money was running low at the end of my first year in Santa Fe, he offered me a loan to tide me over until I could finish
Fevre Dream
.

It wasn’t just me. He did as much, and more, for others. Roger was as kind and generous as any man I have ever known. He was the best kind ofcompany, often quiet, but always interesting. Sometimes it seemed he had read every book ever printed. He knew something about everything and everything about some things, but he never used his knowledge to impress or intimidate. In an age when everyone is a specialist, Roger was the last Renaissance Man, fascinated by the world and all that’s in it, capable oftalking about Doc Savage and Proust with equal expertise and enthusiasm.

Those who saw him only from a distance sometimes came away with the impression that Roger was serious, grave, dignified, never dreaming how funny the man could be. No one who heard the Chicken Effect Speech at Bubonicon will ever forget it. Wild Cards fans still grin at the memory of Croyd and the decomposing alien. During the last year of Roger’s life, Jane Lindskold introduced him to role-playing, and he took to it with the glee of a small boy, mischievous and ever inventive. I will always cherish those people too, although only a few of us were fortunate enough to meet them. His Chinese poet warrior, declaiming thunderingly bad poems as he walked down an endless muddy road. His spaceship chaplain solemnly explaining evolution and ethics to an increasingly confused alien. And Oklahoma Crude, roughneck oilman, chewing tobacco and swapping jokes with space pirates and musketeers alike.

A few months ago, when Howard Waldrop was passing through Santa Fe, I threw a party. Howard wound up sitting on the floor, while Roger read a musical comedy he’d just written, about Death and his godson. Roger sang all the parts, sort of chanting them, a little off-key maybe …well, okay, maybe more than a little. One by one the other guests interrupted their conversations and drifted over to hear him read and sing, until the whole party gathered around Roger’s feet. By the end, there was a smile on every face.

He was fighting Death himself then, though only Jane knew it. And that was very like Roger too, to keep his pains private, to take fear and shape it into art, to transform illness and death into a song, a story, and a roomful of smiles.

“But look around you…” he wrote in
Lord of Light
. “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.”

B
y all accounts, Roger Zelazny was a helluva guy. His poetic style, his wide range of interests and his desire not to repeat himself made him a writer to watch throughout his entire career. He was a witty, learned, and gracious man, who, as Robert Silverberg told us in his introduction to volume 1, drew no unkind words from others and had none to offer. His death at an early age was a tragedy.

It has been a great pleasure and a journey of three years to collect, write, edit and typeset the 3472 pages collected in these six volumes. It was an effort driven by our enjoyment of Roger Zelazny as a writer and as a man.

Thank you for following along with us. We hope it brought you as much reading pleasure as it brought us satisfaction in producing it.

This six volume collection includes all of Zelazny’s known short fiction and poetry. The single short story we have heard of but couldn’t find is “Checkup,” written for the UNICEF News in 1975. We included one serialized novel (
…And Call Me Conrad
) and two novel excerpts (“The Steel General” from
Creatures of Light and Darkness
and “Death and the Executioner” from
Lord of Light
). Other chapters of novels have also appeared separately, but we did not include them. We also did not include a half-dozen poems from collaborative novels, and we made no attempt to include all of Zelazny’s non-fiction or interviews (some of which have titles that have been mistaken for story titles).

See the coming Zelazny bibliography produced by Christopher S. Kovacs for a complete list of all Zelazny publications.

Frontispiece portrait by Jack Gaughan first appeared on the cover of “Marcon VII Program and Schedule Book, 1972” where Roger Zelazny was Guest of Honor.

“Roger Zelazny”
by Jane Lindskold
first appears in this volume.

“Remembering Roger”
by Gerald Hausman
first appears in this volume.

“The Trickster”
by Gardner Dozois
first appears in this volume.

“Godson” first appeared in
Black Thorn, White Rose
, eds. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, Eos 1994.

“Godson: A Play in Three Acts” first appears in this volume (written in 1994-95).

“Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love” first appeared in
Amazing Stories
, August 1992.

“Prince of the Powers of This World” first appeared in
Christmas Forever
, ed. David G. Harrwell, Tor 1993.

“The Long Crawl of Hugh Glass” first appeared as part of the novel
Wilderness
by Zelazny and Gerald Hausman, Forge 1994; it first appeared separately in
Superheroes
, eds. John Varley and Rida Mainhardt, Ace 1995. Previously uncollected in this form.

“Tunnel Vision” first appeared in
Galaxy #3
May/June 1994. Previously uncollected.

“Epithalamium” first appeared in
Fantastic Alice
, ed. Margaret Weis and Martin H. Greenberg, Ace 1995.

“Forever After: Preludes and Postlude” first appeared in
Forever After
, ed. Roger Zelazny, Baen 1995. Previously uncollected.

“Lady of Steel” first appeared in
Chicks in Chainmail
, ed. Esther Friesner, Baen 1995.

“The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker” first appeared in
VB Tech Journal Vol 1 No 5
June 1995. Previously uncollected.

“The Sleeper: Character Outline” first appears in this volume (written late 1980s or early 1990s).

“Concerto for Siren and Serotonin” first appeared in
Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty
, ed. George R. R. Martin, Bantam/Spectra 1988. Previously uncollected.

“The Long Sleep” first appeared in
Wild Cards XIII: Card Sharks
, ed. George R. R. Martin, Baen Books 1993. Previously uncollected.

“Amber Map” by Elizabeth Danforth first appeared in
Hellride #1
, 1972, ed. Ken St. Andre. The current, updated version first appears in this volume.

“Prolog to
Trumps of Doom
” first appeared in
Trumps of Doom
, Underwood-Miller edition [as “Prolog”] 1985.

“The Road to Amber” first appeared in
Nine Princes in Amber Book 1 of 3
, DC Comics 1996. Previously uncollected.

“The Great Amber Questionnaire” first appeared in a modified form in
Hellride #3
, January 28, 1978. Previously uncollected.

“A Secret ofAmber” by Roger Zelazny and Ed Greenwood first appeared in
Amberzine #12-15
, March 2005. (written 1977-1992). Previously uncollected.

“The Salesman’s Tale” first appeared in
Amberzine #6
, February 1994.

“Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains” first appeared in
Wheel of Fortune
, eds. Roger Zelazny and Martin H. Greenberg, AvoNova 1995.

“The Shroudling and the Guisel” first appeared in
Realms of Fantasy Vol 1 No 1
, October 1994.

“Coming to a Cord” first appeared in
Pirate Writings Vol 3 No 2
, June 1995.

“Hall of Mirrors” first appeared in
Castle Fantastic
, ed. John DeChancie, DAW 1996.

“On Writing Horror After Reading Clive Barker” first appeared in
The Stephen King Companion: Grimoire
, ed. George Beahm, GB Publishing, 1990. Previously uncollected.

“‘When It Comes It’s Wonderful’: Art versus Craft in Writing” first appeared in
Deep Thoughts: Proceedings of Life, The Universe and Everything XII
, February 16-19, 1994, eds. Steve Setzer and Marny K. Parkin, LTU&E 1995. Previously uncollected.