Roger Zelazny Book Review: Changeling

Well, I've vowed to myself to cover all of Roger Zelazny's major works here, and that includes the few I don't especially like.

I'd kind of been dreading this one. Roger Zelazny is, by far, my favorite author, and I don't like having to say anything bad about his works. I think that Changeling is the worst story he wrote on his own. (A Farce to be Reckoned With edges it out for worst book period.) I think Pol Detson may be the only protagonist of his whom I really, actively dislike. Kai Wren was boring and Merlin was a bit of a douche, but Pol combines both of those traits in a really unappealing package.

It could have been great. Pol Detson, son of the evil overlord Det Morson is traded for a child of a world where technology, not magic is the paradigm. I loved this stuff! I had already played Final Fantasy 6 with its brilliant commingling of science and technology and I couldn't wait to see what new wrinkles the genius of Roger Zelazny would bring to the concept.

Answer: Not a damn thing.

Pol is a superpowered Mary Sue assisted by Mouseglove the thief, who reminds me of Philippe the Mouse from Ladyhawke, who of course owes a debt to Fritz Lieber's Grey Mouser. I bring up Ladyhawke, because upon showing the movie to my wife, she quipped "He killed a bishop in a church in the middle of Mass. How many Hail Mary's is that worth?"

That story doesn't have anything to do with the book, but it's certainly more entertaining.

I've noticed that when I cover stuff I don't really like, it tends to be just as long as when I cover stuff I do like, except that they don't really deal with what I'm supposedly talking about. I think this is going to be that kind of review.

Zelazny ticks off items on his checklist of fantasy cliches: A magical birthmark (dragon-shaped of course), talk of balance, white streak in his hair (*groan*), generational warfare, orphaned babies. To quote the review on wikipedia, he grows up a "poet, musician and singer", and he majors in Medieval Studies, all of which to serve to estrange him from his engineer father.  

There are several subtle hints scattered throughout the book for the careful reader.

He departed his office and walked back toward Dan’s room. As he went, he heard the sounds of a guitar being softly strummed. Now a D chord, now a G...Surprising, how quickly a kid that age had learned to handle the undersized instrument... Strange, too. No one else in either family had ever shown any musical aptitude.

 What could it mean?! (Or rather, who cares?)


A Dark Traveling was a book with kids as main characters, but it, generally didn't seem like a "kid's book". This does, even though the characters are young adults. I can't remember where I read it, but I seem to recall Zelazny referring obliquely to a movie project he was developing, and I think that that the two Wizard World books were developed as movies, which explains the vivid visuals. Unfortunately, they came at the expense of everything else.

A big part of the problem is that I find the antagonist much more appealing than the ostensible hero. Pol strikes me as the prototype for Merlin. Right up until the end, Mark seemed like a decent if misguided guy and Pol was a bit of a tool. I feel really badly for Mark.  I liked him a lot more than I liked Pol. He's emotionally immature, but he wants to make things better for his village.

“I have also fertilized, plowed, tilled and seeded one of the old fields there. I want you to see how smoothly and evenly this was done, and I want you to watch and see what the yield from that plot comes to. I believe that you will be impressed...”

Four men rushed forward and set hands upon the side of the car. They immediately leaped or fell back.

“That was an electrical shock,” he stated. “I am not foolish enough to give you the same opportunity to harm me twice. Damn it! We’re neighbors, and I want to help you! I want my town to be the center from which the entire country receives the benefits I wish to bring it! I have amazing things to teach you! This is only the beginning! Life is going to be better for everyone! I can build machines that fly and that travel under water! I can build weapons with which we can win any war! I have an army of mechanical servants! I—”

“All right! I’m going!” he cried. “All that I want you to do is to think about the things that I have said! They may seem a lot more reasonable later, when you have cooled off! Go and look at the Branson place! I’ll be back another time, when we can talk!”

He's wronged (cast out of his village, his adoptive father murdered by a superstitious mob) and he swears revenge. He seems to be saying "Isn't that what people do when they're wronged in a Zelazny story?"

(I also liked his base at Anvil Mountain. It had a very cool Gamma World feel.)

Later on, Pol learns that his father was also killed, perhaps even by the same villagers.  It sets up a false dichotomy, where he explicitly rejects the the path of revenge chosen by Mark. I think I'll tell a story so I get a little break from talking about this terrible book.

Around 1994, DC decided that nobody liked Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern, so they decided to kill him off and replace him with a new creation. Hal's town of Coast City is wiped out, and when he can't bring them back to life, he suffers a psychotic break and murders his way through the Green Lantern Corps. He's replaced by a guy named Kyle Rayner. Right after he becomes the Green Lantern, Kyle's girlfriend is murdered and stuffed in his fridge. When he finds the supervillain who did it, he smacks him down,  shapes an electric chair with his power ring to execute him, but  can't go through with it because "Then I'd be no better than you, crying cakes, better man, blah blah blah."

Coming so recently after Hal's killing spree, this was clearly intended to show Kyle was the bigger hero.  And likewise, in Changeling, everything in the narrative conspires to make Pol's decisions the right ones and Mark's the wrong ones.

It reminds me of a book I read in High School or shortly thereafter, The Last of the Renshai. The author always took pains to show that Colbey (the world's most fearsome cheese) Calistinsson lived by his code of honor. He wouldn't use missile weapons, for instance, because that wouldn't be fair to the other dude, but he'd use his swords and he just so happened to be the greatest swordsman ever. Later in the series, he acquires psychic powers. He has the opportunity to use those powers to gets something he wants. He asks the wizard who's tagging along with the party if other people ever had these powers and would it therefore be in fitting with his code of honor to use them against another person.

I knew that the author would contort herself to justify whatever course of action Colbey decided on, so I just skipped the next two pages of justification. I thought of this when Pol confronts Mark at the end of the book. Pol wanted to reason with him, but Mark won't stand down and has to be put down, like the villain who pulls a concealed derringer at the end of the movie and leaving the hero no choice but to kill him in self defense.

In every other Zelazny book, there are internally consistent and believable magic systems. In Changeling, Roger Zelazny says he wanted to show the triumph of magic over science.  That's great, but in Changeling, he sets up  magic as "science but better", making the conflict something of a foregone conclusion.

I can't help but think that Mark would have been more reasonable if Pol weren't such a prick.

Pol dug in his hip pocket, withdrew his wallet. He opened it and flipped through the card case.

“Here,” he said, stepping forward, extending it. “These are pictures of Mother and Dad.”

Mark reached toward him, accepted the wallet, stared.

“These aren’t drawn!” he said. ‘”There’s a very sophisticated technology involved!”

“Photography’s been around for awhile,” Pol replied.

Pol is one condescending motherfucker.

[Mark] “I could kill you with one hand. I was a blacksmith.”

“Don’t try it,” Pol said. “I was a boxer.”

Also, Pol had two clowns at his birthday party.

Pol can shut down Mark's technology at will and also has a dragon bodyguard. After Mark has been beaten and humiliated by Pol's overwhelming superiority, at least Pol is a gracious winner.

“I feel your magic,” Mark said softly. “I will find a way to stop it. It must be a wave phenomenon, tuned by your nervous system—”

“Don’t lose any sleep over it.”

After that he goes off in search of the magical McGuffin, but not before taking a break to nail Mark's girlfriend. Stay classy, Pol. 

Since I never like my Zelazny reviews to be wholly negative, I'll point out stuff I liked. Big surprise, it's a scene with Mark. Plus one point for using "synesthesia", which is one of my favorite words.

“For want of a better name, I call it a jumble box. It smears your sensory inputs, mixes them. Instant synesthesia.”

The man gestured toward the huge unit to his right.

“That didn’t do it? Just the little one you’re holding?”

“That’s right. The other just recorded what was happening. If you didn’t hurt, tell me why you cried out
so much?”

“I—I couldn’t understand what was happening. Everything was still there, but it was changed...It scared me.”

“No pain?”

“No one place that hurt. Just a—feeling that disaster was coming. Most of the time, it kept getting worse. Sometimes, though—”

“What?”

“There were moments of great pleasure.”

“You were able to count all right.”

“Yes...Most of the numbers were yellow. Some tasted sour.”

Unfortunately, the jumble box is Mark's doom. He turns it on when standing too close to a volcano and then falls in when Pol defeats him in a bass battle:

Pol: (Plays guitar)
Mark: The reverb is hurting my soul! *dies*

Pol's story is continued in Madwand, which isn't quite as bad. I'll get to that one a bit later.