Remember, Remember the Ides of Octember

My old Linguistics professor was one of those ridiculously accomplished polyglots who spoke dozens of different languages. He did have a weakness however. Somehow, even though he taught a class in the United States, he had utterly failed to assimilate any kind of idiom, and whenever anyone used one, crash class would come to a screaming halt as we tried to explain what the phrase meant.

I think the title I used for this post would have given him a stroke.

My lovely wife bought me, among other things, a copy of the Ides of Octember, the Pictorial Bibliography of Roger Zelazny. It's been available for almost a year, but I always put off getting a copy, probably for the same reason I still haven't written a commentary post for Wilderness. I like writing these posts, and I really enjoyed reading the Collected Stories and I was increasingly aware that there would be nothing new to read or to review after I completed each of them.

As the title suggests, it's an absolutely exhaustive bibliography of everything Roger Zelazny published in the English language, not just novels and stories, but also poetry and essays, including a secondary bibliography covering works about him.

I love it. I can't say how much appeal it has for the casual fan, but it is a treasure trove of the hundreds of vivid images associated with the stories and trivia about their formation. Wondering what the winner of the 1986 Yugoslavian Lazar Komarčić award for best science fiction novel translated into Serbo-Croatian was? Wonder no more!

The first thing I looked up was the cover images for Jack of Shadows. I could never find the art for the first copy that I had owned and I was beginning to think that I had imagined it, but there it was right there in front of me. (It was the Richard Hescox painting for the 10th printing of the paperback, if you're following along at home, and I'm still tremendously fond of the piece.)

The Phantom Titles section is another treat for those familiar enough with Zelazny's work to appreciate them, and I often liked the phantom versions more than the actual published titles. I think The Kneeling Legless Man is much more gripping than Deus Irae, though I have to admit that Zelazny's puns always make me smile. Also, it looks the authors had so much trouble with naming the books in the Millennial Contest series that they didn't have any energy for anything else, which would explain a lot about Farce. And Darkband/Dark is the Color are both better titles than A Dark Traveling.

It's a great book and a great resource. For me, it's already given me a couple more ideas for things I haven't covered, like the old computer game, and it promises to give me much more enjoyment in the weeks to come.

"Have you an ill omen for me this day?"
"Beware!" jeered Render.
"Yes! Yes!" cried Caesar. " 'Beware!' That is good! Beware what?"
"The ides-"
"Yes? The ides"
"-of Octember."