Zelazny A to Z Index

A Master Index of the Zelazny A to Z Posts

• Introduction
• A is for Arroyo
• B is for Borshin
• C is for Corwin
• D is for Donnerjack
• E is for Ecclesiastes
• F is for Fire
• G is for Ganelon
• H is for Home and Hangman
• I is for Immortality
• J is for Jacobian
• K is for Kjwalll'kje'k'koothai'lll'kje'k
• L is for Lokapalas
• M is for Merlin
• N is for Night
• O is for Orangutan
• P is for Pride (of a Prince)
• Q is for Qwibbian Qwibbian Kel
• R is for Romance
• S is for Sam
• T is for Tyrannosaurus
• U is for Unicorn
• V is for Vending Machine
• W is for Walpurgisnacht
• X is for X-Division, Xenagogue, Xenium, Xenization, Xenodochium and Xyresic
• Y is for Yok
• Z is for Zahn

Z is for Zahn: Zelazny A to Z

Roger Zelazny isn’t the only author I read, but he’s certainly my favorite and he’s the first I seek out when I enter a bookstore. This task is made easier by virtue of his name. I go to the end of the bookshelf and tilt my head sideways and read the names on the spines. Most chain bookstores organize the sci-fi/fantasy section alphabetically by author, but then they include series that have many different authors after those.

So I would see Tad Williams and Timothy Zahn and I knew that if I saw those guys and got to the Star Wars books that this particular bookstore wouldn’t have anything by Zelazny. I like Zahn’s work quite a bit, but I still bear him a tiny bit of resentment for the crime of not being Roger Zelazny.

Thus concludes my Zelazny A to Z. Thanks for reading!

Y is for Yok: Zelazny A to Z

The "...And Call Me Roger" biography segment of NEFSA's Collected Stories has to be my favorite part of a very strong collection.

The monster monarchs from the Great Slow Kings are no doubt similar to ones Zelazny had written as a kid with lifelong friend Carl Yoke about their namesake monsters Yok and Zlaz.

X is for X-Division, Xenagogue, Xenium, Xenization, Xenodochium and Xyresic: Zelazny A to Z

I wanted to do something different with this post, seeing as most A to Z lists fall back on X-ray or xylophone. I consulted this handy list of 40 words that begin with X and came up with a few contenders.

 X-DIVISION: Victorian slang for criminals or pickpockets, or people who make a living by some underhand means: This could work, seeing as many of Zelazny’s characters operate within the underworld.

XENAGOGUE: Derived from the same root as xenophobia, a xenagogue is someone whose job it is to conduct strangers or to act as a guide: Roger Zelazny is our xenagogue to his fantastic worlds.

XENIUM:  A xenium is a gift or offering given to a stranger, which in its native Ancient Greece would once have been a lavish feast or a refreshing spread of food and fruit. In the 19th century art world, however, xenium came to refer to a still-life painting depicting something like a extravagant display of food or a bowl of fruit: It doesn’t map exactly, but I could imagine the word evolving to apply to the Star-Stone in Doorways in the Sand.

XENIZATION: A 19th-century word meaning “the act of traveling as a stranger.”: Yeah, this list is kind of a cheat because they all have the same root word, but this is another theme common to Zelazny’s work.

XENODOCHIUM: A guesthouse or hostel, or any similar stopping place for travelers or pilgrims. Such as The Sign of the Burning Pestle, which lay upon a coach road near the ocean.

"My name is Jack, and I've traveled far to reach this place, Haric," he replied. "I seek an old woman who was coming here to spend her final days. Her name is Rosalie. Tell me what you know of her."
Haric creased his brow, lowered his head and squinted.
"Bide a moment," he said. "There was an old hag . . . Yes. She died some time ago."
"Oh," said Jack. "Tell me then where she is buried, that I might visit her grave."
Haric snorted and quaffed his wine. He then he began to laugh. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, then raised it to wipe his eyes with his sleeve.
"Buried?" he said. "She was worthless. We only kept her here for charity's sake, and because she knew somewhat of healing."
Tiny bulges of muscle appeared at the hinges of Jack's jaws.
"Then what did you do with her?" he inquired.
"Why we threw her carcass into the ocean.- Small pickings there for fishes, though."
Jack left the Sign of the Burning Pestle burning at his back, there on the coach road by the ocean.

XYRESIC: Means “razor-sharp.” That is a pretty great word. Zelazny’s writing is always pretty xyresic.

W is for Walpurgisnacht: Zelazny A to Z

Walpurgis Night, an abbreviation of Saint Walpurgis Night (from the German Sankt Walpurgisnacht [saŋkt valˈpʊʁɡɪsˌnaχt]), also known as Saint Walpurga's Eve (alternatively spelled Saint Walburga's Eve), is the eve of Christian feast day of Saint Walpurga, an 8th-century abbess in Francia, and is celebrated on night of 30 April and the day of 1 May. This feast commemorates the canonization of Saint Walpurga and the movement of her relics to Eichstätt, both of which occurred on 1 May in the year 870.

You'd think Walpurgisnacht would be an Amber story, as it's an unusual word that Merlin employs several times in Trumps of Doom, but it's a story about a computerized tombstone and a curmudgeonly uncle.

From the same article:

30 April is pálení čarodějnic ("burning of the witches") or čarodějnice ("the witches") in the Czech Republic. Huge bonfires—up to 8 metres (26 ft) tall—are built and burnt in the evening, preferably on top of hills. Young people gather around. Sudden black and dense smoke formations are cheered as "a witch flying away". An effigy of a witch is held up and thrown into a bonfire to burn.As evening advances to midnight and fire is on the wane, it is time to go search for a cherry tree in blossom. Young women should be kissed past midnight (and during the following day) under a cherry tree. They "will not dry up" for an entire year. The First of May is celebrated then as "the day of those in love".

My last name is Czech. Now I finally understand why I feel the urge to set Merlin on fire every April 30th.

V is for Vending Machine: Zelazny A to Z

When he reached the Circle of the Fountain, the prince halted. Several dozen people stood in a shifting line before the Temple of Varuna, most stern and august of all the deities. These people were not preparing to enter the Temple, but rather were engaged in some occupation that required waiting and taking turns. He heard the rattling of coins and he wandered nearer.

It was a machine, gleaming and metallic, before which they moved.

A man inserted a coin into the mouth of a steel tiger. The machine began to purr. He pressed buttons cast in the likenesses of animals and demons. There came then a flashing of lights along the lengths of the Nagas, the two holy serpents who twisted about the transparent face of the machine.

He edged closer.

The man drew down upon the lever that grew from the side of the machine cast in the likeness of the tail of a fish.

A holy blue light filled the interior of the machine; the serpents pulsed redly; and there, in the midst of the light and a soft music that had begun to play, a prayer wheel swung into view and began spinning at a furious pace.

The man wore a beatific expression. After several minutes, the machine shut itself off. He inserted another coin and pulled the lever once more, causing several of those nearer to the end of the line to grumble audibly, remarking to the effect that that was his seventh coin, it was a warm day, there were other people waiting to get some praying done and why did he not go inside and render such a large donation directly to the priests? Someone replied that the little man obviously had much atoning to do. There then began some speculation as to the possible nature of his sins. This was accompanied by considerable laughter.

I learned about Hero of Alexandria early last month. He was a scientist in the first century AD.  From Wikipedia: The first vending machine was also one of his constructions; when a coin was introduced via a slot on the top of the machine, a set amount of holy water was dispensed. This was included in his list of inventions in his book Mechanics and Optics. When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve


Also, I never realized until reading the story for this post, but Sam seems to have coined the phrase “pray-o-mat”.

“Tell me, I saw a machine this morning which I think may best be described as a pray-o-mat, are they very common?"

It’s unlikely the gods would employ such a blasphemous name for the device. (At least, not to outsiders. I could absolutely believe they would call it a pray-o-mat internally.)

It would seem he used in conversation and it caught on after his departure. Of course, it’s possible that the phrase could have arisen independently from several sources, but since it seems to be derived from automat and only Sam or another of the First would have that knowledge, I’m leaning towards it being a phrase of Sam’s invention.

U is for Unicorn: Zelazny A to Z

U·ni·corn

/ˈyo͞onəˌkôrn/

 A mythical animal typically represented as a horse with a single straight horn projecting from its forehead.

Unicorns aren’t overrepresented in Zelazny’s work (I’d suspect a rigorous analysis would show more dragons than unicorns, for instance), but they do feature prominently in two of his best-known works, so I’d go so far as to say that they are the mythical creatures most associated with his writing.

And the packet bore a device which caused me to stiffen where I knelt, perspiration suddenly wetting my brow and my breath coming rapidly.
    It bore a white unicorn on a grass field, rampant, facing to the dexter.
    And I knew that device and it hurt me that I could not name it.

I love the meter of that passage. It seems so dreamlike.

A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature—swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.

T is for Tyrannosaurus: Zelazny A to Z

Tyrannosaurus is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin) is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous Period, 68 to 66 million years ago.It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction.

- "The death of Chadwick! By Tyrannosaurus rex! Under the direction of the Marquis de Sade!"

S is for Sam: Zelazny A to Z

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

I’m certainly getting a lot of mileage out of Lord of Light for this series of posts, but I’m not going to apologize for that. It’s a brilliant work and that opening line is one of the best in genre literature.

For this post, I’m going to offer up another quote to take a closer look at Sam the holy con man.

I barely paid any attention to Cliff’s play. I spent most of it thinking about Tommy’s eerie behavior. Why was he always so secretive about everything? why did he get so angry that Cliff rang my doorbell? Maybe, I thought, we weren’t friends. Maybe Tommy had somehow conned me the whole time. That’s the thing with con artists. They never tell you their story. They give you pieces of it and let you fill in the rest. They let you work out the contradictions and discrepancies. they let you believe that the things that don’t add up are what makes them interesting or special. they let you believe that in those gaps are the things that hurt and wounded them. But maybe there’s nothing in those gaps. Nothing but your stupid willingness to assume the best of someone.

---from The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell.

Sam understands the value of allowing his followers to fill his silence.

R is for Romance: Zelazny A to Z

Ro·mance.

[rōˈmans, ˈrōˌmans]

 A feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.

Zelazny’s stories seldom featured romance as it’s commonly understood as primary focus. However, it’s worth noting that there are several definitions that apply to his writing.

1. A quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life. (synonyms: mystery · glamour · excitement · colourfulness · color · exoticism )
2. A medieval tale dealing with a hero of chivalry, of the kind common in the Romance languages. "The Arthurian romances"
3. A work of fiction dealing with events remote from real life, especially one of a kind popular in the 16th and 17th centuries. "Elizabethan pastoral romances"

But yes, traditional romantic attraction seldom played a large role in Zelazny’s writing. I think that’s largely attributable to the period in which he wrote. Those were simply the kind of story that publishers wanted. As he progressed and the times changed, so too did his writing, and 24 Views in Particular deliberately bucks this trend.

Zelazny was a prodigious talent and he was learning and evolving right up to the end of his career. I’d stop short of saying that it would become a prevalent theme in his works had he lived longer, but it’s an addition to his armory of traits I'll not disparage.

Zelazny, Interrupted.

Sorry for the break in posting! Something came up. We now resume with the regularly scheduled series of posts. If I had planned this out better I probably could have configured it to post W for Walpurgisnacht on April 30th.

Q is for Qwibbian Qwibbian Kel : Zelazny A to Z

The lock began cycling closed and Dorphy was already raising the torch to burn through the welds.

"My vocabulary is still incomplete. What does 'qwibbian' mean in your language?"

The cycling lock struck the cable and severed it as she spoke, so she did not know whether it heard her say the word "berserker."

From Itself Surprised

"I got the story from Qwib-qwib in pieces," she began. "I had to fill in some gaps with conjectures, but they seemed to follow. Ages ago, the Builders apparently fought a war with the Red Race, who proved tougher than they thought. So they hit them with their ultimate weapon—the self-replicating killing machines we call berserkers."

"That seems the standard story," Wade said.

"The Red Race went under," she continued. "They were totally destroyed—but only after a terrific struggle. In the final days of the war they tried all sorts of things, but by then it was a case of too little too late. They were overwhelmed. They actually even tried something I had always wondered about—something no Earth-descended world would now dare to attempt, with ail the restrictions on research along those lines, with all the paranoia…"

P is for Pride (of a Prince): Zelazny A to Z

Pride

/prīd/

1. The consciousness of one's own dignity.
2. Tthe quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's importance.

Two passages on pride from Nine Princes in Amber

"Look, I said I'm sorry," I told him. "What do you want me to do? Nobody got hurt and there was no damage."

    "They shouldn't turn goddamn drivers like you loose on die road!" he yelled. "You're a friggin' menace!"

    Random got out of the car then and said, "Mister, you'd better move along!" and he had a gun in his hand.

    "Put that away," I told him, but he flipped the safety catch off and pointed.

    The guy turned around and started to run, a look of fear widening his eyes and loosening his jaw.

    Random raised the pistol and took careful aim at the man's back, and I managed to knock his arm to the side

just as he pulled the trigger.

    It scored the pavement and ricocheted away.

    Random turned toward me and his face was almost white.

    "You bloody fool!" he said. "That shot could have hit the tank!"

    "It could also have hit the guy you were aiming at."

    "So who the hell cares? We'll never pass this way again, in this generation. That bastard dared to insult a Prince of

Amber! It was your honor I was thinking about."

    "I can take care of my own honor," I told him, and something cold and powerful suddenly gripped me and answered, "for he was mine to kill, not yours, had I chosen," and a sense of outrage filled me.

    He bowed his head then, as the cab door slammed and the truck took off down the road.

    "I'm sorry, brother," he said. "I did not mean to presume. But it offended me to hear one of them speak to you in such a manner. I know I should have waited to let you dispose of him as you saw fit, or at least have consulted with you."

And

    "Wait!" he cried out. "I spoke hastily. I don't want to lose your counsel, if nothing else. Stay with me, please. I will even apologize."

    "That is not necessary," I said, knowing what this thing means to a prince of Amber. "I'll stay. I think I can help you."

The overweening pride of the royal family is largely a characterization that was abandoned in later books, but I think it's interesting to examine how it informs the first one.

O is for Orangutan: Zelazny A to Z

O·rang·u·tan

/ôˈraNG(ɡ)əˌtan/

A large mainly solitary arboreal ape with long reddish hair, long arms, and hooked hands and feet, native to Borneo and Sumatra. The mature male develops fleshy cheek pads and a throat pouch.

The Black Throne isn't my favorite story by Roger Zelazny. It's not even my favorite collaboration of his with Fred Saberhagen. It's a Poe pastiche, but there is something there, and I'm glad I live in a world of where it exists.

N is for Night: Zelazny A to Z

Night, Thing that Cried in the

In the days when I reigned
as Lord of Life and Death,
          says the Prince Who Was A Thousand,
in those days, at Man’s request,
did I lay the Middle Worlds within a sea of power,
tidal, turning thing,
thing to work with peaceful sea change
the birth,
growth,
death
designs upon them;

then all this gave
to Angels ministrant,
their Stations bordering Midworlds,
their hands to stir the tides.
And for many ages did we rule so,
elaborating the life,
tempering the death,
promoting the growth,
extending
the shores of that great, great sea,
as more and more of the Outworlds
were washed by the curling,
crowned by creation's foam.

Then one day,
brooding on the vast abyss
of such a world, brave,
good-seeming,
though dead, barren,
not then touched by the life,
         I roused some sleeping thing
with the kiss of the tide I rode.

M is for Merlin: Zelazny A to Z

Mer·lin

/ˈmərlən/

1.) Son of Corwin and Dara and the protagonist in the second chronicles of Amber.
2.) A contemptibly obnoxious person.
3.) A stupid, irritating, or contemptible man.
4.) Paste-eater

L is for Lokapalas: Zelazny A to Z

Lokapāla, Sanskrit and Pāli for "guardian of the world", has different uses depending on whether it is found in a Hindu or Buddhist context.

In Hinduism, lokapāla refers to the Guardians of the Directions associated with the eight, nine and ten cardinal directions.

In Buddhism, lokapāla refers to the Four Heavenly Kings, and to other protector spirits, whereas the Guardians of the Directions are referred to as the 'dikpālas'.

The girl sat on the floor, a heap of various objects before her. She was scarcely more than a child, and she hugged a brown and white puppy and looked at Kubera with wide, frightened eyes, until he gestured and she smiled.
"Kubera," said Yama.
"Koo-bra," said the girl.
"She is my daughter," said Yama. "Her name is Murga."
"I never knew you had a daughter."
"She is retarded. She suffered some brain damage."
"Congenital, or transfer effect?" asked Kubera.
"Transfer effect."
"I see."
"She is my daughter," repeated Yama, "Murga."
"Yes," said Kubera.
Yama dropped to his knees at her side and picked up a block.
"Block," he said.
"Block," said the girl.
He held up a spoon. "Spoon," he said.
"Spoon," said the girl.
He picked up a ball and held it before her. "Ball," he said.
"Ball," said the girl.
He picked up the block and held it before her again. "Ball,"  she repeated.
Yama dropped it.
"Help me, Kubera," he said.
"I will, Yama. If there is a way, we will find it."
He sat down beside him and raised his hands. The spoon came alive with spoon-ness and the ball with ball-ness and the block with block-ness, and the girl laughed. Even the puppy seemed to study the objects.
"The Lokapalas are never defeated," said Kubera, and the girl picked up the block and stared at it for a long time before she named it.

K is for Kjwalll'kje'k'koothai'lll'kje'k: Zelazny A to Z

This is the sound a dolphin makes.

J is for Jacobian: Zelazny A to Z

"I am Vindici! The son of Death! Bred in the Senecan twilight of Jacobian demigods, and punctual as death!

Roger Zelazny's education was in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and his Master's thesis was an analysis of The Revenger's Tragedy, a seminal work of the era. It was titled Two traditions and Cyril Tourneur: an examination of morality and humor comedy conventions in The Revenger's Tragedy and interestingly, authorship of the piece was reassessed since Zelazny's piece and it is now generally held that Thomas Middleton was the author rather than Cyril Tourneur.

Tourneur did write The Atheist's Tragedy, or the Honest Man's Revenge, which is something of a subversion of the tropes of the revenge play, to the extent that the ghost of the murder victim shows up to tell his son, "Naw, it's all good. No need to seek revenge." I could absolutely imagine Zelazny writing such a twist.

Three hallmarks of the era are metatheatricality, madness and murder, traits we can agree Zelazny's work has in abundance. 

H is for Home and Hangman: Zelazny A to Z

Home

/hōm/

The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.

 Hang·man

 /ˈhaNGmən,ˈhaNGˌman/

 An executioner who hangs condemned people.

I've always had difficulty with titles. I'm very happy with my Doctor Who story "Forever Fallen", but I feel like I could have done better with the title. It’s not bad; it’s just not the best title for the work.

It's tricky encapsulating a work in a single phrase. There are only so many pithy epigrams to go around in the English language, and consequently you occasionally this leads to two books with the same title.

Richard Laymon’s A Night in the Lonesome October is probably fairly well-known to fans of Zelazny’s work. I’ve personally encountered it on bookshelves, and first I was elated to find a version of the classic with a new cover and then quickly dashed when I realized what was going on.

Now both books take their name from Poe’s Ulalume, so it’s not as huge a coincidence as it may seem.

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:

Chris DeVito brought another book with the same name to my attention. Home is the Hangman, by Richard Sale. I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to do so once I wrap up April’s posts and I’ll report back it if the book contains any parallels with Zelazny’s story of the same name or if it’s just one of those coincidences that occurs from time to time.