Roger Zelazny Book Review: Lord of Light, Part III - The Curse of the Buddha

This is the third part of a review of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light that will span at least four, and probably more posts. Part one is here and part two is here and an index of all my Zelazny posts is at this link.

We're now up to chapter four, which details Sam's descent into Hellwell.

I remember the first time I heard the name Hellwell. It was actually before I read Lord of Light and it was mentioned briefly in the introduction to a paperback copy of some book or another. I want to say it was Jack of Shadows, but it might have been one of the anthologies, but I'm away from my books now and can't check. Zelazny was talking about iconic moments in his stories. He said something about the descent into Hellwell. I was about fourteen or fifteen, I guess, and I loved all manner of sci-fi and fantasy, no matter how corny, and even then, I thought, "That's a stupid name."

And, years later, having read Lord of Light many times...I still think it's kind of a stupid name. A great concept, just kind of a lame name. Hey, lame name! That rhymes! Just like Hellwell!

...

Zelazny has written that he was originally going to kill Yama off in the middle of the book. I wonder if it would have been at the hand of Rild (which seems unlikely and would have spun the narrative in a completely different direction), drowning in quicksand (which would have been ignominious) or at Hellwell.

One thing you know for sure, though, is much like rocks shaped like skulls in kid's cartoons, any place named Hellwell is bad news. In Lord of Light, Hellwell is where humanity imprisoned the rakasha, the energy beings who were the indigenous population of the planet. (Yeah, kind of sucks to be them, but it was them or us.)

This chapter has two distinct parts and I love them both. The first is when Sam enters Hellwell, and winds up possessed as he misjudges the power the rakasha are capable of bringing to bear.

I liked his description of the act of possession, though.

There came a dream.

He was running.

His shadow lay before him, and, as he ran upon it, it grew.

It grew until it was no longer his shadow but a grotesque outline. Suddenly he knew that his shadow had been overrun by that of his pursuer: overrun, overwhelmed, submerged and surmounted.

Then he knew a moment of terrible panic, there upon the blind plain over which he fled.

He knew that it was now his own shadow.

The doom which had pursued him no longer lay at his back.

He knew that he was his own doom.

Knowing that he had finally caught up with himself, he laughed aloud, wanting really to scream.

Taraka uses Sam's body to terrorize the countryside. The bulk of the freed rakasha, like idiots, boil outwards into the world to sate their appetites, an action that draws the attention of the gods directly to Hellwell. When Taraka asks Sam why he begrudges him the use of his body, Sam answers with one of my favorite passages:

"It is because I am what I am, demon...It is because I am a man who occasionally aspires to things beyond the belly and the phallus. I am not not the saint the Buddhists think me to be, and I am not the hero out of legend. I am a man who knows much fear, and who occasionally feels guilt. Mainly, though, I am a man who has set out to do a thing, and you are now blocking my way. Thus you inherit my curse, whether I win or whether I lose now, Taraka, your destiny has already been altered. This is the curse of the Buddha, you will never again be the same as once you were."

Uh oh. This is turning into one of those "Hey! I liked this quote too!" reviews.

The second part of the chapter is when the gods show up and things really get crazy.

"Describe this stranger!" ordered Siddhartha, forcing the words through his own lips.

"He stands very tall," said the demon, "and he wears black breeches and boots. Above the waist he has on him a strange garment. It is like a seamless white glove, upon his right hand only, which extends all the way up his arm and across his shoulders, wrapping his neck and rising tight and smooth about his entire head. Only the lower part of his face is visible, for he wears over his eyes large black lenses which extend half a span outward from his face. At his belt he wears a short sheath of the same white material as the garment, not containing a dagger, however, but a wand. Beneath the material of his garment, where it crosses his shoulders and comes up upon his neck, there is a hump, as if he wears there a small pack."

"Lord Agni!" said Siddhartha. "You have described the God of Fire!"

"Aye, this must be," said the Rakasha. "For as I looked beyond his flesh, to see the colors of his true being, I saw there a blaze like unto the heart of the sun. If there be a God of Fire, then this indeed is he."

"Now must we flee," said Siddhartha, "for there is about to be a great burning. We cannot fight with this one, so let us go quickly."

"We cannot fight this one?" I think you're selling yourself a little short here. Don't you kick his ass in short order in a couple pages?

Agni had entered, and he pointed the wand.

"Do not move, Sam! Demon!" he cried, above the roar of the engines; and as he spoke, his lenses clicked red and he smiled.

"Demon," he stated. "Do not move, or you and your host will burn together!"

Sam sprang upon him. Agni fell easily when he struck, for he had not believed that the other would reach him.

Sam's power is that of electrodirection, mind over energy. It's kind of poorly defined, but it serves to bind the energy forms of the rakasha (thus the sobriquet "Binder") and disrupt the functioning of electrical circuitry, including Agni's fire wand. I do think it's kind of odd that Yama never undertook a study on Sam's Attribute. He never had Sam to study directly, but we know that he had undertaken intense research into the rakasha and I assume he could deduce the nature of the ability used to bind them. (On the other hand, it's possible that his research into the rakasha came after his departure from Heaven.)

Despite his best efforts, Sam is eventually captured. He has a rather civil conversation with Yama on journey to Heaven. I'm a sucker for a principled adversary, and the exchange is among Zelazny's finest. Two sincere, intelligent people discussing their irreconcilable views in a civilized fashion.

"What's First Base like these days?"

"You'll hardly recognize the place," said Yama. "If everyone in it were to die at this moment, it would still be perfect ten thousand years from now. The flowers would still bloom and the music would play and the fountains would ripple the length of the spectrum. Warm meals would still be laid within the garden pavilions. The City itself is immortal."

"A fitting abode, I suppose, for those who call themselves gods."

"Call themselves?" asked Yama. "You are wrong, Sam, Godhood is more than a name. It is a condition of being. One does not achieve it merely by being immortal, for even the lowliest laborer in the fields may achieve continuity of existence. Is it then the conditioning of an Aspect? No. Any competent hypnotist can play games with the self-image. Is it the raising up of an Attribute? Of course not. I can design machines more powerful and more accurate than any faculty a man may cultivate. Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that those who look upon you know this without hearing your name spoken. Some ancient poet said that the world is full of echoes and correspondences. Another wrote a long poem of an inferno, wherein each man suffered a torture which coincided in nature with those forces which had ruled his life. Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one's ruling passions. Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them."

"So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?"

"You choose the wrong adjective."

"You've already used up all the others."

"It appears that our minds will never meet on this subject."

"If someone asks you why you're oppressing a world and you reply with a lot of poetic crap, no. I guess there can't be a meeting of minds."

Zelazny called the pair two aspects of the same character, and I have to agree. Fascinating to read them interacting, though. That's the perfect exchange illustrating their differences right there.

I feel some regrets about returning to a mere "quotes and commentary" method for my review here, but Zelazny's words are simply more eloquent than mine, so I leave you with Sam's promise to Yama.

When I have died the real death, then will I be changed. But until that moment I will hate Heaven with every breath that I draw. If Brahma has me burnt, I will spit into the flames. If he has me strangled, I will attempt to bite the executioner's hand. If my throat is cut, may my blood rust the blade that does it.

Yama tells him that he would be a good god, to which Sam replies "Good God!" Until next time.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: Lord of Light, Part II - All Rild Up

Links to each part of the review: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six 

I'm not entirely satisfied with the first part of my Lord of Light review. It covers all the points that I wanted to discuss, but it meanders all over the place and the different areas never coalesce into a unified whole. I'll go back to correct the odd typo in and old post, but I'm loathe to rewrite something substantially once it's already out there. I'll see if I can tighten up my style for this installment.

We finished the last one with the end of Chapter 1. I'm going to skip over Chapter 2 almost entirely. It's awesome, of course, but not so awesome as what comes later, and it's mostly serves to set up later chapter.

If, for some reason, you're reading the second part of a spoiler filled Roger Zelazny book review (the page indexing the rest of my Zelazny reviews an be found here) without being familiar with the book, the first chapter is set in the present day and deals with Sam's return from the cloud, and the next few describe the events leading up to that. The second chapter deals with his return from an ancient land, where he returns to civilization and learns that things have changed in his absence, and not for the better. His peers, the First, the original settlers of the planet, have set themselves up as honest to God gods, and they rule over the world in this fashion.

It's all around pretty good, but nothing in it inspires me to quote entire passages at length. Its goal is to set the stage for what is to come, and it achieves that admirably.

However, I would be remiss if I let a recap of the chapter pass without mentioning Zelazny's most famous pun. When the Shan of Irabek suffers an unexpected grand mal seizure, Zelazny describes it with the line: "Then the fit hit the Shan." It's a groaner, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Chapter 3: Death and the Executioner.

It is said that, when the Teacher appeared, those of all castes went to hear his teachings, as well as animals, gods and an occasional saint, to come away improved and uplifted. It was generally conceded that he had received enlightenment, except by those who believed him to be a fraud, sinner, criminal or practical joker. These latter ones were not all to be numbered as his enemies; but, on the other hand, not all of those improved and uplifted could be counted as his friends and supporters. His followers called him Mahasamatman and some said he was a god. So, after it was seen that he had been accepted as a teacher, was looked upon with respect, had many of the wealthy numbered as his supporters and had gained a reputation reaching far across the land, he was referred to as Tathagatha, meaning He Who Has Achieved. It must be noted that while the goddess Kali (sometimes known as Durga in her softer moments) never voiced a formal opinion as to his buddhahood, she did render him the singular honor of dispatching her holy executioner to pay him her tribute, rather than a mere hired assassin ...

That assassin was named Rild. I always thought it was pronounced to rhyme with "Killed", but Victor Bevine, the narrator of my audio book, pronounces it to rhyme with "Wild", as in "all riled up", thus the name of this review.

Rild falls ill on the way, and as he is nursed back to health, he abandons his mission and becomes a monk of the Buddha, the guise under which Sam is now operating.

Summer passed. There was no doubt now that there were two who had received enlightenment: Tathagatha and his small disciple, whom they called Sugata. It was even said that Sugata was a healer, and that when his eyes shone strangely and the icy touch of his hands came upon a twisted limb, that limb grew straight again. It was said that a blind man's vision had suddenly returned to him during one of Sugata's sermons.

There were two things in which Sugata believed: the Way of Salvation and Tathagatha, the Buddha.

"Illustrious One," he said to him one day, "my life was empty until you revealed to me the True Path. When you received your enlightenment, before you began your teaching, was it like a rush of fire and the roaring of water and you everywhere and a part of everything, the clouds and the trees, the animals in the forest, all people, the snow on the mountaintop and the bones in the field?"

"Yes," said Tathagatha.

"I, also, know the joy of all things," said Sugata.

"Yes, I know," said Tathagatha.

"I see now why once you said that all things come to you. To have brought such a doctrine into the world, I can see why the gods were envious. Poor gods! They are to be pitied. But you know. You know all things."

Tathagatha did not reply.

In that passage, Rild, now calling himself Sugata, has achieved enlightenment. He believes in the words of the Buddha, and in the Buddha himself but Sam, himself the Buddha, does not. I think that Sam is a decent enough fellow that this misguided faith (in both himself and his words) from such a good man unsettles him. Yet, it doesn't surprise me. When Jen and I first moved to New Hamster, we joined a Unitarian Universalist discussion group. I forget what exactly the topic was, but I remember the pastor saying that he stopped believing in God shortly before he completed seminary. (Feel free to insert your own UU joke here) I was somewhat surprised by this, but I wasn't shocked, because it seems like the "true believers" are never at the head of their respective organization. Perhaps it's because they are less willing to compromise on matters of principle and that makes them less suitable for leading an organization in the secular world.

In the passage below, because Rild has failed, Yama Dharma, God of Death is coming to kill Sam and Rild is barring his passage.

It was a small man who stood there, wearing the dark garments of a pilgrim, caught about with a leather harness from which was suspended a short, curved blade of bright steel. This man's head was closely shaven, save for a small lock of white hair. His eyebrows were white above eyes that were dark, and his skin was pale; his ears appeared to be pointed.

The traveler raised his hand and spoke to this man, saying, "Good afternoon, pilgrim."

The man did not reply, but moved to bar his way, positioning himself before the log that led across the stream.

"Pardon me, good pilgrim, but I am about to cross here and you are making my passage difficult," he stated.

"You are mistaken, Lord Yama, if you think you are about to pass here," replied the other.

The One in Red smiled, showing a long row of even, white teeth. "It is always a pleasure to be recognized," he acknowledged, "even by one who conveys misinformation concerning other matters."

"I do not fence with words," said the man in black.

"Oh?" The other raised his eyebrows in an expression of exaggerated inquiry. "With what then do you fence, sir? Surely not that piece of bent metal you bear."

"None other."

"I took it for some barbarous prayer-stick at first. I understand that this is a region fraught with strange cults and primitive sects. For a moment, I took you to be a devotee of some such superstition. But if, as you say, it is indeed a weapon, then I trust you are familiar with its use?"

"Somewhat," replied the man in black.

"Good, then," said Yama, "for I dislike having to kill a man who does not know what he is about. I feel obligated to point out to you, however, that when you stand before the Highest for judgment, you will be accounted a suicide."

The other smiled faintly.

"Any time that you are ready, deathgod, I will facilitate the passage of your spirit from out its fleshy envelope."

"One more item only, then," said Yama, "and I shall put a quick end to conversation. Give me a name to tell the priests, so that they shall know for whom they offer the rites."

"I renounced my final name but a short while back," answered the other. "For this reason, Kali's consort must take his death of one who is nameless."

"Rild, you are a fool," said Yama, and drew his blade.

The man in black drew his.

"And it is fitting that you go unnamed to your doom. You betrayed your goddess."

"Life is full of betrayals," replied the other, before he struck, "By opposing you now and in this manner, I also betray the teachings of my new master. But I must follow the dictates of my heart. Neither my old name nor my new do therefore fit me, nor are they deserved, so call me by no name!"

Yama kills him and advances onward to speak with Sam, the Buddha.

When he was about twenty paces away, the other turned his head.

"Greetings, oh Death," he said.

"Greetings, Tathagatha."

"Tell me why you are here."

"It has been decided that the Buddha must die."

"That does not answer my question, however. Why have you come here?"

"Are you not the Buddha?"

"I have been called Buddha, and Tathagatha, and the Enlightened One, and many other things. But, in answer to your question, no, I am not the Buddha. You have already succeeded in what you set out to do. You slew the real Buddha this day."

"My memory must indeed be growing weak, for I confess that I do not remember doing this thing."

"The real Buddha was named by us Sugata," replied the other. "Before that, he was known as Rild."

"Rild!" Yama chuckled. "You are trying to tell me that he was more than an executioner whom you talked out of doing his job?"

"Many people are executioners who have been talked out of doing their jobs," replied the one on the rock. "Rild gave up his mission willingly and became a follower of the Way. He was the only man I ever knew to really achieve enlightenment."

"Is this not a pacifistic religion, this thing you have been spreading?"

"Yes."

Yama threw back his head and laughed. "Gods! Then it is well you are not preaching a militant one! Your foremost disciple, enlightenment and all, near had my head this afternoon!"

A tired look came over the Buddha's wide countenance. "Do you think he could actually have beaten you?"

Yama was silent a moment, then, "No," he said.

"Do you think he knew this?"

"Perhaps," Yama replied.

"Did you not know one another prior to this day's meeting? Have you not seen one another at practice?"

"Yes," said Yama. "We were acquainted."

"Then he knew your skill and realized the outcome of the encounter."

Yama was silent.

"He went willingly to his martyrdom, unknown to me at the time. I do not feel that he went with real hope of beating you."

"Why, then?"

"To prove a point."

"What point could he hope to prove in such a manner?"

"I do not know. I only know that it must be as I have said, for I knew him. I have listened too often to his sermons, to his subtle parables, to believe that he would do a thing such as this without a purpose. You have slain the true Buddha, deathgod. You know what I am."

I like the manner in which Zelazny justifies Sam's coming monologue. Yama is mired in quicksand, and can't climb out. "For the moment, however, you are something every preacher longs for, a captive audience, representing the opposition. So, I have a brief sermon for you, Lord Yama."

Possibly the strongest chapter in Zelazny's greatest book. (Though the others are pretty wonderful, also.)The part that sticks with me after everything is Sam's last line in the passage above: You know what I am. Sam knows it too. He has no illusions about what he is or what he is doing. And yet, despite not believing his own words, he somehow found something true and beautiful and inspired his disciple to surpass him. Rild is only mentioned once after this chapter, but I like to believe that he did not make his sacrifice without purpose, that he did it to shape the path that Sam would take.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: Lord of Light, Part I - This is reality, the Nameless.

Links to each part of the review: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six


Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rules their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons. Lord of Light.

Well, this is the big one. Lord of Light. The strongest story by my favorite author. I've touched on some of his other works in passing.

I sometimes split my longer reviews into several segments, and that's what I'm going to have to do here, otherwise, my review, like rivers, will threaten to flow on forever.

I guess I'll open with a little more preamble than usual. I forget when I first read Lord of Light. After Amber, Jack of Shadows and Roadmarks, but before This Immortal. I know that influenced a lot of the stories I tried to write in high school. So, I was about 15 or 16, I would guess.

One of the most interesting bits of trivia about the book is that it was used as cover for a CIA operation.

Wikipedia describes it like this: "In 1979 it was announced that Lord of Light would be made into a 50 million dollar film. It was planned that the sets for the movie would be made permanent and become the core of a science fiction theme park to be built in Aurora, Colorado. Famed comic-book artist Jack Kirby was even contracted to produce artwork for set design. However, due to legal problems the project was never completed.

Parts of the unmade film project, the script and Kirby's set designs, were subsequently acquired by the CIA as cover for an exfiltration team for six US diplomatic staff trapped – in Tehran but outside the embassy compound – by the Iranian hostage crisis. The team had a version of the script, renamed to Argo; they pretended to be scouting a location in Iran for shooting a Hollywood film from that script."

This website has more details, plus a link where you can buy some Jack Kirby Lord of Light art! (If not for yourself, buy for me. My birthday is coming up this month!)

I still think Roadmarks is the most cinematic of all of Zelazny's works, but I would not say no to a Guillermo del Toro directed adaptation using Kirby's concept art.

I've been listening slowly, an hour or two every day. Audible.com offered the book at one time, but no longer does so. (Though, interestingly, I was able to download it when I installed the Audible app on my phone.) I assume it's some sort of right issue.

The introduction to the book is by a guy named Jim Kelly. He gives a broad outline, gushes about what he likes about it and offers up some random quotes, which is pretty much what I'm doing with my reviews, so it was kind of cool to see someone else approach it in that fashion.

One phrase that stuck out was his observation was that Roger Zelazny "was just 30 years old and at the height of his powers" when he wrote the book. "At the height of his powers" seems like such a Zelazny-esque phrase. (Specifically, it made me think of "...for his Jenny was a specially designed deathcar, built for him by the Archengineer of the Geeyem Dynasty, far to the East, and all the cunning of that great artificer had gone into her construction" line from Devil Car.

The audio book is wonderfully performed by Victor Bevine. I'm glad I could get a chance to listen to this on audio. It's interesting to hear the names of the gods and concepts pronounced correctly rather than the bizarre mangling I was giving them as I read. He gives a beautiful reading. I have some Zelazny books read by the author, some of which are really good (A Night in the Lonesome October, which I'll be reviewing before the end of the month, springs to mind) but he has a strange meter when reading some of his other works that can sometimes be distracting.

I loved the scene with Mara. Reproducing what I love about it would entail posting the entire exchange, so I'll just say that everything about it is perfect, and spelling your name backwards never fooled anyone.

Sam's sermon is flawless I thought of it when I was blogging about my infant daughter and how I was constantly amazed at how quickly she incorporates new skills into her activities. As adults, when we learn something new, we tend to keep it at arm's length until we determine where it belongs in the set of categories through which we define our world. I wasn't at that point familiar with the concept of schemata, but that's pretty much what I was trying to say. She was still developing her schemata at that point, and she wasn't trying to understand things, but experience them, but through that experience comes understanding.

Allow me to illustrate with a Zelazny passage:

"Names are not important," he said. "To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.'

"If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality, the Nameless.

This reminds of a line from Jack of Shadows: "Each of you colors reality in keeping with your means of controlling it."

That only takes us up to the end of the first chapter, but I have to stop here. I dearly love all of Roger Zelazny's writing, but as the man says, he's at the height of his powers here. The meter, the poetry, the philosophy, all work some sort of alchemy to produce what I believe is the greatest science fiction novel ever written.

I'll be back soon with the second part of the review.

Four years ago today

It is October, which brings with it birthdays and car accidents.

Jen got rear-ended coming home from doing some last minute shopping for Lily's party. She was hit by some random idiot who "just looked down for a second", which is word-for-word, the same explanation used by the last random idiot who hit her five years ago. Jen is reasonably certain that he was talking or texting when he hit her, though she doesn't have any proof.

Fortunately was the only one in the car when she got hit and it's still drivable, though initial estimates place the damage at greater than the value of the car. She was also packed for a show, and lost a bunch of her eggs. She's fine, but this is Lily's birthday weekend, and thus a bad time for this to happen and we'll probably be down to one car for a while, but things could have turned out a lot worse. From Jen's description, the expensive BMW that hit her crumpled like tin foil from the impact.

Her car was driven into the one in front of hers, but her airbag didn't deploy, which is good, because they can sometimes hurt smaller people when they go off.

My main concern is the insurance. The car is drivable in the short term, but it will need to be repaired or replaced eventually and State Farm moved exceedingly slowly the last time, taking almost an entire year to get the check to us., though I think the big problem last time is that the guy who hit her then didn't have any insurance and was using a borrowed car, so that made recovery difficult. More on this as it develops.

Lily has a little underwater seascape for her wallpaper, just a little strip of it running around the room at about 3/4 up the wall. We were holding hands and telling funny stories. Lily gets Highlights magazine and there's a little feature called "What's Wrong?", where you have to identify unusual features in a picture, like space aliens at a picnic, or a knight diving into a swimming pool. Lily really likes that, so Jen started a game where she and Lily tell stories like that about her wallpaper. Lily looked at the dolphin and said "Oh, I have a good one! The dolphin there is a real dolphin! But when people ask him if he's real, he tells them that he's pretend."

And I thought, okay there, Zhuangzi.

"Am I a dolphin or am I a dolphin dreaming I am a dolphin?"

She was excited and had trouble sleeping the night before her party, so I asked her which comic book she wanted to read. (She really liked the Tiny Titans book she got as a favor from Eric's party, so I picked up a couple more when I found them cheap.)

Lily: I don't like comic books.
Me: Then why do you ask me to read them?
Lily: Because I know you like reading comic books
Me: Aha! Then why do you ask mommy to read them to you?

She had no answer for that, and I think she was just trying to delay bedtime. I felt good about being able to outsmart her, but she was only three when I did that, and now that she's turned four today, I think I'm going to have trouble outwitting her.

We were looking at Halloween decorations around the house and we saw a little chipped Halloween mug and Lily commented, "It's Chip's Halloween costume!" (Chip was the chipped little teacup in Beauty and the Beast.)

Her party was pretty nice. Jen bought way too much food. I also tell her that she's buying too much food, and she always does it anyway. I'll be eating Eggo waffles for lunch for the next two weeks.

It was mostly family, but the little neighbor girl made it over too. Lily had a ball. She got a ton of Princess stuff and a pillow pet, which is a stuffed animal that transforms into a pillow. Lily opened it threw her arms around it and said "I love it! This is great for a vacation!"

I blinked and looked at Jen. "Is our daughter reciting ad copy?" And I've never seen a commercial for them, but I have to assume that's the case, because it's such a strangely specific thing to say.

Later on, she was playing with her Pillow pet, and said "She's such a nice pet. I don't want to hurt her." I explained that "You can rest on mommy's shoulder or daddy's tummy without hurting us, because you're gentle and we're strong. I bet pillow pets are like that." Lily nodded sagely and added. "Yeah, and also, she's just pretend."

Later on, she was showing me her princess oven which has light up Princesses. I was like "Wow! Is that magic?" She shook her head. "No, it's just batteries."

She is totally going to be the kid that spoils Santa for the rest of the class.

I had a pretty nice time at the party, in no small part due to the fact that my brother's girlfriend showed up and played Scott Pilgrim with me. It's even MORE fun with two players!

Lily was telling me about germs earlier, and she seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what to do to minimize risk, so I asked her where she had learned about it and she told me that she had seen it on Sid the Science Kid. So that's what we watched. The character design on Sid looks an awful lot the like the designs from Dinosaurs. Brian Henson involved in both, and I'm not sure if the similarity across such vastly different media is a bug or a feature

After the show was over, I asked her "What's science?" and she said "It's Cool Stuff!"

I thought that it was awesome that she thought science was cool and I mentioned this to Jen, who said, "Oh, I thought she said 'It's school stuff,'" This was easily verifiable, so I asked Lily, and turned out that she had said "It's school stuff". Ah, well. If I want to raise a good scientist, I have to set a good example by owning up to my mistakes.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: My Name is Legion

"For the love of God, Gort, put on some deodorant!"

Welcome back to my series of Roger Zelazny book reviews. Today, I've decided to recap the anthology, My Name is Legion. It contains three stories following the same nameless protagonist. The first of the stories is good, the second I find rather weak and the final story won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

The idea behind the stories is a simple one. The time is the near future and as much information as mankind could manage to record was entered into a Central database. (The idea was probably informed by Zelazny's time in the Social Security Administration.) There is an extended flashback where the main character talks about his time in the database project, and his doubts and concerns mirror those raised by privacy advocates in modern times. Zelazny was prescient with his concerns about the information society we are only now entering long before it became a realistic possibility.

Everybody, nowadays, has a birth certificate, academic record, credit rating, a history of all his travels and places of residence and, ultimately, there is a death certificate somewhere on file. Once, all things of this sort existed in separate places. Then, some people set out to combine them. They called it a Central Data Bank. It resulted in massive changes in the order of human existence. Not all of these changes, I am now certain, were for the better.

What the people in my project were doing was linking every data bank in existence, so that public records, financial records, medical records, specialized technical records all existed and were available from one source—through key stations whose personnel had access to this information at various levels of confidentiality.

His personal data was never entered into the system (he destroyed the, *sigh* punch cards, the only detail that dates an otherwise superb series) but he had a back door into the system so that he could become anybody he wanted. He didn't want to live within the system, though, so he spends some time training in judo, lockpicking, studied "every little thing I could think of that I thought would help me get by." He works as an independent contractor for Walsh Investigations, the third (and later second) -largest detective agency in the world. I like not only his method for his contacting the owner and his description of the act itself.

I send one Christmas card each year, and it is unsigned. All it bears—in block print—is a list of four bars and the cities in which they exist. On Easter, May Day, the first day of summer, and Halloween, I sit in those bars and sip drinks from nine until midnight , local time. Then I go away. Each year, they're different bars...Sometimes Don Walsh shows up, sits down next to me and orders a beer. We strike up a conversation, then take a walk. Sometimes he doesn't show up. He never misses two in a row, though. And the second time he always brings me some cash..

I've got it in paperback, (two copies, one of which is misprinted. It goes from 1 to 193, then for the final twenty pages, it has the text of pages 173 to 193. I bought it in the dark days when I occasionally only had one copy of a given Zelazny book and I was really getting into the book and I found it super annoying that I wouldn't be able to find out how it ended)

(Also, fun fact! According to wikipedia: In the film Phantasm, a paperback copy of the book is clearly seen on Mike Pearson's nightstand as he prepares to open the box containing a finger of the Tall Man.)

The Eve of RUMOKO

The gist of the first story is that Nameless is trying to figure out who is sabotaging the Rumoko project, which aims to produce an artificial volcano with the eventual goal of producing a chain of manmade islands. Zelazny goes into a fair amount of detail about the science involved and it seems pretty plausible to me.

Nameless also gets bonus points for using the alias "Albert Schweitzer".

The interrogation scene where he tries to beat the truth serum is a work of genius. Zelazny does an excellent job of portraying the guys conducting it as smart, but Nameless as even smarter. It's nearly a work without villains. I'll include a slight spoiler here along with my praise, but Nemo's adversaries seem like more or less decent guys. They have the concern, legitimate, as it turns out, that the Rumoko project would endanger the underwater city from which they hale.

For this review, I read it where it was collected in Volume 4 of the Collected Works of Roger Zelazny. You should buy the books, by the way. They cover much the same material as my reviews in this blog, and while I think anyone reading this far into a Roger Zelazny review is probably aware of their existence, but I thought I'd throw in a plug anyway.

At the end of each work is some commentary and an explanation of unusual terms in the story. I usually think this is superb, but I disagree with them on their interpretation of a particular reference.

When detonating the atomic to spark the creation of the island, the text reads: "Over the port bow, I saw the man stand up. He was old and grey and wore a wide-brimmed hat" they say the old man is likely Odin. Zelazny has twice referred to mushroom clouds with this imagery (In Lord of Light "I think the tall man of smoke who wears a wide hat shall bend above Nirriti's palace" and in Deus Irea as well, I believe) so I think they're mistaken here.

Then again, I'm just a part time Zelazny blogger, so what do I know?

(On the other hand, I'm sure I'm currently among the most prolific Zelazny bloggers in the world, so that must count for something)

Kjwalll'kje'k'koothai'lll'kje'k

This one had some dolphins in it.

Home Is the Hangman

It's an extremely interesting story. It won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, though you know what those awards are, you probably know this already and if you don't, you probably don't care. Also, it builds on concepts he explored in an earlier story called "The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current", which is the best reference to a Dylan Thomas poem, EVER!

Home is the Hangman is the story of A KILLER ROBOT FROM BEYOND THE STARS!!!! MST3K aside, that's actually a pretty accurate description of the action. The hangman was an exploration robot. It started behaving erratically, eventually stopped transmitting and was given up for lost. Shortly before the events of the story, it has returned to Earth apparently to seek revenge on its creators.

I like how Don Walsh goes from operating the third largest detective agency in the world to operating the second largest. I like to think that this improvement in his fortunes comes through Nemo's efforts.

Hangman makes for interesting reading. Society hasn't changed that much since it was written in the late 1970s, but technology continues to advance. So we get an odd juxtaposition of conversations we could be having (hell, are having) today with talk about a worldwide database on punch cards.

The story has a great cold open and we return to these lines near the end.

Beside the helmet, next to the gun, in front of my hand, stood a small walkie-talkie. This was for purposes of warning Bert and Larry if I should hear the click of a microswitch followed by a humming sound, should see a light come on and begin to blink rapidly. Then they would know that Tom and Clay, with whom we had lost contact when the shooting began, had failed to destroy the enemy and doubtless lay lifeless at their stations now, a little over a kilometer to the south. Then they would know that they, too, were probably about to die.

I called out to them when I heard the click. I picked up the helmet and rose to my feet as its light began to blink.

But it was already too late.

I used to work in Competitive Intelligence (much like Nameless, I have something of an eclectic background) and it was neat to see him employ his tradecraft tricks for getting into the apartment building.

I enjoyed Leila Thackeray's snark about the Liberal Arts:

"You are saying that if it did pull through, it would hate us. That strikes me as an unfair attempt to invoke the spirit of Sigmund Freud: Oedipus and Electra in one being, out to destroy all its parents—the authors of every one of its tensions, anxieties, hang-ups, burned into its impressionable psyche at a young and defenseless age. Even Freud didn't have a name for that one. What should we call it?"

"A Hermacis complex?" I suggested.

"Hermacis?"

"Hermaphroditus having been united in one body with the nymph Sahnacis, I've just done the same with their names. That being would then have had four parents against whom to react."

"Cute," she said, smiling. "If the liberal arts do nothing else, they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace."

Oh, snap!

I really like his portrayal of David Fentris. Leila on Fentris: "Some people find comfort in religion. Others . . . You know. Others take it up late in life with a vengeance and a half. They don't use it quite the way it was intended. It comes to color all their thinking."

For an author whose work is so steeped in mythology, religion, as it's commonly understood, seldom enters into his stories. We have Willy Boy, the fallen faith healer in Coils, but off the top of my head, we only get three characters who self-identify as Christians, Lancelot (both of them), Nirriti the Black and David Fentris. I know that Zelazny was a lapsed Catholic, and I wonder how that informed his writing. Possibly, it was a structural thing, rather than a personal one, as such issues would not be germane to the story and Zelazny tends to keep his stories very tightly plotted. It's interesting to speculate, but ultimately futile, I think.

Or perhaps he just used up all his awesome on Fentris, who is such a fascinating character:

About fifteen years my senior, Dave had been with the data bank project when I had known him. Where a number of us had begun having second thoughts as the thing progressed, Dave had never been anything less than wildly enthusiastic. A wiry five-eight, graycropped, gray eyes back of homrims and heavy glass, cycling between preoccupation and near-frantic darting, he had had a way of verbalizing half-completed thoughts as he went along, so that you might begin to think him a representative of that tribe which had come into positions of small authority by means of nepotism or politics. If you would listen a few more minutes, however, you would begin revising your opinion as he started to pull his musings together into a rigorous framework. By the time he had finished, you generally wondered why you hadn't seen it all along and what a guy like that was doing in a position of such small authority. Later, it might strike you, though, that he seemed sad whenever he wasn't enthusiastic about something. And while the gung-ho spirit is great for short-range projects, larger ventures generally require somewhat more equanimity.

Nameless is smart, but Fentris is brilliant. One of the many things I admire about Roger Zelazny is his ability to write smart people more convincingly than anyone I've ever read. Witness this exchange. (Nameless is going by the alias John Donne here)

[Fentris] "We were doing something we had no business doing,"

"That being...?"

"For one thing, attempting to create an artificial intelligence."

"Why had you no business doing that?"

"A man with a name like yours shouldn't have to ask."

I chuckled.

"If I were a preacher," I said, "I would have to point out that there is no biblical injunction against it—unless you've been worshiping it on the sly."

He shook his head. "Nothing that simple, that obvious, that explicit. Times have changed since the Good Book was written, and you can't hold with a purely fundamentalist approach in complex times. What I was getting at was something a little more abstract. A form of pride, not unlike the classical hubris—the setting up of oneself on a level with the Creator."

"Did you feel that—pride?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure it wasn't just enthusiasm for an ambitious project that was working well?"

"Oh, there was plenty of that. A manifestation of the same thing."

"I do seem to recall something about man being made in the Creator's image, and something else about trying to live up to that. It would seem to follow that exercising one's capacities along similar lines would be a step in the right direction—an act of conformance with the Divine ideal, if you'd like."

"But I don't like. Man cannot really create. He can only rearrange what is already present. Only God can create."

And slightly later:

"Just for the record," I suggested, "if the Hangman had had full access to the necessary equipment and was able to construct another unit such as itself, would you consider it guilty of the same thing that is bothering you?"

He shook his head.

"Don't get all cute and Jesuitical with me, Donne. I'm not that far away from fundamentals. Besides, I'm willing to admit I might be wrong and that there may be other forces driving it to the same end."

And after that:

"What if you are wrong on the supernatural," I said, "but correct on the other? Supposing it is coming under the circumstances you feel it proper to resist? But supposing you are not next on its list? Supposing it gets to one of the others next, instead of you? If you are so sensitive about guilt and sin, don't you think that you would be responsible for that death—if you could prevent it by telling me just a little bit more? If it's confidentiality you're worried about—"

"No," he said. "You cannot trick me into applying my principles to a hypothetical situation which will only work out the way that you want it to. Not when I am certain that it will not arise. Whatever moves the Hangman, it will come to me next. If I cannot stop it, then it cannot be stopped until it has completed its job."

Nameless also observes: "Marvin Minsky once said that when intelligent machines were constructed, they would be just as stubborn and fallible as men on these questions."

I wind up blogging a lot about Marvin Minksy a lot on this blog.

The conclusion took me by surprise the first time, but subsequent readings have impressed me with how neatly each piece fits into the puzzle. I would have enjoyed seeing the further adventures of Nameless, and while Zelazny said he was interested in writing some more of them, he never got around to it before he died. Still, we couldn't ask for a better sendoff than Hangman.