A very quick summary of my weekend

We had a nice enough weekend. Jen finally got a replacement car, more than two months after she was hit. It's a Focus. Her last two cars were also Focuses (Foci?), and both were destroyed in rear end collisions from distracted drivers.

I occasionally have a good idea, and I suggested that we go to Friendly's after work on Friday and get an appetizer tray and some ice cream. That actually worked out really well, and we had a fun little family picnic.

We got our tree on Saturday morning, then Jen went on the annual Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage. She is one of my favorite Pilgrims.

I learned that I probably need a shave, when Lily felt my face and told me "Your chin feels like a cactus and a porcupine had a baby!"

Steve Wozniak was on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me for their "Not My Job" segment. He seemed like he was having so much fun and he is one of the reasons I proudly self-identify as a geek. We was getting so excited talking about his own nerdery (he told a story about about having six smart phones) and he seems like a really decent, fun-loving guy.

On Sunday, we went to Glendon's annual Christmas party and saw Santa there. Lily didn't want to sit on his lap, but she was fine standing next to him.

Lily is really getting into the Nightmare Before Christmas. Frederick will probably come over just to kick my ass when I mention this, but I don't actually own the movie. I used to have it on VHS, and thought I still did, but I was unable to find it. Still, we're watching little videos on youtube and Lily is really enjoying them. I'll have to get it from Netflix one of these days.

We watching "This is Halloween" when Jen came into the room and Lily said, "Don't be scared. It's just pretend." Pause. "And if they were real, my stuffed animals could fight them."

We trimmed the tree on Sunday, did a little shopping and watched Little Miss Sunshine. I was expecting to like it. I didn't. I actually disliked it.

The Wikipedia page for the movie has this account leading up to its creation: Prior to writing the script, Arndt read in a newspaper about Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking to a group of high school students and saying "If there's one thing in this world I hate, it's losers. I despise them." As a result, Arndt developed his script lampooning the thought process: "And I thought there's something so wrong with that attitude ... I wanted to ... attack that idea that in life you're going up or you're going down ... So to a degree a child beauty pageant is the epitome of the ultimate stupid meaningless competition people put themselves through." I post on a message board where one of the moderators said "I hate Nazis". This would have been cool if he were making some kind of Blues Brothers reference, but no, he was actually taking the very courageous stance of speaking out...against Nazis. And likewise, it's not hard to include something stupid and meaningless in your movie, but then you don't get any points by pointing out how stupid and meaningless it. Tim decried Juno as "quirky", but at least it was entertaining. In Little Miss Sunshine, there was no plot twist too predictable to use, no characterization too banal. The characters were unlikeable, but more importantly, they were boring. I was just very disappointed in this movie.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: Dilvish, the Damned

Today's Roger Zelazny book review will be Dilvish, the Damned.

I found a copy of Dilvish, the Damned shortly after high school, read the stories and enjoyed them in what I perceive to be the spirit in which they were written. My impression is that Zelazny wanted to do something along the lines of Robert E. Howard's Conan or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I enjoy both of them quite a bit (though it's my friend Tim who is the real Howard fan) and I was already kindly disposed towards the sword & sorcery pulp genre to which Dilvish belongs.

There are eleven short stories in this collection.

01 Passage to Dilfar
02 Thelinde's Song
03 The Bells of Shoredan
04 A Knight for Merytha
05 The Places of Aache
06 A City Divided
07 The White Beast
08 Tower of Ice
09 Devil and the Dancer
10 Garden of Blood
11 Dilvish, the Damned

Passage to Dilfar begins in media res with Dilvish and his steed Black ("...not a horse, but a beast of steel in the likeness of a horse") running a blockade.

As Lord Borel knows, Zelazny heroes don't play fair:

"You must see now that my armor cannot be breached. It was forged by the Salamanders themselves and bathed in the blood of ten virgins…"

Dilvish cut at his head and as he had cut at him, Dilvish had circled slowly to his left, so that now Lance stood with his back to the horse of steel, called Black.

"Now, Black!" cried Dilvish.

Then did Black rear high up on his hind legs and fall forward, bringing his front hooves down toward Lance.

Thelinde's Song is my favorite of the collection. We get some background on Dilvish and his quest. He interrupted a human sacrifice by Jelerak two hundred years ago,  his body was turned to stone, and "his spirit was banished to one of the deepest pits of Hell the Dark One could manage." He bartered away a portion of his soul for his freedom and Black's services, and now he is back for revenge.

"Why must I not mention the name of Jelerak?"

"For so long has his name been used in the conjuring and compelling of fell spirits and dark wights that his has become a Name of Power. They rush to find the speaker, whenever they hear it uttered, lest it should be he and he should grow angry at their tardiness. If it is not he, they often seek vengeance upon the presumptuous speaker. It is also said, though, that if his name be pronounced too often by one person, then he himself becomes aware of this and sends a doom upon that person. Either way, it is not wise to go about singing such songs."

"I will not, ever. How can a sorcerer be that strong?"

"He is as old as the hills. He was once a white wizard and he fell into dark ways, which makes him particularly malicious—you know, they seldom ever change for the better—and he is now accounted to be one of the three most powerful, possibly the most powerful, of all the wizards in all the kingdoms of all the Earths.

I've mentioned previously that I think one of Zelazny's strengths is his ability to make exposition interesting. I liked this quite a bit, and he paints an interesting character in Mildin the Mistress of the Coven in comparatively few strokes.

In the The Bells of Shoredan, Dilvish walks the Paths of the Dead in an effort to summon the Shadow Host. Whoops, I mean he journeys to Rahoringhast in an effort to summon the Host of Shoredan.

Dilfar is under siege and unless they get some reinforcements, the city will fall. I like this one a lot too, but it really is pretty reminiscent of the part in Return of the King where Aragorn calls forth the Dead Men of Dunharrow.  Dilvish is dispatched because he is the only one who can call forth the Host of Shoredan, who were cursed in an earlier age.

Interestingly, this is our first mention of the keep of Mirata. In The Hand of Oberon, Corwin observes that Brand has painted a rather somber rendering of the well at Mirata. . It's probably just a coincidence, as plenty of towns have the same name after all, and if not, infinite shadows and all that, but I like the thought of an Amber/Dilvish crossover.

Black can't come with him into Rahoringhast . I like this passage:

Black nodded and touched the first stair with his hoof. Fire rose from the stone. He drew back his hoof and smoke curled about it. There was no mark upon the stair to indicate where he had touched.

"I fear I cannot enter this place and preserve my form," he stated. "At the least, my form."

"What compels thee?"

"An ancient enchantment to preserve this place against the assault of any such as I."

"Can it be undone?"

"Not by any creature which walks this world or flies above it or writhes beneath it or I'm a horse. Though the seas some day rise and cover the land, this place will exist at their bottom. This was torn from Chaos by Order in the days when those principles stalked the land, naked, just beyond the hills. Whoever compelled them was one of the First, and powerful even in terms of the Mighty."

We also learn a little more about Dilvish's nemesis, Jelerak:

"Many of his deeds do lie like stains upon the land," said the priest, "but he was not always such a one. He was a white wizard who matched his powers against the Dark One, in days when the world was young. He was not sufficient. He fell. He was taken as servant by the Maleficient. For centuries he endured this bondage, until it changed him, as such must. He, too, came to glory in the ways of darkness. But then, when Selar of the Unseen Blade bought the life of Hohorga with his own, Jel—he fell as if dead and lay as such for the space of a week. Near delirious, when he awakened, he worked with counterspell at one last act of undoing: to free the cursed legions of Shoredan. He essayed that thing. He did. He stood upon this very stairway for two days and two nights, until the blood mingled with perspiration on his brow, but he could not break the hold of Hohorga. Even dead, the dark strength was too great for him.

Because Dilvish is of the blood of Selar, ghosts re-enact Selar's death and the death of Hohorga when he enters the city.

[Hohorga] was fair to look upon and noble of feature; but so blindingly fair was he that all eyes were averted from that countenance now lined with pain. A faint bluish halo was diminishing about his shoulders. Even in the death pain he was as cold and perfect as a carved gem-stone, set upon the red-green cushion of his blood; his was the hypnotic perfection of a snake of many colors. It is said that eyes have no expression of their own, and that one could not reach into a barrel of eyes and separate out those of an angry man or those of one's beloved. Hohorga's eyes were the eyes of a ruined god: infinitely sad, as proud as an ocean of lions.

One look and Dilvish knew this thing, though he could not tell their color.

Hohorga was of the blood of the First.

The guards had cornered the slayer. He fought them, apparently empty-handed, but parrying and thrusting as though he gripped a blade. Wherever his hand moved, there were wounds. He wielded the only weapon that might have slain the King of the World, who permitted none to go armed in his presence save his own guard.

He bore the Invisible Blade...

And then Hohorga spoke, in a voice held firm though soft, without inflection, like the steady beating of surf or the hooves of horses: "I have outlived the one who presumed to lay hands upon me, which is as it must be. Know that it was written that eyes would never see the blade that could slay me. Thus do the powers have their jokes..."

That was a bit more literal than I like, but it's such a good story that I don't mind.

A Knight for Merytha is a shorter story. Dilvish is rather droll, as is illustrated by one of my all time favorite lines: "I find my position somewhat awkward, Merytha," Dilvish observed, "being guest to a vampire lord I've cuckolded. I don't quite know what one says on these occasions." It's not bad, and it has a nice plot twist I didn't see the first time around.

The Places of Aache is another short one that doesn't do much to advance the overall plot. I like it mostly for Dilvish's abundant snark.

A look of surprise crossed his face and he dropped his own weapon to clutch at the one that held him.

Dilvish wrenched it free and watched him fall.

"An unlucky day for both of us," Rogis muttered.

"More so for yourself, I'd say."

"You'll not escape this so easily, you know—I'm favored of the goddess—"

"She has peculiar tastes in favorites then."

I get the impression that Zelazny mostly kept Dilvish in reserve. If he had need for another story on short notice, he could always crank out a Dilvish tale. That's not to say that they're bad; they just don't deal with themes of profundity as do most of his other works.

A City Divided gives us a little insight into why Dilvish thinks he's capable of killing one of the most powerful sorcerers who ever lived. We learn that he learned twelve "Awful Sayings" during his time in hell, spells unequaled by earthly magic, but which will destroy the caster if he makes the smallest error in their invocation.

I thought this was a neat concept, though Awful Sayings is an awful name. For my role playing campaign, I stole the concept but reframed them a bit as the Ruinous Names. Each was a syllable of the Deplorable Word from the Narnia series, a single word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all life except the person who uttered it.

He's forced to run thorough a game by a set of twins, who must divide their power between them.  One of them would spend ten years exiled to an astral limbo while the other enjoyed full potency in the real world. At the end of that time, they would play the game to see who would enjoy the next ten years on earth. He uses his Awful Saying to demolish the city.

The White Beast is just a couple of pages long, and it serves to bridge A City Divided and a Tower of Ice. Dilvish runs into a dude transformed into a monster by Jelerak on his way to the tower.

The Tower of Ice is pretty long and very good. Ridley, one of Jelerak's apprentices, is the warden of the tower, and he dwells there with his sister Reena. Ridley has an alternate personality

"He was chosen as apprentice from among many candidates," she said, "because he possessed great natural aptitudes for the work. Are you aware that in its higher workings, sorcery requires the assumption of an artificially constructed personality—carefully trained, disciplined, worn like a glove when doing the work?"

"Yes," Dilvish replied.

She gave him a sidelong look and continued:

"But Ridley was always different from most other people, in that he already possessed two personalities. Most of the time he is amiable, witty, interesting. Occasionally his other nature would come over him, though, and it was just the opposite—cruel, violent, cunning. After he began his work with the higher magics, this other side of himself somehow merged with his magical personality. When he would assume the necessary mental and emotional stances for his workings, it would somehow be present. He was well on his way to becoming a fine sorcerer, but whenever he worked at it he changed into something—quite unlikable. Still, this would be no great handicap, if he could put it off again as easily as he took it on—with the ring he had made for this purpose. But after a time, this—other—began to resist such a restoration. Ridley came to believe that it was attempting to control him ."

which cut off Jelerak's access to the keep when it was in control.

As an aside, I really like how we're getting these periodic insights into how the magic system works in this world. Ridley is mostly out of the picture, Reena and Dilvish team up. Then Jelerak comes calling and begins the fight with Ridley.

"Doesn't it seem to you that the entire mountain is shaking?"

"Yes, it does," she replied. "Then it must be true."

"What?"

"I'd heard it said that ages ago, at the height of his power, the ma—Jelerak—actually raised this mountain by his conjuring."

"So?"

"If he is sufficiently taxed in this place, I suppose that he might have to draw upon those ancient spells of his for more power. In which case—"

"The mountain might collapse as well as the castle?"

"There is that possibility. Oh, Ridley! Good show!"

That was really cool, and it helps give an idea of the feats of which Jelerak is capable.

I don't have a lot to say about Devil and the Dancer. It's self-contained, though not as much as A Knight for Merytha or The Places of Aache because Reena is still with Dilvish and there are references to earlier stories. Reena is pretty cool, and she gets a little more development here. We also get an account of Ridley's fate. Jelerak defeated Ridley didn't have the strength to destroy him. So he imprisoned him beneath the fallen Tower of Ice, whence he planned to return when he regained his strength, there to finish the work. His return there is barred by certain powerful sorcerers, a point referenced in The Changing Land.

Garden of Blood is probably my least favorite of the series, though it did have an interesting exchange.

He began to hum as he rummaged in a saddlebag after a meal—a simple, repetitive tune.

"I've never before heard you sing, whistle, or hum," Black commented.

Blink and you'll miss it, but it speaks volumes about Dilvish's personality.

Dilvish, the Damned is the final story. It's not my favorite, but it's closest to the genre's roots. You can't have a proper sword & sorcery anthology without the plundering of a god's temple and subsequent flight from his vengeance!

I like the series. In a hundred years, people aren't going to remember Roger Zelazny for the Dilvish series, but it's addition to his armory of traits I'll not disparage.

Dilvish's saga is concluded in The Changing Land, which I'll be covering in a few days.

A post all about Lily

We got to the airport early when we went down to Florida the other week, so we had a lot of time to kill. Jen and I like playing 20 Questions with animals to pass the time. (though Jen has a much stronger life sciences background than I do, leading to exchanges like Jen: "Is your animal an isopod?" Me: "...I don't know." (I'm just kidding. I totally know what an isopod is.)) We thought Lily might be old enough to play, so we tried to get her involved. Her version of the game was more like charades. She was running around the table with her arm in front of her nose, waving it like a trunk, so we guessed "elephant!" We all had a fun time playing that.

The other night, I was up her room, getting ready to read a bed time story, and she gave me her magic wand and asked me to turn her into an animal. So I waved the wand and said, "Poof, you're a doggy!" and she smiled mischievously and got down on her hands and knees and said, "Meow, meow." We did this for a while, and Lily had a fun time subverting what I said. When I turned her into a raccoon, she became a panda and said "I'm eating bamboo." She likes the game even more than story time and I enjoy not reading the same bed time stories over and over again.

Lily was saying prayers before bedtime, something I'd never observed her doing. She structured them kind of like her grace, saying "I'm thankful for the plane that took us down to Florida, and for getting to see Grammy Kathy and the ornaments we made together..." Grammy Kathy made quite an impression on her.

Lily takes after her Grammy Kathy in that she likes to watch cooking shows. Her previous favorite thing to do on the computer was to play Princess Dress Up on the Disney Princesses page, but now she likes to watch videos of how to make pirate ship cupcakes. She's big enough to use the computer on her own, though we don't let her on there unsupervised. I'll be in the room and watch her as she's moving the mouse and selecting which video to watch.

The videos are short, and some are preceded by an extraordinarily loud Target commercial, so I finally got tired of watching them. I suggested to Lily that we do something else and she acquiesced.

Lily: Let's play dolls!
Me: Okay.
Lily: (Getting doll ready) She's at work.
Me: Okay.
Lily: She's training her eyes at work.
Me: Okay...
Lily: She's training her eyes at work by watching movies about cooking.
Me: ... ...well played.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai

Mt. Fuji from the Offing in Kanagawa

I don't like writing negative reviews (Actually, that's a lie. I enjoyed savaging Lord Demon. I just feel guilty afterwards) so I always try to follow a review of a story I didn't like with a review of one I do like. I was rather critical of Eye of Cat yesterday so today's Roger Zelazny commentary will be one of my favorites, "24 Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai"

For some reason, I didn't want to read the story at first. I don't really remember why. I read everything else in Frost & Fire, got to 24 Views, shrugged and said, "Eh, maybe later."  I think it must have been the title, because once I began reading the story, it hooked me from the very first line. "Kit lives, though he is buried not far from here; and I am dead, though I watch the days-end light pinking cloudstreaks above the mountain in the distance, a tree in the foreground for suitable contrast."

It's wonderful, and quite unlike anything he had written previously. It is the tale of Mari, a widow whose husband has been "translated" into a powerful and alien being who now exists as a digital entity on the internet. Mari fled to America to escape him, but has now returned to Japan to bring things to a conclusion. She is using a book of twenty-four of Hokusai's prints as a kind of map for her journey, which is an absolutely wonderful framing mechanism.

I'm not doing justice to the story, because the chief strength is Mari's narrative. It has been widely observed that Zelazny very rarely wrote female characters (and his commentary on this work suggests that 24 Views was a reaction to that), but I really like the voice he gives Mari. Her narrative is is what makes the piece as wonderful as it is. Her journey is a pilgrimage and her ruminations move the story. It's easy to slip from to reflection to navel-gazing, but Zelazny never makes a misstep, even though there are several chapters composed of nothing but Mari's observations.

The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny are usually very good with their end note references, but the notes following this story are exemplary even by the high standards I had come to expect from them. Also, they have images of the appropriate woodcuts for each chapter, which is a very nice feature.

Mari enters the country in disguise and makes her way slowly towards the place where confrontation will take place, following the pattern laid out in the prints. She offers commentary on how the modern locations compare to the woodcuts as the story slowly unfurls.

Her tale has some interesting digressions as well. When she has trouble sleeping, she tells herself the following story:

So . . . Upon a time during the troubles following the death of the Retired Emperor Sutoku a number of itinerant monks of various persuasions came this way, having met upon the road, traveling to seek respite from the wars, earthquakes, and whirlwinds which so disturbed the land. They hoped to found a religious community and pursue the meditative life in quiet and tranquility. They came upon what appeared to be a deserted Shinto shrine near the seaside, and there they camped for the night, wondering what plague or misfortune might have carried off its attendants. The place was in good repair and no evidence of violence was to be seen. They discussed then the possibility of making this their retreat, of themselves becoming the shrine’s attendants. They grew enthusiastic with the idea and spent much of the night talking over these plans. In the morning, however, an ancient priest appeared from within the shrine, as if to commence a day’s duties. The monks asked him the story of the place, and he informed them that once there had been others to assist him in his duties but that they had long ago been taken by the sea during a storm, while about their peculiar devotions one night upon the shore. And no, it was not really a Shinto shrine, though in outward appearance it seemed such. It was actually the temple of a far older religion of which he could well be the last devotee. They were welcome, however, to join him here and learn of it if they so wished. The monks discussed it quickly among themselves and decided that since it was a pleasant-seeming place, it might be well to stay and hear whatever teaching the old man possessed. So they became residents at the strange shrine. The place troubled several of them considerably at first, for at night they seemed to hear the calling of musical voices in the waves and upon the sea wind. And on occasion it seemed as if they could hear the old priest’s voice responding to these calls. One night one of them followed the sounds and saw the old man standing upon the beach, his arms upraised. The monk hid himself and later fell asleep in a crevice in the rocks. When he awoke, a full moon stood high in the heavens and the old man was gone. The monk went down to the place where he had stood and there saw many marks in the sand, all of them the prints of webbed feet. Shaken, the monk returned and recited his experience to his fellows. They spent weeks thereafter trying to catch a glimpse of the old man’s feet, which were always wrapped and bound. They did not succeed, but after a time it seemed to matter less and less. His teachings influenced them slowly but steadily. They began to assist him in his rituals to the Old Ones, and they learned the name of this promontory and its shrine. It was the last above-sea remnant of a large sunken island, which he assured them rose on certain wondrous occasions to reveal a lost city inhabited by the servants of his masters. The name of the place was R’lyeh and they would be happy to go there one day. By then it seemed a good idea, for they had noticed a certain thickening and extension of the skin between their fingers and toes, the digits themselves becoming sturdier and more elongated. By then, too, they were participating in all of the rites, which grew progressively abominable. At length, after a particularly gory ritual, the old priest’s promise was fulfilled in reverse. Instead of the island rising, the promontory sank to join it, bearing the shrine and all of the monks along with it. So their abominations are primarily aquatic now. But once every century or so the whole island does indeed rise up for a night, and troops of them make their way ashore seeking victims. And of course, tonight is the night...

I'm not sure exactly what that story is doing within the larger story (except making it eligible for inclusion in later Cthulhu anthologies), but it's all kind of awesome.

In a flashback we see a newly ascended Kit trying to sell Mari on apotheosis. I really like this, because it showcases Mari's love for her husband and juxtaposes it against her keen mind and the steel in her soul.

“Does this not feel right?”

“Yes, it feels right. But I do not want that feeling unaccompanied. When I touch feeling with reason, I see that it is sometimes but an excuse for failing to close with complexity.”

“You can deal with any complexity here. Behold the data! Does reason not show you that this condition is far superior to that you knew but moments ago?”

“Nor can I trust reason unaccompanied. Reason without feeling has led humanity to enact monstrosities. Do not attempt to disassemble my imagination this way.”

Kit is a wonderful antagonist, horrifying in a nicely understated manner. Near the end, he comes to Mari in the real world and they speak.

“Last year there was a revolution in Saudi Arabia. It seemed to promise well for the Saudis but it also threatened Japan’s oil supply. Suddenly the new government began to look very bad on paper, and a new counterrevolutionary group looked stronger and better-tempered than it actually was. Major powers intervened successfully on the side of the counterrevolutionaries. Now they are in power and they seem even worse than the first government which had been overthrown. It seems possible, though incomprehensible to most, that computer readouts all over the world were somehow made to be misleading. And now the Osaka Conference is to be held to work out new oil agreements with the latest regime. It looks as if Japan will get a very good deal out of it. You once told me that you are above such mundane matters, but I wonder? You are Japanese, you loved your country. Could you have intervened in this?”

“What if I did? It is such a small matter in the light of eternal values. If there is a touch of sentiment for such things remaining within me, it is not dishonorable that I favor my country and my people.”

“And if you did it in this, might you not be moved to intervene again one day, in some other matter where habit or sentiment tell you you should?”

“What of it?” he replies. “I but extend my finger and stir the dust of illusion a bit. If anything, it frees me even further.”

“I see,” I answer.

“I doubt that you do, but you will when you have joined me..."

Creepy.

I don't want to spoil the ending, because I really enjoyed it and think that other readers will too. I know that the Frost & Fire anthology includes it, but having read it with the prints included, I recommend that version, which is included in volume 5 (Nine Black Doves) of The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny.

I am reminded again through Mari's allusions at what a fantastically literate author Zelazny was. The story is less than 25,000 words, but it overflows with references to all manner of classics. Mari is quite unlike any other character Zelazny has ever written, at turns sensitive, romantic, pragmatic and ruthless. Certainly his finest female character and among the very best of any of his characters in his long career. 

Roger Zelazny Book Review: Eye of Cat

Today's Roger Zelazny commentary will be even more meandering than most.

Eye of Cat is the story of a Navajo man, William Blackhorse Singer, who is filled with such malaise that he no longer wishes to live.

After reading Eye of Cat, I understand exactly how he feels.

It reminds me of a tale from a website I used to read regularly, Fametracker's Fame Audit.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine named David was living at the home of parents of another friend of ours, for the summer, because he was living in Toronto, because he was working at a huge theme park called Canada's Wonderland, because he was singing and dancing in a musical revue called "Hot Hits." And so he spent that summer singing and dancing and sleeping and eating and hanging out at the home of parents of another friend of ours, at which also lived the grandmother of the other friend of ours, who was Hungarian and known as Oma. And Oma wasn't quite clear on exactly what David was doing at the house, or what a "Hot Hit" is, or who David even was exactly, and why he kept sitting on the couch watching TV and eating yogurt. So one day she came into the living room while he was sitting on the couch watching TV and eating yogurt and asked, in her high-pitched, Hungarian-accented voice, to no one in particular, and with a philosophical clarity and succinctness that would have done Sartre proud:

"Why is David?"

I always thought that was a clever bit of writing, and now I ask the question:

"Why is Eye of Cat?"

Okay, that was a bit harsh. The truth of the matter is that I don't really care much about Eye of Cat one way or the other. It's fine. The cover art is neat. I would file it away with Today we Choose Faces as one of the works for which I bear neither animus nor affection, if people would just shut up about it.

Confession: I don't like Joss Wedon's Firefly. Not that I think it's terrible; it's just your basic middle of the road sci-fi show, but its pedigree and the circumstances of its cancellation have elevated it to the status of sacred martyr and the wailing and gnashing of teeth that began when it was yanked in 2002 have not even begun to subside. I was largely indifferent to it at first and slowly grew to dislike it every time somebody mentioned it as a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. I feel the same way about Eye of Cat.

Eye of Cat is not terrible, like A Farce to be Reckoned With. It's not brilliant, like Lord of Light. It's just kind of there. And yet, Zelazny devotes an essay in Frost & Fire to the techniques used in the story.

I'm capable of making the distinction between something that I don't like and something I think is really and truly objectively bad. I do think that Eye of Cat does fall into the former category. I find it difficult to put my finger on why I don't like this story. Part of it is that it strikes me as over-hyped, as I encountered Zelazny's essay (Constructing a Science Fiction Novel) on how awesome the book was before I read the book itself, and I was let down when I did finally get a hold of a copy.

There were certainly good elements to it. Billy seems like a cool cat (no pun intended). I like the way Zelazny describes his outfit:

He  wears  a  blue  velveteen  shirt  hanging out  over his jeans, a wide concha belt securing it at  his waist.  A heavy squash  blossom  necklace  -  a  very  old  one -  hangs down upon his breast. High about his neck is  a slender  strand of turquoise heiche. He has a silver bracelet on his left wrist, studded  with  random  chunks  of  turquoise  and  coral. The buttons  of  his  shirt  are  hammered  dimes from  the early twentieth century. His long hair is bound with a strip of red cloth.

That's really pretty cool. I think it's the dimes that make me love it.

I was listening to the audio book and the bird whistles during Zelazny's opening narration really add an additional element to it. He pronounces coyotes  "kigh-ho-tays" whereas I always say "kigh-yo-tees". I'm sure his pronunciation is correct, but I'm so accustomed to hearing it the wrong way that the right way sounds funny to me.

The narrative is interspersed with various "myth interludes". One of them includes this passage: "But this also was a place of suffering, of misery, a thing Coyote discovered as he went  to and fro in the world and up and down it."

The same phrase appears almost verbatim in The Changing Land. (When asked of what he would do with the power in Castle Timeless, the man identifying himself as Weleand says "...I would go up and down in the world and to and fro in it, putting down injustices and rewarding virtue...")

A little research shows me that it's from Job 1:7.

And Jehovah said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered Jehovah, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

That's interesting. I don't think I've ever encountered the phrase other than in these two works. I know that Zelazny was raised Catholic, but had stopped identifying as a member of any organized religion by the time of his death. I don't think it's coincidence that such a specific phrase appears twice (though I suppose it's possible that it is, as in any large body of work, you'll eventually have similar phrases appearing), but I have no idea what it might signify. It might even be as simple as the fact that he liked the sound of it.

On my first read-through, I didn't like how heavily emphasized Billy's heritage was. I kind of snarked about this kind of thing when I covered Lord Demon, where I observed that I have Asian friends who sometimes get through entire conversations without mentioning Sun-Tzu or Confucius. It just seemed that Billy didn't have any traits that weren't wrapped up in him being a Navajo.

On reflection, though, I think it's a particularly clever bit of story-telling. Billy is lost. He's looking for his place in this modern world, and not finding it, he reverts to the identity held in his youth.

For instance, I liked this,

"You  are  an  expert  on the  pursuit and capture of exotic life forms.  You spent most of your life doing it. You practically  stocked the Interstellar Life Institute single-handed, You -"

 Billy waved his hand.

"Enough," he said. "The alien you are talking about is an intelligent  being. I  spent much  of my life tracking animals - exotic  ones,  to  be  sure,  some  very  crafty  and  with tricky behavior  patterns  -  but  animals  nevertheless,  not creatures capable of elaborate planning."

Billy reminded me of Joseph Makatozi is Louis L'Amour's Last of the Breed. Like Billy, Makatozi is an American Indian who has received advanced training in the modern world, but when he is shot down over Russia during the Cold War, he eschews that training and falls back on the lessons of his youth to escape his captors and survive the bitter Siberian winter. With both characters, the man who fits into civilization is simply a veneer, and I think that could possibly be offensive if not handled well, but both writers execute it quite deftly.

I found Makatozi a lot more appealing than Billy, not in the least because Billy is afflicted with such ennui, and that's a hard trait to sell if you want people interested in your protagonist, no matter how talented a writer you are.

Anyway, William Blackhorse Singer is called out of retirement to help protect an alien ambassador. To do so, he frees an alien he had captured, the eponymous "Cat" of the title. Cat's price for its assistance is Billy's life. Since Billy wasn't really using it for anything anyway, he agrees.

This plan always makes me think of a scene in the movie version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The movie has a complicated plot, but the gist of it is that one thousand years ago, human civilization was all but wiped out in the Seven Days of Fire by the God Warriors, huge bio-engineered monsters. The plot is set in motion when one of the big empires unearths a God Warrior embryo at an archeological dig.

At the point in the movie where this scene takes place, Nausicaä's people have a tenuous alliance with the people who invaded their village, because if they can't stop an approaching herd of Ohmu, then everyone there is going to die. The Ohmu are hundred-ton pillbugs, the biological equivalent of the Imperial Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back and their herd numbers in the thousands.

In order to stop the stampede, the invaders roll out the newborn God Warrior, whose growth they forceably accelerated so they could use it as a living weapon. We never get an exact head count for the number of God Warriors it took to extinguish humanity, but I get the impression that there were fewer than twenty of them. They move by bending space around them and fire radiotoxic lasers (I'm told the Japanese words used for the beams in the comic are 'poison light'). They are these horrifying, uncontrollable monsters. I love this plan because it's a swallowing-the-spider-to-catch-the-fly solution that's going to cause more problems than it solves, and the whole time they're doing it they've got this attitude like "Relax, we've got this covered."

For such a long review, I'm not really doing a huge amount of talking about the book. To return to the actual commentary, Billy's bargain with Cat strikes me as a similar thing.  It's not like Billy is oblivious to the danger Cat represents, but he really just doesn't care if he lives or dies, so he makes the deal. Cat stops the assassin, and then begins hunting Billy, who gains the assistance of a group of human psychics along the way. That's pretty much the whole story.  (If you're playing the Roger Zelany Drinking Game at home, "arroyo" only shows up four times. I'm rather amazed.)

Here's an excerpt that touches on some on what I think are the problems with the story:

"If  you  want  to  call  it that,"  he replied.  "He's gone around  the  bend.  He's...  somewhere  else.  His mind is running everything through a filter of primitive symbolism. I can't understand him, and  I'm sure  he can't  understand me. He thinks he's deep under the  earth, traveling  along some ancient path."

"He is,"  Ironbear  said. "He is walking the way of the shaman."

Fisher snorted.

"What do you know about it?"

"Enough  to  understand  some," he  answered. "I  got interested  in Indian  things again  when my father died. I even remembered some stuff I'd forgotten for a long time.  For all of his education and  travels, Singer  doesn't think  in completely modern terms. In fact, he doesn't  even think  like a modern Indian. He grew up in almost the last possible period and place where  someone could  live in  something close  to a neolithic environment. So he's been to the  stars. A part of him's  always been  back in  those crazy canyons. And  he was a shaman - a real one - once. He set out several days  ago to go back  to that  part of himself, intentionally, because he thought it might help him. Now it's got hold of him, after all those years of repression,  and  it's coming  back  with a vengeance. That's  what I  think. I've  been reading  tapes on the  Navajos  ever  since  I  learned  about him,  in all of my spare moments here.  They're a lot different  from  other Indians, even from their neighbors. But they do  have certain things  in  common  with  the rest  of us  - and  the shaman's journey often  goes underground when things are really tough."

I bolded the part that I think is important. In the essay I referenced above, Zelazny mentions how the Navajo created their own words for parts of an internal combustion engine rather than adopting the English words for them. The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny has an account of how much research he did for this book, and it seems like he just didn't want any of it to go to waste, and I think that's the core of my dislike for the book.

It's fairly well known among Zelazny fans that he wrote a short vignette having nothing to do with the story for his major characters, just as a way to give the character life beyond his immediate circumstances. These set pieces were just for his personal reference and enlightenment and only one of them was every published (Dismal Light, a Francis Sandow story). I always admired that restraint, but it seemed to go out the window here. And I don't want to be one of those Zelazny fans who rag on his later works (Donnerjack happens to be one of my very favorites, for instance), but I think that in he had reigned in his enthusiasm for the topic of the Navajo, I would have found it more appealing. Eye of Cat is unique in its relation to me in that it's the only time Zelazny's excitement for something failed to infect me.

I'll try to end on a positive note, so I'll say that I really enjoyed the poem that ended the book, especially the last three stanzas.

Coyote call across the darkness bar...
I have eaten myself and grown strong.
There is beauty all around me.
Before me, behind me, to the right
and to the left of me,
corn pollen and rainbow.
The white medicine lifts me in his hand.

The dancer at the heart of all things
turns like a dust-devil before me.
My lightning-bead is shattered.
I have spoken my own laws.

My only enemy, my self, reborn,
is also the dancer.
My trail, my mind, is filled with stars
in the great wheel of their turning
toward springtime. Stars.
I come like the rain with the wind
and all growing things.
The white medicine lifts me in his hand.
Here at lost Lukachakai I say this:
The hunting never ends.
The way is beauty.
The medicine is strong.
The ghost train doesn't stop here
anymore. I am the hunter
in the eye of the hunted. If I call
they will come to me
out of Darkness Mountain.