The year Twenty-Twelve was a good year for Roger Zelazny Haiku.

Continuing our look

back at haiku from before.

This was the first bunch:

In April, I will

post one Roger Zelazny

haiku every day.

Roadmarks was fun to

read. Want to know why? Timyin

Tin was fucking great!

(Also, he and Archie exchange haiku during their fight.)

Archie:

"It looks as if white

flowers fall upon my shroud.

Your hands are so pale."

Timyin Tin: 

"To leave the world in spring,

with flower guards to honor:

it must be peace."

Lord of Light haiku?

Just say Mahasamatman.

You're already done!

And thousandhp posted this in the comments section. It was much better than anything I wrote:

Kalkin's Chariot

Breaking Gods against its wheels;

Yama, reins in hand.

Hey, my copy of

Wilderness finally came.

Now to review it!

Typical Josh post:

"Merlin sucks. Blah blah blah blah."

Pretty much just that.

Naked Matador

Medusa meets Hemingway

How awesome is that?

The only way to

improve Godson was to make

it a musical.

Only Zelazny

says things like "Jacobian

Demigod". (Starships)

Jack of Shadows. Lord

of Shadow Guard. Walker in

silence and shadows .

Black, the demon horse

is neither demon, nor horse.

(It's complicated)

Kalifriki has

one too many syllables

for a good haiku.

I thought I was smart

to read just one chapter of

October per day.

(But I really wasn't. Turns out that's the way everybody reads it.)

I loved Donnerjack.

But nobody else did. It

was awesome. Le Sigh.

Note to Hugh Glass: Aim

more carefully. Also, you

should pick better friends.

Oddball immortals

and green-eyed gods. No one else

could write them better.

Francis Sandow. Host

to Shimbo of Darktree. Half

God, half scaredy cat.

Creatures of Light and

Darkness. Fathers who are sons.

(Set's his own grandpa)

Fred Cassidy. The

Eternal Undergrad. I

think each school has one.

No love for "To Die

in Italbar"? I like it

more than "Eye of Cat."

The world databank

in Legion would need a

zillion punch cards.

Mafia clones in

space. ("Today We Choose Faces")

Less cool than it sounds.

The Amber novels:

Sometimes sibling rivalry

just goes way too far.

Loki Seven Two

Eight One. Roger commits world's

first mechanicide.

Was Benedict as

good as they say? Corwin still

has all of his arms.

In Autumn's dark chill

In the Lonesome October

The Great Game is Held

A brotherhood of

gods. The Lokapalas are

never defeated.

Post-modern fable

of Kit, Mari, Fuji and

apotheosis.

To deliver him,

Dara was Oberon's tool.

Merlin's just a tool.

Green-eyed ubermench

sought for literate sci-fi.

Smokers only please.

Hey, I wrote thirty

haiku about Zelazny.

Only took a month!

April is almost here, so here is last year's stuff, to tide you over.

Zelazny haiku,

year two! Even though last year's batch

wasn't that funny.

If you should find the

Buddha, kill the Buddha. No!

Not like that, Yama!

Fiona's head looks

really weird in this piece from

the visual guide.

Josh always runs out

of ideas for haiku

on about this date.

Teenage werewolf grows

hair where there was none before.

Some Fangs and claws, too.

Maxine meets Jenny.

"Chess?" "No. I'll waste you with my

machine guns instead."

Bright Defile is the

greatest name for a city.

I wish I lived there.

As much as I love

the book, "Lord of Light" seemed such

a poor name for it.

The doors of his mouth,

The lamps of his face, Moby

Dick set on Venus

Updated: 

The doors of his face

The lamps of his mouth! There, I

corrected it, Chris!

Time to revisit

my Eye of Cat review. Next

month works well, I think.

Roger created

Forever After, fun and

funny shared world book.

April Thirtieth

would be such a great day. If

Luke could pull it off.

Mighty Frost searches

for the measurements of the

nature of a Man.

Poet needed to

Repopulate Mars. Good work

if you can get it.

And now for something

completely different. Song

of the Blue Baboon.

Divine Madness. The

Music is Reversible.

Alas, time is not.

I'm such a big fan

of Amber that I married

a green-eyed woman.

Damnation Alley.

Good man falls. Bad man rises.

And they meet midway.

Charles Render, the

Dream Master, is really a

bit of an asshole.

Remember the time

the Great God Pan beat the crap

out of a robot?

By virtue of his

name, Marcel Marceau would fit

in with the Furies.

Gather 'round, children,

for Pol Detson's strum-a-long.

Get a job, hippie!

Cut your brain in half

so you'll kill the president.

It's the perfect crime.

Immortal hero

in a Zelazny story?

Obligatory.

Oberon looks like

he has to go poo. Maybe

some prune juice would help.

Syllable count in

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

Damned if I know, man.

I don't care what Chris

Kovacs says! Jenny is way

better than Maxine!

Two more weeks...

April Approaches
Josh needs to think of thirty
Zelazny haiku

Sumdog Millionaire

Yeah, yeah, predictable title. I know.

Sumdog is a site Lily's school uses to practice math at school. With her login, she can use the site at home as well. By solving math problems, kids earn coins to spend on their avatars. Every so often, they go up a rank. Everyone starts as a brown rat, and they go up through the ranks, they level up to the next animal, going  through common chimpanzee to blue whale to dhole to harpy eagle, or however the progression goes.

That was my first surprise. Apparently the dhole is a real animal. It's some kind of wild dog from Asia. It's kind of cute.

Awwwww....Cute!

The only dhole with which I was familiar was the one from the Cthulhu Mythos, the miles-long nightmare worm monsters, which I had to admit, would have been an unusual choice for an intermediate rank in a children's math game.

Ahhh!!!...Not Cute!

It's nice. Lily enjoys math and she enjoys the games and dressing up her avatar. I'm surprised to see problems that amount to elementary algebra at her level.

Solve for paw

Overall, it's a decent tool for a parent, and I like to be able to track her progress.

What Josh Reads: Blogs, part two

Jane Lindskold: Jane Lindskold's fiction doesn't appeal to me. That's not a comment on the merit of her books, but rather an observation that her solo works hold no particular resonance for me. That's fine. Different strokes for different folks, and she's got plenty of other fans. Plus, she's got a lifetime supply of goodwill from me for completing Donnerjack, and for the work she has done in safeguarding Zelazny's legacy. Also, I really like her blog. It has a wonderful, conversational tone and some interesting insights into the life of a professional writer.

ken-jennings.com: Yup, Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy champ. He posts logic puzzles, updates about his books and has a very sly sense of humor.

Let the Weird Times Roll: My best friend's blog! Tim is New Hampshire's number one authority on Calvin and Hobbes (click here to hear him on the radio). Seldom updated since he drank the Twitter Kool-Aid and became unable to express himself in more than 140 characters, but always fun when he does.

Lurking Rhythmically: A peculiar but engaging mix of ponies, guns, the Traveller RPG and invocations against Strygalldwir, in about that order.

Neil Gaiman's Journal: This is Neil Gaiman's blog. If you're reading a blog dedicated to the works of Roger Zelazny, you know who Neil Gaiman is. I don't know how he has time to write between all the stuff he does.

News From ME: In my opinion, one of the very best blogs online about any subject. Mark Evanier has been working in the comic and animation industries for decades. He worked for Jack Kirby, worked at Hanna Barbara when they were producing their most memorable properties (like Scooby Doo). He collaborated with Sergio Aragonés on Groo and he seems to have known everyone in the industry, because whenever a famous person passes away, he's right there with a loving and respectful anecdote. He's absurdly prolific and I don't know how he gets any work done in the real world, because the blog usually has five or six posts during the day.

Oakheart at LizDanforth.com: I can't remember how I started following this blog. Though she's best known as an artist, she's also worked as a writer for video games and tabletop RPGs. She's working on Wasteland 2 (and had been one of the forces behind the original). Though the blog is infrequently updated, it's worth reading, as she's got a lot of experience in all manner of fun, geeky things.

Reversing the Polarity: This is my friend Jen's blog. Though she's profoundly wrong about which Doctor was the best, her episode recaps are certainly worth reading. (She started at Hartnell and is working her way through at about a post a week.) She also posts about baking, photography and vandalizing Edgar Allen Poe's grave.