Creatures of Light and Darkness
Jul. 9th, 2005 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
learnedaxJust read Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness. It was good, but a little more disjoint than it could have been. The overall effect was a bundle of very interesting bits and pieces, which almost flowed smoothly into an excellent whole. I'd say it was a near thing at being a great book, and as it is it's a quite good book.
The thing that really interested me is how many evocative ideas he put into it. There are the Masters of Temporal Fugue (short-range time travel) who fight duels in paradoxical loops backwards and forwards; the Steel General, who when his whole body has been replaced piecemeal by robotics wears a ring of his original flesh; the non-diest, non-sectarian priest, who recites the Possibly Proper Death Litany*; one scrier reading the living entrails of another, with the latter rising up to argue the former's interpretation; half-human, half-machine oracles that can continue to analyze the future so long as they receive stimulation; the teleporter, who presumes an infinite universe must contain anything he can visualize, and may teleport anywhere he can envision. This last idea is only briefly touched upon here, but is essentially the basis for the Amber series. One wonders what he would have come up with if he'd gone down more of these paths...
In any case, I think I need to read more of Zelazny's early work. I had read the first half of Amber a while back, and enjoyed it, but it wasn't until I read the most excellent Lord of Light that I got really interested in him, and unfortunately the next thing I read was the later Amber quintet, which I found deeply unsatisfying.
*"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely..."
The thing that really interested me is how many evocative ideas he put into it. There are the Masters of Temporal Fugue (short-range time travel) who fight duels in paradoxical loops backwards and forwards; the Steel General, who when his whole body has been replaced piecemeal by robotics wears a ring of his original flesh; the non-diest, non-sectarian priest, who recites the Possibly Proper Death Litany*; one scrier reading the living entrails of another, with the latter rising up to argue the former's interpretation; half-human, half-machine oracles that can continue to analyze the future so long as they receive stimulation; the teleporter, who presumes an infinite universe must contain anything he can visualize, and may teleport anywhere he can envision. This last idea is only briefly touched upon here, but is essentially the basis for the Amber series. One wonders what he would have come up with if he'd gone down more of these paths...
In any case, I think I need to read more of Zelazny's early work. I had read the first half of Amber a while back, and enjoyed it, but it wasn't until I read the most excellent Lord of Light that I got really interested in him, and unfortunately the next thing I read was the later Amber quintet, which I found deeply unsatisfying.
*"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely..."
no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 05:08 am (UTC)I considered buying the Amber series, since you can get it all in one handy LARGE book now. Is it worth reading?
Try Orson Scott Card, Robert Heinlein, perticularly the Lazerous Long books and I have a few other non classic authors kicking around that have some great stuff.
I bought Philip Jose Farmer's River World Series and Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series. but i haven't had a chance to read them yet.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 01:27 pm (UTC)I've read bunches of Heinlein, and up until the end I like him a lot; the only Card series I got into was Ender's game, and after two books that started to go downhill in a hurry; I have actually read Incarnations of Immortality, although as with most Anthony I read at that time I was interested at the beginning but kept reading the later books mainly out of stubbornness.
BTW, should I know you?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-12 04:39 am (UTC)it's kitty from shaughn's party.