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I have been reading Roger Zelazny since I was a kid. My brother had left his copy Roadmarks at the house when he went away to college and I ended up hoovering it off his bookshelf (along with all the other science fiction he left). At the time I was often out of my depth with his allegories, vocabulary, as well as his historical and mythical references. Honestly I often still am. But being out of my depth didn't and doesn't mean there isn't a lot of enjoyment to be had.
This book was produced by the NESFA Press (New England Science Fiction Association). Hardcore fans. The set in total is six volumes with spines designed to make one picture sitting on your shelf. It is truly a work of love.
This first volume starts with work from when Zelazny was in junior high school and goes until just after he was out of graduate school and beginning his professional career. A couple of things are striking. From the start Zelazny intended to be a writer and did things which would make that possible. That is a cliche, but in Zelazny's choices you can see it play out in fact. When he was young he read all the science fiction and adventure he could consume. When we was in high school and college he read simply everything, took every course that wasn't a writing course. Never took a writing course, but learned to write from the authors he loved. He was single minded but he wasn't stuck, when he realized he couldn't make a living writing poetry, he stopped writing poetry and wrote prose exclusively. He still thought poetry was a higher art, but he wanted to write for a living.
Even his early published work is amazing. He crammed so much into short stories! His worlds are complex and have depth. But only as it builds the story, there aren't spare bits of world stuck on for the sake of world building. I think I felt that most in "He Who Shapes" the world of which seems perfectly plausible today, even a bit familiar in places, but if you remember he wrote this in 1965 it's spooky. Zelazny's writing isn't really about the tech bits or the science, it's how he makes characters people and makes their concerns and lives so much like the reader's life. While so many of his peers had cardboard cutouts or perfect people, Zelazny wrote people, never perfect. Well, if you ignore the characters in the Amber series, but the Amber series always did feel like something else Zelazny did maybe because he intended to make a living.
32. Roger Zelazny "The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny Vol 1: Threshold"
This book was produced by the NESFA Press (New England Science Fiction Association). Hardcore fans. The set in total is six volumes with spines designed to make one picture sitting on your shelf. It is truly a work of love.
This first volume starts with work from when Zelazny was in junior high school and goes until just after he was out of graduate school and beginning his professional career. A couple of things are striking. From the start Zelazny intended to be a writer and did things which would make that possible. That is a cliche, but in Zelazny's choices you can see it play out in fact. When he was young he read all the science fiction and adventure he could consume. When we was in high school and college he read simply everything, took every course that wasn't a writing course. Never took a writing course, but learned to write from the authors he loved. He was single minded but he wasn't stuck, when he realized he couldn't make a living writing poetry, he stopped writing poetry and wrote prose exclusively. He still thought poetry was a higher art, but he wanted to write for a living.
Even his early published work is amazing. He crammed so much into short stories! His worlds are complex and have depth. But only as it builds the story, there aren't spare bits of world stuck on for the sake of world building. I think I felt that most in "He Who Shapes" the world of which seems perfectly plausible today, even a bit familiar in places, but if you remember he wrote this in 1965 it's spooky. Zelazny's writing isn't really about the tech bits or the science, it's how he makes characters people and makes their concerns and lives so much like the reader's life. While so many of his peers had cardboard cutouts or perfect people, Zelazny wrote people, never perfect. Well, if you ignore the characters in the Amber series, but the Amber series always did feel like something else Zelazny did maybe because he intended to make a living.
32. Roger Zelazny "The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny Vol 1: Threshold"
