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Roger Zelazny: Difference between revisions
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His early work attracted the bulk of the critical attention, particularly by the literary community. His greatest commercial success and best known work is the (later) [[Chronicles of Amber|Amber series.]] It is a tale of princes locked in rivalry around the claim for a throne. The princes are gods, but Zelazny loved to mix genres: these immortals, these primal forces in human form initially have the morals and at times the style and speech of gangsters out of a hard-boiled detective novel.
While the bulk of the Amber series marks Zelazny settling down to a more straightforward prose style, there are stream-of-consciousness sequences and touches of poetry. The best dialogue is eloquent yet unornamented.
The influence of Zelazny forms a baseline to modern sci-fi and fantasy: he is one of those writers other writers read and love. [[Neil Gaiman]] dedicated ''The Wake'' to Roger, who died of cancer during its production, aged only 58.
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* [[And I Must Scream]]
* [[Animated Armor]]: Merlin's servitor in "The Last Defender of Camelot"
* [[Author Appeal]]: In quite a few books (''[[Chronicles of Amber]]'' and ''[[Lord of Light]]'' among them) people smoke a lot-- usually cigarettes, sometimes a pipe. Zelazny was himself a heavy smoker until middle-age when he gave it up for health reasons. Whenever he got stuck as to where to go next, he would have a cigarette to think about things, and would put this activity into the text. When he stopped smoking during the second set of ''Amber'' books, he also stopped writing about his characters smoking.
* [[Author Existence Failure]]: ''Donnerjack'' and several other works were incomplete at his death. It is moving that Zelazny himself finished off several books of other authors who had died.
* [[Automated Automobiles]]: ''Devil Car'', and other stories.
* [[Balance Between Good and Evil]]: The pantheon Zelazny created for ''Isle of the Dead'' <ref> and ''To Die in Italbar''</ref> balances creative against destructive gods.
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* [[Disappeared Dad]]: Sandow to his son; Randy's father in ''Roadmarks''. Zelazny's own father died early.
* [[Doomed Moral Victor]]
* [[Excited Show Title!]]: "Horseman!"
* [[Gentle Giant]]: Mondamay in ''Roadmarks''.
* [[Flowery Elizabethan English]]: in ''Creatures of Light and Darkness'', the immortal Prince Who Was A Thousand tends towards this style of speech, especially when conversing with his bodiless love, Nephytha. Other immortals and gods speak normal modern English, for the most part.
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