My first exposure to the works of Roger Zelazny was the film Damnation Alley (1977), at the time I didn’t realise was based upon his work. The film starring George Peppard and Jan Michael Vincent, directed by Jan Smight only has a passing resemblance to Zelazny’s book. Zelazny loved the first draft of the script but it went through several more revisions before the shooting script that was used.  It suffered in production due to Star Wars, funds that were to be spent on Special Effects were funnelled into Star Wars by Fox as it was having production issues.  The most successful part of the film was the Landmaster vehicle. This behemoth of a 12 wheeled vehicle constructed by Dean Jeffries, was basically exactly as fictionalised

As for the written work, my first experience was seeing a copy of ‘The Doors of his Face and Lamps of His mouth and other stories’ on a friend of my mothers bookshelf. The cover fascinated me, as did the title because of my interest, this book was gifted to me. The Doors of his face is the story of a baitman who is working on Venus to catch the biggest living animal in the sea, the Ikky. Unlike the real Venus in the story it is represented as lush and full of oceans, this was written in 1961 before more was known about the composition of the planet. In that way it’s a throwback to the pulp era of science fiction. The story is about much more than fishing though, with nods to Moby Dick it’s a story about obsession, broken people and finding yourself again. As always Zelazny writes beautifully I always love his use of descriptive language, lyrical but stripped back.

The whole collection of 15 stories it can be argued are from Zelazny’s best period, but personally for me his whole life was his best period. The collection includes Devil Cars, The Devil and a myriad of other wonderful creations. After Door I went in search of more Zelazny. My next foray was ‘The Last Defender of Camelot’, the title story about Lancelot returning and With Morgana Le Fay they try to defeat Merlin. This was adapted into the 1986 run of The Twilight Zone (you need to watch this) with the script written by George R Martin, other stories in the collection include ‘Auto Da Fe’, ‘The stainless steel leech’ and ‘For a Breath I Tarry’ the story of the surviving sentient machines after man has destroyed themselves.

In 1983 a new collection of Zelazny’s shorts was released and I immediately got hold of it. Unicorn Variations with the title story the result of George R Martin challenging Zelazny to write a story set in a bar with a Unicorn playing chess in order to sell it to the largest market, other stories in the collection included ‘The Last of the Wild Ones’ (a follow up to Devil car), ‘Home is the Hangman’ and ‘My Lady of the diodes’.

I have always preferred Zelazny’s short work over his novels, I’m not sure why as I enjoy the novels but the variety and the execution of his shorts always gave back far more to me. Weirdly I have never read his most famous work The Chronicles of Amber. I always saw the books around but for some reason the covers put me off, one day I’ll get around to it though. No matter what for me Roger Zelazny’s short story work is some of the best and most eclectic of the 60’s/70’s and 80’s.

 

By Duncan

I'd love to hear from you, please leave a comment below.