The Road to Amber (65 page)

Zelazny told his friend Carl Yoke that the collaboration enticed him for two reasons. First, the tone would mirror the Zlaz/Yok stories he’d written with Yoke back in high school, a timbre later echoed in 1963’s “The Great Slow Kings.” Second, by positioning himself as the senior collaborator, he could give Sheckley more experience with novel-length stories, an arrangement which McCauley suggested and Sheckley accepted.
[15]

The good versus evil conflict came from Zelazny’s long list of ideas. They discussed the idea, and then Zelazny composed a detailed outline. Sheckley later acknowledged, “Yes. It was lovely having him do the whole layout and also, it was quite a straightforward story.”
[16]
Sheckley wrote a complete first draft; Zelazny rewrote and submitted it. Their only contact was by telephone or letter. Zelazny also responded to the publisher’s queries and made any changes that they wanted.
[17]
Archived correspondence at Syracuse University verifies this account.

Sheckley gave an interview after Zelazny’s death in which he claimed to have written
Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming
: “He and I only met once to talk about a possible collaborative project. We agreed on an idea, which was his, and we also agreed very rapidly. He and I got along very well and seemed to understand each other. I am very sad about his loss… For a month or more he would send me plot outlines, and I would ask him questions to clarify things for me. You say this. What does it mean? And when it came time to write, when I felt I understood the story situation, I wrote the entire book. I did a polish on it also and gave it over to Roger, and he handled any other problems that came up. He cleared up any discrepancies. If the publisher had any objections, that was his problem, not mine. And this worked well.”
[18]
However, this account differs from the archived correspondence between Zelazny and Sheckley, the archived manuscripts from Sheckley and Zelazny, and from the interviews that Zelazny gave about the novel.

Zelazny described
Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming
this way. “It’s a medieval fantasy, somewhat humorous in nature. Heaven and Hell have this contest, once every thousand years, at the turning of the millennium. The side that wins is given control of human destiny for the next thousand years. Our story involves the putting together of Hell’s entry for the contest: the Prince Charming story, which is done in a somewhat unusual fashion. Beyond that, I don’t want to spoil the plot.”
[19]

As is often the case, this collaboration differed from either author’s usual fare, and it proved less satisfying for fans of both. It fell short of the quirky humor from the Zlaz/Yok stories, and Zelazny was disappointed about that. The book came out in hardcover and trade paperback and later in mass market paperback. It evidently sold well enough to justify completion of the trilogy, although the hardcover of the second book was canceled. The later two volumes each came out in trade paperback, followed by mass market paperback. Overall, the three figure among Zelazny’s lighter works, and none of them ranks among the best of his collaborative works.

In a 1991 introduction to a Sheckley collection, Zelazny wrote, “I have been privileged to collaborate with Robert Sheckley and have witnessed his thinking as we were about it. I was impressed by his general erudition as few have impressed me. I was amazed by his sense of the story’s form. I was awed by his ability to juggle disparate characters and situations into tighter and tighter circles… I’ve learned a lot from him.”
[20]
Unfortunately, their relationship deteriorated as they wrote the second and third books.

Gerald Hausman presented Zelazny with the third chapter of
Colterglass
, sparking a series of chapter exchanges. It was intermittent at first, but by 1991 they traded manuscripts every week or two. “Roger would deliver his chapters to my wife’s desk, usually on a Monday. My wife Lorry worked as the receptionist at Santa Fe Preparatory School in Santa Fe, NM, where Roger’s children Trent, Devin, and Shannon were enrolled. Roger would drop the kids off in his van and then step into the front office and give Lorry a mysterious manila envelope and one Scottish scone from the French Pastry Shop. I’d get the envelope that evening. It was always a perfect complement to the story, and it gave me the right inspiration for the next part. Usually, by the following Monday, Lorry would have a new manila envelope on her desk waiting for Roger.”
[21]

Zelazny said, “We did it as a hobby. We didn’t have a contract or anything. He’d write a chapter and when I had a chance I’d write a chapter. We kicked it back and forth for a long time.
[22]
Later in 1991 , however, he remembered his idea for
A Night in the Lonesome October
and resumed that project; it reduced time for
Colterglass
.

Writers—especially science fiction and fantasy writers—find that question unimaginative but inevitable. Zelazny addressed the issue for his alma mater, Case Western Reserve. “When you make your living writing science fiction, the question you hear most frequently is ‘where do you get your ideas?’ I think this is a terrible question, and having compared notes with most science fiction writers in the country, I feel safe in saying that all of us agree it is a terrible question.

I have heard it from small children and from the trembling lips of the near-senescent, from people in nearly every profession, at every level of society. I once heard it in a cave in Mexico, translated from Hungarian to Spanish to English, and I saw it coming long before it came. It’s not that the question is unanswerable, it is just that it does not give itself to a ready reply.”
[23]

Zelazny sometimes replied with a quick, funny retort. Joe Haldeman recalled convention speeches in which Zelazny declared “that every night he leaves a bowl of milk and some crackers on the back stoop; in the morning, the milk and crackers are gone, but there’s a stack of crazy ideas by the empty bowl.”
[24]
Editor David Hartwell recalled a different answer from Zelazny: “In front of a group of fans at a convention, he replied to a vacuous teenager that the
Journal of Crazy Ideas
is published quarterly in Schenectady, New York, and that when you join the Science Fiction Writers of America and become a certified professional, you get a free subscription and can use any of the ideas in the magazine instead of having to think up your own. This is one of the secrets of being a professional and one of the reasons why two different writers will have the same idea in different stories.”
[25]
It’s not clear who first used a Schenectady quip; Frank Herbert and Harlan Ellison used variations in the late 1970s, and Ellison named a postal service in “Poughkeepsie, NY,” as the source.

In his essay “Beyond the Idea,” Zelazny recalled his learning that a cartoonist used the Yellow Pages for inspiration. Zelazny used the Yellow Pages a few times to extrapolate future occupations; this explains how a “bait and tackle ad” allegedly inspired “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.”
[26]

The “A Word from Zelazny” sections in these six volumes contain Zelazny’s recollection of the preceding story’s genesis. For example, in the afterword (in volume 2) to the story “Death and the Executioner” (which is actually chapter 3 of
Lord of Light
) Zelazny explains how a shaving mishap provoked him to conceive
Lord of Light
.
[27]
Zelazny’s varied reading program undoubtedly provided myriad material that his subconscious later disassembled, synthesized, and transmuted.

At Norwescon on March 31, 1991, Zelazny again faced the inevitable question, followed by another, asking if he was running out of ideas. “There’s never a shortage of ideas. I have more ideas than I’ll ever be able to use in my stories. I’m a writer who keeps notes, very simple notes, just short things which remind me of longer notions… I just had a great idea [for a novel] about a week ago…but the way my work is lined up right now, I wouldn’t be able to get to it for about two years. I don’t know if that will be the one I’ll be writing; by the time I get there I may have a better idea, or I may unearth one from my notes that I want to work on, it’s hard to say. There’s also this tension between wanting to write novels and wanting to write short material. Most important for me is really novelettes and novellas. I have about three story ideas I really want to work on, but then again it’s going to be at least a year or so before I get to write them. Novels tend to push shorter material out to the side, just basically for economic reasons, which is a pity. But there you are.”
[28]
The timing of these remarks suggests that the novel could have been the
Donnerjack
trilogy, inaugurated in September 1991; one of the story ideas was likely “Godson.” That interview is also notable for his remark that “most important for me is really novelettes and novellas,” but both his schedule and a need to rely on novels for income kept him away from that format for long intervals.

Zelazny’s remark in March 1991, “I may unearth [an idea for a novel] from my notes that I want to work on,” proved prophetic. In December 1991 he unearthed the notes for
A Night in the Lonesome October
, forgotten in a drawer since 1979. Agent Kirby McCauley casually mentioned that he was going to dinner with Gahan Wilson, provoking Zelazny to find his notes. Zelazny read them over, and the story haunted him. Flouting his rule to write nothing on spec or without a contract, he commenced immediately. He skipped meals and lost sleep, completing a first draft by March 1992. Initially he planned a short story or novelette, but once he started writing, it turned itself into a novel. He finished the book before he even mentioned the concept to his agent. McCauley immediately suggested that Zelazny should write it and was astounded to learn that the manuscript already existed. McCauley signed Gahan Wilson to illustrate it, fulfilling Zelazny’s original 1979 vision for the project.

Having Jack the Ripper’s dog narrate the tale made the book compelling. It was generally extremely well received, and many consider it to be the best of Zelazny’s longer works since
Doorways in the Sand
or
Eye of Cat
. Some critics suggested that it represented his return to the experimentation exhibited in
Lord of Light
—although
A Night in the Lonesome October
was clearly far lighter fare. Zelazny said, “I feel that whenever you are considering a story, if something odd occurs to you (as with
A Night in the Lonesome October
, when I decided to tell the story from the viewpoint of the dog), you should be willing to take a chance. I think that is part of the creative spirit speaking to one, saying, ‘I’m not going to interrupt too long, Zelazny—take a chance, write the story from a dog’s viewpoint, and make Jack the Ripper a somewhat sympathetic guy.’ Things like that I had thought of in the past but lacked the nerve to show it.”
[29]

He’d rationalized a similar venture in his introduction to
The Last Defender of Camelot
. “Occasionally, there arises a writing situation when you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant—you just don’t know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you’d mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.

“Trust your demon.”
[30]

He also realized that his 1977 story, “Is There a Demon Lover in the House,” had directly inspired the later novel. “I had once written a story involving Jack the Ripper. It was for
Heavy Metal
… I had actually skimmed a book about Jack the Ripper at the time, and I remembered that the last Ripper killings occurred in October. I said ‘you have a ritual killing situation and October. What’s special about October? Well, Halloween, but there’s a Halloween every year.’ I was looking for something to distinguish it. I said, ‘well, there’s not a Halloween with a full moon every year. That could make it special.’ That’s when I got the rough idea for a sort of game. A stylized duel between two sides involving something that would culminate on Halloween.”
[22]
A full moon appeared over London on October 31 in 1887, 1925, 1944, 1955, and 1974; the next occurrence will be in 2020. 31 Halloween 1887 fits the timeline of both Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper.

The novel’s title refers to the poem “Ulalume” by Edgar Allan Poe. Zelazny’s book is rich with borrowed characters—some obvious and others tantalizingly familiar—from real life and classics of literature and screen. The dedication provides an important clue as to their identities: “To—Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Albert Payson Terhune, and the makers of a lot of old movies—Thanks.”
[32]

Narrator
Snuff
owes inspiration to Chum, Buff and other dogs in the stories of Albert Payson Terhune. His owner Jack is, of course, Jack the Ripper, who terrorized London in the autumn of 1888 by slaying women with a knife and mutilating their bodies afterward; in the dedication, Zelazny acknowledged Bloch’s
The Night of the Ripper
.
Graymalk
is Graymalkin, familiar of the third witch in Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
. Graymalk’s mistress
Jill
is, therefore, that third witch; together with Jack, her name enables a pun that is not voiced until the end.
Nyarlathotep
and the
Elder Gods
come from H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
Morris and MacCab
are based on William Burke and William Hare who, during the 1800s in Edinburgh, operated as serial killers and grave robbers (body snatchers) and sold the corpses to the medical school.
Larry Talbot
was the lycanthrope in the 1941 film
The WolfMan
.
Rastov
is the crazy Russian monk Rasputin, who exerted undue influence over Tsar Nicholas II before and during World War I.
Owen
may stand for Owen Glendower of Shakespeare’s
Henry IV Part 1
, who can call spirits from the vasty deep. The
Vicar
may be inspired by Lovecraft’s “The Peace Advocate” and Barthélemy Lemeignan, vicar of Saint-Eustache, who sacrificed children in black masses. The vicar’s
Raven
likely acknowledges the famous poem of Edgar Allan Poe. The
Count
is Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
. The
Good Doctor
and
experiment man
come from Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
; the small hunched companion (Fritz or Igor) is a Hollywood addition.
Great Detective
and his
Companion
are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The rest of the familiars have thematic names, such as
Bubo the rat
, whose name suggests the plague, carried by rats’ fleas, producing markedly swollen lymph nodes (buboes) in humans. Chapter 22’s Dreamworld sequence alludes extensively to H. P. Lovecraft’s
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
.