The Road to Amber (67 page)

Upon Zelazny’s death in 1995, Sheckley said in a memorial essay that he’d only met Zelazny three times and displayed no hint that there had been problems between them. “Roger and I hit it off at once… I loved talking with Roger. He was quick, erudite, gentlemanly, and funny. He was a tremendous problem-solver. We had many interests in common. I always wished we had lived closer to each other, because I’m sure we would have spent a lot of time together.”
[48]

In a 1992 essay marking the thirtieth anniversary of his first professional sale, “Passion Play,” Zelazny cited a quote from Greek poet Archilochus in
The Hedgehog and the Fox
by Isaiah Berlin, a study of Tolstoy’s theory of history. Zelazny identified with that quote, for it rationalized his self-learning program. “‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’—to the end of relating it to a division of thinkers into those two categories: the ones who relate everything to a single, central vision, and the ones who pursue many things—hedgehogs and foxes…for suddenly I knew myself to be a fox.

“As a fox, one chases after ideas for their own sake, not to buttress any hard core of belief. I saw that was the way my mind worked, and I realized it was one of the things I liked about science fiction—the play of ideas. And this fox-hedgehog notion has returned to me many times over the years. I have always gone about my reading—most of it non-fiction—in foxlike fashion, hunting after provocative ideas and insights. When some characters and an idea come together and I feel a story impulse present, I become a temporary hedgehog for the sake of that piece, searching after ways to make everything fit its single, central vision. When it’s over I resume my foxlike prowling.”
[49]

Zelazny enjoyed life in Santa Fe, finding inspiration in its people, its wildlife, and especially its mountains. He described Santa Fe in the liner notes to Bruce Dunlap’s music CD,
About Home
: “This is a place of amazing skies. It can be sunny in one direction, cloudy in another, with curtains of rain—
virgas
—waving in odd corners of the heavens; and double rainbows are common. All this over jagged horizons, bitten rough by mountains with names like Ortiz, Jemez, Sandia, Sangre de Cristo. Piñon pines and juniper trees cover the hills; chamisa [a rabbitbrush] flows golden among them. The nights are chilly, the days pleasant. Coyotes howl in season, driving dogs to distraction; jackrabbits play suicide games with passing pickup trucks; ravens circle the roadkill. And the wind is often with us.

“But home is also a state of mind. Here it is colored by Spanish and Indian culture as well as the raw beauty of the land. One hears odd words and phrases not common elsewhere, sees a lot of silver, turquoise, leather, eats interestingly spiced foods. There is a different rhythm to the days, the seasons.”
[50]

Zelazny grew up reading comics and enjoyed them as an adult. He collected John Ostrander’s
Grimjack
and Neil Gaiman’s
Sandman
and
The Books of Magic
and others. In his introduction to
Demon Knight
, a graphic novel about
Grimjack
, Zelazny said that the main character’s changing nature appealed to him. “I was instantly attracted by the cover of
Grimjack #1
(August 1984) which depicted a long-haired, golden-earringed individual with a magnificently scarred face…[John Gaunt] had a tantalizingly complex past…and a future. He has been changed considerably by events. In this sense, the entire series over these past five years has been more in the nature of a novel, each issue a chapter thereto, than a typical, episodic comic book [with unchanging, flat characters].”
[51]

In his introduction to
The Books of Magic
, Zelazny described Neil Gaiman as “a medium specialist. While his tales are gripping, moving, there is in particular the way of his stories to consider. I’m always fascinated by the point of attack, and by the angles in which he views people, situations, settings, actions. It’s his approach that I study as much as the ideas that he employs.”
[52]

Zelazny’s childhood love of comics antedated his first encounters with mythology and science fiction. “I remember reading newspaper comic strips & editorial cartoons as soon as I began to read. Then comic books along w/regular reading. I never stopped enjoying comics. I’m a fan of comic art & I enjoy good commercial art.”
[53]
His favorite comics were Disney’s
Uncle Scrooge
and
Donald Duck
, and he collected these two as books and newspapers clippings. He also amassed
Doc Savage
comics and novels; consequently his son Devin became fascinated with that character.
[54]

Zelazny enjoyed seeing some of his own stories adapted into comic books or graphic novels, including those assembled for
The Illustrated Roger Zelazny
.
A Night in the Lonesome October
was illustrated comic-book style with Gahan Wilson’s one-panel images.
Jack of Shadows
rematerialized for a new graphic novel,
Shadowland
, but the project was not completed (the outline for it appears in this collection). DC Comics rendered the first two Amber novels into graphic novels in 1996—and since 2006 his son Trent has been adapting the entire Amber decalogy for a new graphic series to be published by Dabel Brothers.
[7]
In January 2008 Trent Zelazny described “amazing” artwork by Caanan White and said that the novels were in production for expected release that year.
[7]
However, there have been no further announcements about the project from Dabel Brothers or any other publisher. The Amber series inspired a lot of graphic-style fan art as well.

Zelazny’s contributions to the comics field earned him an Inkpot Award for best prose writer from Comic-Con International in 1993, where he was a Guest of Honor.

Zelazny offered a unique perspective on short story writing to his colleagues.
[55,56]
Neil Gaiman recalled, “My friend Steve Brust sat me down in a bar with Roger, and the three of us spoke about story structure for most of the evening. When Roger spoke, Steve and I listened. ‘Many of my better stories,’ said Roger, pulling on his pipe, explaining how to write short stories, ‘are just the last chapters of novels I did not write.’”
[56]

This perspective determined when to start a story. “Had I wanted, my stories ‘Permafrost’ and ‘24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai’ could’ve been novels. There was easily enough material there. I chose instead to start near their endings, explaining what had gone before as economically as possible while moving right into the ‘good parts.’ It was an esthetic judgment both times. And both are stronger as short stories than they would have been as novels.

“It has been my experience that if I have what I feel to be a very good idea but do not like the mechanical things that seem necessary for its expression, then I should reconsider the structure of the piece. This usually results in my finding a different point in time for the action to commence.”
[57]

He counseled the novice, “Persistence. You do all the things you learn to do in the way of the craft, you hope for inspiration in the way of something perhaps more involved, but it’s not enough even to sit down and write a good book or a good story. You’ve got to keep doing it over and over.

“Don’t discourage easily, because more likely than not, for the first few years, everything will come back and it’ll be rejected—even if it’s quite good—because I think editors are more conservative these days.

“If your career does start catching on, in my experience, from people I’ve talked to, all that old stuff you got rejected can quite often be taken out again and sold. It’s not that it’s changed any in quality by aging, like wine in a cask; it’s that you’ve suddenly become more commercially viable. They say ‘oh, we need something by this person. It’s not a bad story.’ And it might be the same person who’d rejected it earlier. I’ve seen that happen too.”
[36]

Tor/Forge accepted
Wilderness
in February 1993. Zelazny’s first non-genre novel published, it appeared the following year. He’d written
The Dead Man’s Brother
more than twenty years earlier, but it didn’t appear until 2009. Curiously, John Clute described
Wilderness
as “semi-autobiographical” in his
Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia
.
[58]
It may be considered a semi-biographical account of its two main characters, but it is not an autobiography by either author.

Zelazny and Hausman did some signing events together. Hausman recalled an incident in Albuquerque: “a woman with a big Stetson who asked us to sign her book. She was a little annoyed that we did not recognize her. Finally, she removed her hat and said—‘Can’t you tell who I am?’ Roger and I apologized, and both of us said no. The woman laughed. ‘I thought you could tell by the way my ears stick out. It’s a family resemblance. I am John Colter’s great-great-great niece!’ Later, she told us that we’d gotten everything right in the novel, and she said it was about time someone told the story straight from the heart. A similar thing happened here in Florida at a party: I met a direct descendant of Hugh Glass.”
[21]

Reviewers found the book gripping and compelling. Hausman was amused to note that “Charles Kurault included the
Colterglass
tale in his book
America
as if it were fact. I had a laugh at that—did we make our historical fiction so unfictive that it seemed like biographical fact?”
[21]
The novel did sufficiently well that the editor requested another collaboration. Zelazny said, “The editor, a fellow named Bob Gleason, is quite an authority on western fiction. He mentioned to us recently that he’d like another. I decided whether we do it or not, I would like to at least study the historical background. I’ve been a history buff for many years. A second book by us would be a few years down the line…”
[22]
Hausman confirmed, “Roger and I talked about collaboration, but the closest we got was the outline he wrote for an unusual guidebook of New Mexico called
Cities of Gold
. He wanted me to do it with him, and we certainly would’ve, but unfortunately, our time together ran out.”
[22]

Although Zelazny died before any work began, he did provide Hausman with an idea. Zelazny dreamed that Hausman wrote a novel about Jamaica, a buried treasure and a wraith named James Bond,” and he told Hausman.
[46]
“Shortly before he died, he had a lucid dream about a novel I was to write about my mystical experiences in Jamaica. He phoned me and gave me the outline for that novel, and, coincidentally, I am writing it now. It will be called
Sungazer
and it is, as you might imagine, science fiction.”
[21]

Zelazny mused on a poetic presence in his prose, seemingly missing in newer authors’ work: “the difference is how English is taught now than when I was in school. Nowadays, they don’t memorize sonnets, long sections of poetry. At the time, I thought it a dull exercise; later, I found poems that I liked memorized themselves. Then the lines, the rhythms for some of the poems I’d taken the trouble to memorize, play in the mind when writing prose, slip into its form.”
[59]
Like Ray Bradbury, another author also described as a “prose poet,” Zelazny continued to write and publish poetry in addition to his fiction.

In 1990 the publisher Twayne commissioned Jane Lindskold to write a book about Zelazny for its
Twayne’s Authors Series
of literary criticism. Part biography and part literary critique, her book
Roger Zelazny
appeared in late 1993. It received mixed reviews, but it fared better than Theodore Krulik’s similarly titled book.
[60-62]
The book begins with the statement that Lindskold met Zelazny as a fan and befriended him from 1990-1992 while researching the book.
[63]
More recently, she admitted that they became lovers during that interval.
[64]
She and Zelazny moved in together shortly after the book was published. In retrospect, Lindskold may not have retained the objectivity needed for a literary critique of a major author. Her book remains important for its interviews, correspondence from Zelazny, and her insight into his writing and personal life.

Zelazny’s friendship with Jane Lindskold had deepened into romance. By late 1993 he was ready to leave Judy, to whom he had been mar¬ried since 1966.
[65,66]
He told Carl Yoke that his marriage had failed several years before he met Lindskold.
[15]
His son Trent said, “I won’t go into details, but yes, there were problems. The last couple of years as a family, it was five people living in five separate locked rooms.”
[7]
Lindskold’s own marriage was over, and in late 1993, “when I told Roger I was getting a divorce, he asked me if I would come and live with him in Santa Fe.”
[66]

The two were in very good spirits, planning their new home. Zelazny decided that this was a good time to have a full medical check-up. He’d been experiencing low energy for some months, a complaint that can indicate something serious. The news was not good: he had cancer of the large bowel (colorectal cancer), and it was inoperable. Chemotherapy was the only option. The diagnosis caused Zelazny and Lindskold to delay their plans for a few months, and he offered to release her from her promise to move in with him (she refused).
[66]
Lindskold wrote, “In early 1994, while contemplating separating from Judy and moving in with fellow writer Jane Lindskold, Zelazny discovered that he had cancer. He went into treatment almost immediately, and his condition temporarily improved. In mid-1994, he and Lindskold set up housekeeping in Santa Fe, in order to remain close to his mother and children.”
[65]