The title of the third story in this collection is given as "Engine at Heartspring's Center", and the second paragraph, as presented here, is:

She was regaining her feet, the signs in the sand indicating flight and collapse. She had on the same red dress, torn and stained now. Her black hair—short, with heavy bangs—lay in the only small disarrays of which it was capable. Perhaps thirty feet away was a young man from the Center, advancing toward her. Behind him drifted one of the seldom seen dispatch-machines—about half the size of a man and floating that same distance above the ground, it was shaped like a tenpin, and silver, its bulbous head-end faceted and illuminated, its three ballerina skirts tinfoil-thin and gleaming, rising and falling in rhythms independent of the wind.

That of course is a problem. The title of the story is usually given as "The Engine at Heartspring's Center", and the second paragraph is, memorably:

Choose any of the above and you might be right.

An entire page has been omitted from the ebook. I repeat, the entire first page of the story has been omitted. In fact, the last page of the previous story, "For a Breath I Tarry" is missing as well. Other pages are missing throughout the ebook. I don't think that I have ever seen this before, from any other ebook that I have ever read. It is shockingly contemptuous of the author and of the reader. I acquired this over a decade after publication, so there is no excuse for not fixing the problem.

In addition, the very title of the collection shows disrespect to both reader and writer. In Zelazny's lifetime, a largely different collection of stories was published with the same title, in 1980. Each story had an introduction from Zelazny, shedding light on what he was trying to do (and largely succeeding) in each case. There's none of that here, just an introduction from Robert Silverberg saying that Zelazny was a great guy and a great writer.

I never thought that the day would come when I actively disrecommended a book by Zelazny, one of my favourite authors, but that day has in fact come. All of the stories here are great, but all of them are readily available elsewhere, mostly in collections authorised by Zelazny in his lifetimes, and many of them can be found for free online. Shame on ibooks, Inc. for publishing such a crappy effort, and shame on the Zelazny estate for authorising it. I understand that the print edition of this collection was poorly produced and some buyers found that their copies fell apart.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2016 (as part of a Zelazny bundle). Next on that pile is The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest, of which I have somewhat higher hopes.

Second paragraph of third story ("Home is the Hangman"):

I sat in a chair turned sidewise from the table to face the door. A tool kit rested on the floor to my left. The helmet stood on the table, a lopsided basket of metal, quartz, porcelain, and glass. If I heard the click of a microswitch followed by a humming sound from within it, then a faint light would come on beneath the meshing near to its forward edge and begin to blink rapidly. If these things occurred, there was a very strong possibility that I was going to die.

Very glad to start this write-up with a quote from a favourite story, the Hugo and Nebula-winning climax of the three stories of a nameless protagonist which make up My Name is Legion. The later 1970s were a productive and fertile time for Zelazny's imagination; the one problem with this volume, the fourth of six collecting his short fiction, is that I have read it all before - My Name is Legion, Dilvish, the Damned, Unicorn Variations - I even have a copy of The Illustrated Roger Zelazny with the Jack of Shadows prequel "Shadowjack". Still, there is plenty of explanatory material outlining how each story came to be written, and a useful afterword linking the short fiction and poetry to Zelazny's novels and other life events (notably the births of his children). For a Zelazny completist like me, it's indispensable; but it adds less than previous volumes did.

This was the last book left on my shelves bought in 2009. That now opens up all my 2010 lists: non-fiction (The Other Islam, by Stephen Schwartz), non-genre (See How Much I Love You, by Luis Leante), sf (Argonautica, by Valerius Flaccus), short books (De Piraten van de Zilveren Kattenklauw, by "Geronimo Stilton"), and most popular (The Palace of Dreams, by Ismail Kadarë).

This is the second volume in the NESFA series collecting Zelazny's writings, again edited by David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs and Ann Crimmins. I had high praise for the first of these; the second didn't grab me quite as much. Almost half of it is occupied by the original "...And Call Me Conrad" text of This Immortal, a separately published chapter of Lord of Light, and the first few Dilvish stories, which is I suppose necessary for completeness, but most readers will already have Zelazny's preferred final texts of those works. (Though it is fascinating to learn that Lord of Light was inspired by a train of thought started when Zelazny cut himself shaving at a science fiction convention.)

Anyway, I won't complain too much. As well as some excellent short stories (including the three wrenching pieces written the day Zelazny's father died), there are two speeches and a short essay, forewords by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Walter Jon Williams (who tried, unsuccessfully, to get Zelazny to try the Amber roleplaying game), and Christopher Kovacs continues his fascinating bio-bibliography. I shall be getting the next two volumes which are apparently already out from NESFA.

Problems with my train journeys to and from work today meant that I managed to finish this weighty volume of almost 600 pages, covering the early work of the late, great Roger Zelazny (1937-1995). This is the first of a planned series of six volumes covering his entire literary career, published by the New England Science Fiction Association and edited by David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs and Ann Crimmins. Together with volume two, it was launched at Boskone in February which was where I bought it.

I suspect that the book's main audience will be Zelazny fans like myself, hoping for 1) hitherto unpublished literary gems unearthed by the editors' diligence, 2) some insights into those aspects of Zelazny's life and background which made it possible for him to produce his work, and 3) a convenient volume including our favourite pieces. NESFA have delivered on all three. A lot of the uncollected pieces here are rather minor, but there were a couple which jumped out at me as memorable ("Final Dining", "Circe Has Her Problems"). There is a decent amount of explanatory biographical material by co-editor Kovacs, Carl Yoke and a preface by Robert Silverberg. And this first volume includes "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", "The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth" and "He Who Shapes", Zelazny's best early stories, which is a powerful mixture.

Satisfying those three requirements would just about justify the hefty $29 price of this hardback. But there are several other positive points about it. First, a lot of Zelazny's early poetry is collected here, interspersed through the stories, certainly at a pace where I could appreciate it. Second, and probably deserving to be mentioned before this, there is a brilliant Michael Whelan cover which will apparently span the jackets of all six volumes. Third, each story and poem has, if available, a short epilogue from Zelazny himself explaining his own feelings about it, and also a glossary of literary references (most of which are accurate, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Miller whose writing has emetic effects is Henry rather than Arthur).

So, apart from its obvious appeal to existing fans, I think volume one at least is well-designed as a gateway book to encourage new sf readers to read more Zelazny and just to read more widely. "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" is a really powerful story to begin with - consciously old-fashioned but doing something new as well. "He Who Shapes", drawing as it does on Zelazny's own experience of car accidents and bereavement, is a good ending point for this first selection. The commentary keeps us going through the less memorable stories in the middle. I am looking forward to reading volume two, and to buying the rest as they come out.

It's often a bit worrying to return to the scene of one's youthful enthusiasm to see if the magic is still there - particularly in the case of this novel, bearing in mind the recent discussions of cultural appropriation.

It still worked for me. Zelazny's writing in the first place is vigorous and powerful, and funny also on occasion; it is rather easy to get swept along by the characters with superhuman, semi-divine abilities trying to outwit each other without concentrating too much on the plot. His trademark was always the juxtaposition of the mythic and the demotic, and Lord of Light probably is the peak of his powers at novel length.

The plot also stands the test of time. The rulers of the world of Lord of Light have chosen to construct a religion in order to stay in power, and rather than make up their own (as later Zelazny books do) have taken Hinduism off the shelf, as it were, suited as it is to their reincarnation technology. "Accelerationism" (ie modernisation) among the general populace is ruthlessly repressed. Our hero, Sam, is one of the privileged who rebels, and uses methods of terrorism, war and assassination to undermine the power structures, is captured, executed twice, and eventually returned to life (at the start of the book, most of the story being told in flashback) and victory.

It's not terribly clear that Sam is doing this out of an egalitarian or libertarian commitment to oppose tyranny; it seems more that he (along with Zelazny) favours two different types of enlightenment - personal enlightenment in the (explicitly) Buddhist sense, and cultural enlightenment in the sense of eighteenth-century Europe, in both cases implying freedom from religious dogma and control, and so is committed to bringing them about.

To achieve this, he has to do a deal with the indigenous entities of the planet as well, now known as the Rakashas; he exploits them but also possibly liberates them, and their support is crucial to his ultimate success - a subplot with interesting undertones both historically and psychologically. Note also that the explicitly Christian characters are dubious outsiders who are minor but somewhat unreliable allies (leading an army of soulless zombies). Plenty of cultural irony, directed mainly westwards.

Lord of Light won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Other shorlisted books that year were The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany, and three books I haven't read: Chthon by Piers Anthony, The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson and Thorns by Robert Silverberg. All except the Anderson book (of which I have otherwise not heard) were also shortlisted for the Nebula, which was won by The Einstein Intersection.

Zelazny's first novel, and one of his great ones, set on a devastated future planet earth with a Greek immortal lapsed terrorist as the protagonist. He was almost at the peak of his powers: in his late he hit levels of quality he had difficulty in reaching again in later, more comfortable times. The familiar Zelazny themes of death and fatherhood are already here. Conrad/Konstantin loses his wife (apparently, in an earthquake) and two other sympathetic characters die of natural causes; and his son (like himself immortal, but without his own eternal youth) recurs to utter prophecies and help at a crucial moment.

Two things make the book. The first is the fascinating character of the narrator, whose hard-boiled but occasionally lyrical voice becomes familiar (perhaps too familiar) in later Zelazny but must have been fresh in 1965. His past as a former fighter against the alien Vegans and quisling humans who have taken over the devastated earth, combined with his present as a chief administrator collaborating (at least superficially) with the administrationn makes us never quite sure what he is up to himself but eager to find out. He is a hero who is trying to keep his heroic identity under wraps. He does things like dismantling the Great Pyramid for laughs. And there are the little touches like dropping in on his friend's daughter's seventh birthday party.

The other thing is just the writing: first, the setting up and description of the bizarre blasted landscapes of the future Greece, the voodoo celebration in Haiti, the shift in perspective as he fights the golem, the Athens hotel room covered with plaques commemorating Conrad's life as Konstantin ("I was really afraid to go into the bathroom"). And second, of course, the humour - the skill Zelazny had in combining the contrasting styles of demotic with epic and making it funny rather than just cheap.

The book is not without flaws. The plot (both the sequence of events in the story, and the conspiracy among several of the characters) has a lot of holes in it. Conrad appears to have married Cassandra without telling her how old he is; she in her turn surprisingly survives apparent death and then doesn't contact him for weeks, showing up just in the nick of time to save them all from the Black Beast of Thessaly. (No apologies for spoilers - the book has been a classic for forty years.) The invisibilty of Conrad's immortality to the administrative system is rather less credibly established than that of the protagonist of Zelazny's later My Name Is Legion.

But I loved rereading it, and am wondering if I might make the complete works of Zelazny into one of my future reading projects. (I should add that I got the idea of setting myself reading projects in the first place after discovering from a biography that Zelazny planned his own leisure reading fairly meticulously.)

I'm a die-hard Zelazny fan, and when I heard that this book - written in the early 1970s, at about the same time as Today We Choose Faces and My Name Is Legion - had finally been published, I was delighted but also a little worried. Even we die-hard Zelazny fans would have to admit that his later novels from the 1990s were not really of the same quality, though his short fiction was still consistent with his earlier output. Also, of course, it's not that long since I read Variable Star, and concluded that Heinlein had probably had the right idea when he locked away its manuscript for the rest of his life.

The Dead Man's Brother is a much better book than Variable Star. It is a more or less non-sfnal thriller (I say "more or less" because it is hinted that the narrator, being of course a Zelazny hero, has special abilities) set in contemporary (ie early 70s) Rome and Brazil. The Zelazny hard-bitten writing style is gloriously there. His narrator is more misogynistic than most Zelazny characters, but matures a bit in the course of the story. The cover is rather gloriously tacky, featuring our hero cradling the heroine while clutching a ridiculously phallic machete. In short, I enjoyed it, and would even recommend it as a gateway book for non-Zelazny fans.

( new format )
( Blood of the Daleks - a reasonable start )
( Horror of Glam Rock - stick to the day job, Stephen )
( Immortal Beloved - Doctor Who does Zelazny )
( Phobos - bungee jumping to the wormhole )
( No More Lies - the whuh? )
( Human Resources - the truth about Lucie )

Basically, all of these (apart from No More Lies) are decent fare, but none really blew me away with their brilliance. I'm only listening to them now because I'm running out of BF audios to listen to. Perhaps the second series will have higher peaks.

"We all brought desserts. Roger loved dessert."

The name "Semiramis" crops up as an epithet in both Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew, as a legendary ancient warrior queen.

I first encountered her in slightly different form as Semirama, a character in Roger Zelazny's The Changing Land (the second of the two books about his character Dilvish the Damned, which is itself a sort of epilogue to William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland). I can't lay hands on my copy at the moment but she was rather memorably brought to life the illustrator; in the book, she is an ancient queen, resurrected centuries after her death to help contain the mad deity at the centre of the story.

I have no idea how Zelazny intended her name to be pronunced, but I automatically read it as along the same lines as semiCOLon or semiFINal, thus "SemiRAMa" or in the traditional version "SemiRAMis". (I never really thought about why she would be half of a Rama or Ramis, though.)

However, it's absolutely clear that Shakespeare has a different pronuniciation in mind:

( evidence )

I guess it wouldn't have occurred to me so quickly if I was just reading the plays rather than listening to them as well, but it's obvious that Shakespeare is stressing the antepenultimate (or, as we say in English, third last) syllable: "SeMIRamis".

Wikipedia, as so often, has much interesting information about Semiramis, including that her original name may have been the Babylonian "Shammur-amat". Ancient Babylonian is not one of my languages, so I don't know where the stress would be in "Shammur".

Then again, when you consider how different the modern pronunciation of "Julius Cæsar" is from the way he probably said it ("Yoolius Kaiser"), Semiramis would probably be glad to know that she is remembered at all this long after her death, and not too worried about the pronunciation of her name by people in countries she did not know existed.