The Magic (October 1961–October 1967)

Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny

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There was a period, from 1961-1967, when Roger Zelazny was magic, and every new story of his was an event. He was a tremendously variable writer. The heart-wrenching “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” (written October 1967) was nothing like the passionate “Graveyard Heart,” which was completely different from the mind blowing “The Ides of Octember,” serialized in Amazing as “He Who Shapes,” which was altogether different from the post-nuclear holocaust romp, “Damnation Alley,” published in Galaxy and released as a film ten years later.

Zelazny had style, his language sang, …

Zelazny had style, his language sang, his prose flowed like poetry. There was really no one else quite like him when he exploded onto the scene. Collected here together in one volume are the ten long stories that made Zelazny a legend. The impact of these ten stories cannot be denied. Reading them together gives one a sense of how rare an accomplishment Zelazny’s early career was.

Samuel R. Delany is the author of more than 20 novels including Nova and Dhalgren. He has won two Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, two Lambda Awards, and the Stonewall Book Award. Delany is an SFWA Grand Master and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. He is widely regarded as one of our most important science fiction authors.

Roger Zelazny was a science fiction and fantasy writer, a six time Hugo Award winner, and a three time Nebula Award Winner. He published more than forty novels in his lifetime. His first novel This Immortal, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the title “...And Call Me Conrad,” won the Hugo Award for best novel. Lord of Light, his third novel, also won the Hugo award and was nominated for the Nebula award. He died at age 58 from colon cancer. Zelazny was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.

2 edizioni

eBook, 620 pagine

lingua English

Pubblicato il 13 Novembre 2018 da Positronic Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-1-5154-3922-6
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Recensioni

MH Thaung ha recensito The Magic: (october 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny di Roger Zelazny

Classic novella collection, maybe more for the completionist than a new reader

Nessuna valutazione

I’ve enjoyed reading Zelazny’s works after borrowing Nine Princes in Amber from my local library some forty years ago. Some of the novellas in this collection of ten were old friends, and I enjoyed revisiting them while discovering new-to-me works as well.

Setting each work in perspective, the novellas are interspersed with brief commentaries, author’s notes and explanatory notes. (I didn’t pay much attention to the last. On the one hand, they might be handy, but on the other they felt rather condescending.) I liked learning more about the context (eg what else was being published at the time, and by whom).

Zelazny’s protagonists are unapologetically exceptional. We don’t (generally) follow them through a story that challenges their abilities. The opposition they face is not usually from equally competent people. Instead, they may strive against forces of nature (as in “This Moment of the Storm” or “This Mortal Mountain”). Their challenges—or maybe, the challenges the reader perceives—are moral or philosophical problems, such as the dying population in “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”. Perhaps because I binge-read the collection, I found myself hankering for a touch more human fallibility, but I guess then the stories would lose their mythic tone. It would also have been nice if the women had more than walk-on roles.

Overall, a handy collection for completionists, but new readers might want to start elsewhere.