Lord of Light Roger Zelazny

Lord of Light

Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny was born in 1937 in Cleveland Ohio, he was the only child of Joseph Zelazny and Josephine Sweet. Joseph Zelazny immigrated from Poland and worked as a pattern maker for a typewriter company, Josephine was a homemaker. Mr. Zelazny started reading early and his first published works were poems in his high school literary magazine, which he also edited. While in high school he submitted stories for publication to science fiction magazines but only one story was ever accepted; this discouraged him a bit so he focused on his poetry, After graduating high school, he enrolled in Western Reserve University in Cleveland, originally he studied psychology but switched eventually to English and graduated with his BA in 1959. While he was there, he won the Finlay Foster Poetry Prize, twice. He then headed to graduate school at Colombia University, where he would study Elizabethan and Jacobean drama (Jacobean drama refers to works written during the reign of the British King James I, who took the throne after Queen Elizabeth). He would also serve a term in the Ohio National Guard. He received his Master's degree in 1962 and sold two short stories as well as started work as a claims agent in the Social Security Administration, writing part-time. He married his fiance after delaying the wedding due to an auto crash but the strain of the accident and the death of his father in the same year led to the marriage falling apart and they separated in 1965, Mr. Zelazny moved on and married Judith Callahan in September 1966. She was the mother of their three children and they remained married (although separated) until his death due to colon cancer in 1995. Mr. Zelazny was a major writer throughout the 1960s and 70s, mostly known for the fantasy series Lords of Amber, he also wrote a long list of science fiction and other works. He won the Nebula three times (Nominated fourteen times) and the Hugo six times (also nominated fourteen times), as well as two Locus Awards, a Prix tour Apollo Award (a French science fiction award), two Seiun Awards (Japanese) and two Balrog Awards (which ended in 1985). The book we're reviewing today is actually Mr. Zelazny's third novel and a Hugo award winner, Lord of Light. Published in 1967 by Doubleday publishing, which is today owned by Penguin Random House (which means, you guessed it, owned by Random House).

Lord of Light takes place in the far future on a distant planet where the remnants of humanity have found themselves surrounded by hostile alien species and unable to leave. Deciding to fight it out to the last alien creature, members of the crew undergo strange treatments to create various physical and mental powers to give them an edge over the strange beings they must confront and oust in order to secure a future for humanity. These people also find a style of immortality when they are able to transfer their minds to new bodies and find that their powers transfer right along with them and over time grow even stronger. The people who underwent the procedures to gain these powers find become warlords, then monarchs, and finally gods; as humanity slowly reverts to a dark age existence. This was encouraged by a faction among the new gods who claim it's safer and healthier for everyone to let all memory of vanished Earth and its technology fade away, proclaiming that due to their mind transfer technology people can live for generations and eventually gain the wisdom to be trusted with such power. Meanwhile the gods (who have taken the names and some of the physical appearances of Hindu gods in the meantime) will of course take up the hard burden of policing humanity, deciding who gets to move up the ladder towards godhood and of course living in their own post-scarcity utopian city of heaven and if some folks get “promoted” faster and it seems odd that some of them are really attractive folks that caught a god or goddess' eye? Not to worry all part of the plan. If it seems that people who question this system end up spending centuries in the bodies of beasts or worse actually dying... Well doesn't that mean it's best not to question? You do want to get to heaven after all... Don't you? Have faith, maintain your Karma and obey the priests (who have access to high technology in disguise, the better to serve the gods), paradise will come to you in time. Of course, there were those among the gods who didn't agree with this social order. A faction called Accelerationists wanted to share the knowledge and technology that the gods hoarded with the people in order to improve their knowledge and lives and, you know, let the average person enjoy such dangerous wonders as indoor plumbing, printed books, and electricity. Then again, I suppose if you're hiding knowledge, the printing press is the most dangerous thing in the world to you. They first tried to debate but lost against the temptations of keeping an entire world as a personal game reserve and whorehouse. They tried to fight but were all swiftly rounded up, crushed and quietly done away with. Well, almost all... There's always one isn't there? I'm gonna quote the first lines of the novel because there is no better introduction to our main character.

“His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Mah- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence though, could.”

Sam is an immortal on a mission: he's gonna break the stranglehold his fellow transhumans have on this world by any means necessary. Because until he does that, humanity is locked in the existence of drudgery and mindless obedience to beings who’ve honestly outlived their purpose. To do this, he will plot, lie, cheat, murder and... Refound Buddhism. Which honestly makes sense, as the gods control people through their hope of a better reincarnation and created an entire system of social and cultural controls to reinforce that hope. The only way to really counter that is to undermine the whole thing, Buddhism among other things suggests that maybe being endlessly reincarnated isn't that grand of a thing and what you should pursue is a spiritual union with the universe which means a surrender of yourself and individuality. By creating a counter-culture that rejects the preachings of the dominant religion, Sam lays the ideological and cultural groundwork for resistance to the gods. It's not enough to oppose something, after all, you need to create an alternative. This creates an interesting paradox, an unenlightened man who preaches enlightenment. A man who is living a lie embracing and spreading a doctrine of Holiness. While the gods oppose this spiritual awakening in their midst, they can't kill it because it is rooted in the flaws and contradictions of their own system. The only way to get rid of Buddhism here would be to reform the system to the point of rendering the protests moot. Which for many of the gods would defeat the whole point of having the system in the first place. But if you don't then you run the risk of things getting out of control and losing anyway. Of course, this isn't Sam's only string on the bow; there are other forces lurking at the edges of the world who disagree with the established order. Survivors of the alien races that contested them in the first place for example, or members of the group who left a lot earlier. There are even those among the gods who are dissatisfied with the way things are going for reasons both petty and sublime. Throughout all of this is Sam, working every seam and weak point in the regime, questing for every ally and advantage, because before things can get any better, first they’ve got to change.

The plot of the novel unfolds in seven interlinked stories that tell the origin of Sam's resistance; his creation of Buddhism on an alien world; and the ultimate fate of his attempts to change his world for the better. These stories cover a long stretch of time, as you could imagine when talking about an immortal engaged in a long grim twilight struggle. There is also a host of recurring supporting characters and antagonists. Interestingly enough, we are never given a full first-hand look at the brutal wars that gave rise to this in the first place. We do not see the desperate battles against creatures who only exist as electromagnetic patterns, or beings able to attack our very minds just by existing. We don't see the discussion and thinking that lead to people subjecting themselves to experiments to gain the powers and tools needed to fight such beings or the relationships that were built and fueled by such conflicts. Instead, we only see the breakdown and existence of a degenerate world order designed to keep those same warriors in charge. This creates a mythic background to the story in front of us, as we only know those deeds through myth and hazy memory, they become mythical tales that create the pantheon that Sam struggles against. This also leaves us trying to work out the history behind the personal relationships between the gods, Sam and the gods, and everyone else. Because Sam is also in the situation where the only peers he has, the only people who really understand him... Are the people he's trying to overthrow. By leaving so much unsaid, Mr. Zalazny also injects a heavy air of mystery into the novel which helps to draw the reader in. Especially to the motives of supporting characters, who I won't ruin here, you'll have to read the novel yourself.

Another element that caught my interest was the idea of trans or post-humans rising themselves up as gods. Let me explain what I mean by transhuman and posthuman. Transhumans are individuals who through the use of advanced technology have transformed themselves into better versions of human, being smarter, stronger, more resistant to injury and disease, and having a longer life. These people are still recognizably human and meaningful interaction is still possible with them. They would have human desires, needs, and goals. A posthuman is a being either created by humans or once a human that has transformed by technology into something that is honestly no longer human and in many opinions beyond humanity. The most common examples of posthumans in fiction tend to either be artificial intelligences who grow so powerful that humans become like monkeys before them or individuals who “evolve” into energy beings or advanced examples of life and then usually leave. A posthuman isn't recognizably human anymore and may be more alien than anything else we can imagine honestly. Lord of Light is the oldest book I've run into so far to use the idea of transhumans acting as gods, other examples include Ben Bova's Orion series, Safehold by David Weber, God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert, Illium by Dan Simmons and many more. It's a plot element I find honestly kind of interesting as it opens up the story to themes about what one should expect from a religion, or what exactly makes a divine presence. Being that this was written in 1967, you shouldn’t expect too many modern transhuman themes in it, although some of the timeless ones are there mostly in what kind of challenges an immortal may face over a long period of life.

My biggest complaint with Lord of Light is that there isn't more of it. There's easily enough story in this one novel for a trilogy or so. Much is left vague or passed over that could have been expanded on. As it stands the novel serves as a show of the highlights of Sam's long battle to free mankind from it's latest group of tyrants. There's just so much more that could have been shown here and a lot of the story that is left entirely to the reader's imagination. Additionally, there are chunks of the story that are told instead of shown. They're cleverly told in a way that shows additional parts of the plot and the world, usually using the character to relay information in a way that tells us a lot about them but I still would have been liked to have been shown this. That said it's an interesting story that held my attention rather effortlessly and offered me a lot to think about. Lord of Light certainly earned it Hugo's award and still remains a relevant read today over 50 years after it was published. I'm giving Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny an A- and an encouragement to any science fiction or fantasy fan to give it a spin.

First I want to say happy Passover and happy Easter to all my readers. I hope you and your families have a good holiday.  If you enjoyed this week's review, consider joining us at our patreon at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads, for a dollar a month you can vote on what books get reviewed that month and more.  Next week join us for the sequel of Kings of the Wyld, as we take a look at Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames!  By all means, comment and share but above all Keep Reading.