This is the final instalment of ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information.
Roger Zelazny
Zelazny is one of the more recent authors on the list, moving into full-time writing in 1965 (after having progressed from short stories to longer forms as a side venture to his job working for Social Security). He was born of Polish and Irish parents in Cleveland, Ohio but ended up in Baltimore, and was a member of SAGA, as well as winner of multiple awards including six Hugos and three Nebulas (Nebulae?). He died at the relatively young age of 58, in 1995, from complications from cancer.
The Appendices recommend Jack of Shadows and the Amber series – there are two of these, the “Corwin Cycle” and the “Merlin Cycle”, five books each. Of these, the Merlin Cycle postdates the publication of the DMG, so I focussed only on the five books of the Corwin Cycle. I’d read these before but was happy to revisit. For some reason, I accidentally read Lord of Light as well (Light/Shadows, probably got confused somewhere) but as it fits in nicely with some of Zelazny’s themes, I’m going to keep it in the discussion.
Lord Of Light
Lord of Light is the earliest of the works, published in 1967. It’s heavily couched in Hindu and Buddhist mythology, written in a fantastic style but in an evidently science fiction setting. Through reading between the lines, we learn that the “gods” are the original command team of a colony ship, maintaining immortality through transferal of their thought patterns onto a new body (a process under the control of the Priests of Karma) and developing within themselves various psychic powers known as their Aspects.
The main protagonist is Mahasamatman, aka Sam, who at the beginning of the story is in a state of diffused energy/consciousness in the Golden Bridge (what seems to be a ring formation around the planet given mythic attributes) and reincarnated after a long punishment with the help of some other rebel "gods". We then get a series of chapters in flashback of Sam’s life, and the rebellion against the other gods that led to his dissolution. Sam is a member of the Accelerationists, who wish to share the technology of the "gods" with the general population, who live in an iron age at best.
Each chapter feels somewhat like a Buddhist parable. Sam takes on the attributes of the Buddha and, when the other gods send an assassin against him, his calm causes the assassin to turn to Sam's side and become such a devoted follower that he gives his own life – in some ways he becomes the Buddha instead of Sam. Here, the virtues of Inaction are hinted at. Another time, Sam tries to conquer the Rakasha, indigenous inhabitants of the planet that are creatures of thought and fire, captured by the gods and cast in the role of demons. Sam is careless and ends up possessed by the most powerful of the Rakasha for a year, during which time his body enacts cruelties and perversions on the inhabitants of the city. Again, Sam’s calm acceptance brings about a transformation of his enemy.
Quite why the inhabitants of the planet chose Hinduism as the basis is unclear, although at one stage a description of Sam’s new body suggests that the colonists were originally of Indian origin. There is an intrusion of Christianity as well, of a sort, with Nirriti, the former chaplain of the ship, raising a horde of zombies to assault Heaven, the fortified palace of the gods at the North Pole.
Jack Of Shadows
Jack of Shadows, published in 1971, also takes place on another world, in this case a tidally locked one where the “light” side is much like our own, a place of science and modernity, while the “dark” side is home to magical, fey-like creatures including the protagonist Jack. We begin with Jack failing at a theft attempt and being killed as punishment – Nightsiders resurrect, but they have no soul, while the Lightsiders have one life but an immortal soul, another fey reference.
Jack makes his laborious way from the charnel pits where he re-awakens, to try to regain his power and discover an item that will help him with this. On the way he encounters various other nightsiders including the Lord of Bats, and his friend Morningstar, a kind of sphinx figure imprisoned on the top of a mountain waiting for dawn that will never come. Jack spends some time in the light side, and eventually returns to take over a domain in the night where he becomes a cruel tyrant. Finally Jack seeks a way to change the machinery of the world and set it turning, ending the status quo.
Like Lord of Light, there are quite a few big time jumps within the narrative, and it feels a little less developed. Jack is a bit like Vance’s Cugel, both in his lean appearance and his callous trickster nature, and less of a likeable character than Sam. It also feels reminiscent of Margaret St Clair’s The Shadow People, with its modern world clashing with the shadowy fey realm of magic, and in both cases the fey realm is not a bright and cheerful place but a dark, gloomy place infested with rot and cruelty.
The Chronicles of Amber
And so to the meat of Zelazny’s work. The (First) Chronicles of Amber span five books, starting with Nine Princes in Amber (1970) and ending with The Courts of Chaos (1978). At least, the original series, the “Corwin Cycle” do, and I’m only tackling those, not the second set of five books, the “Merlin Cycle” published between 1985-1991 as those come after the publication of the 1st Edition DMG.
In Nine Princes in Amber we are introduced to “Carl Corey”, a man with amnesia in a mental institution being kept in a drugged state. But “Carl” has superhuman strength and healing ability, and he breaks out of the institution, following fragmented clues to his apparent sister. It transpires that he is actually Corwin, prince of the Royal House of Amber, although the full significance of this evades Corwin for quite a few chapters.
Amber is the true world in the midst of “Shadow” worlds through which the royal family of Amber can travel at will. In the castle of Amber, atop Mount Kolvir, lies the Pattern, a magical design that creates reality. Walking the Pattern brings a prince (or princess) of Amber into their true power, and so Corwin aims to do so to recover his lost memories. Actually, he walks the mirror image of the Pattern in the underwater mirror image of Amber, the cunningly named Rebma.
As the game is further revealed, it turns out that Oberon, father of all of the siblings and half-siblings of his brood, the eponymous Nine Princes (and four Princesses), is missing, presumed dead, while Corwin’s hated brother Eric has assumed the throne. Corwin teams up with brother Bleys in a power play against Eric, but ends up defeated, blinded, and thrown in prison. The book ends when, after three years in prison Corwin has managed to regrow his eyes and escapes with the aid of the mysterious mad hunchback Dworkin.
In the second book, The Guns of Avalon, Corwin continues his quest to claim the throne from Eric, enlisting the help of brother Benedict, the finest strategist of all the Amberites, as well as Random, youngest brother who helped him in the first book. Corwin travels through shadows in search of a way of creating a gunpowder substitute in that will work in Amber (where regular gunpowder and other technology will not work), meeting an old friend/enemy Ganelon in a shadow resembling Arthurian myth. On the way it becomes apparent that a strange “black road” can be found spreading throughout the shadows, a region of corruption along which monsters can travel all the way to the borders of Amber. Here, as Corwin and his forces move in on Eric they find him already beset by strange beasts, with victory coming hollow as the "hellmaid" Dara with whom Corwin has a brief dalliance, claims that Amber will fall to the Courts of Chaos.
The Sign of the Unicorn and The Hand of Oberon peel back layers of schemes within schemes, revealing a true Pattern hidden behind the Pattern of Amber, stained with the blood of an Amberite (Random’s son Martin). Missing brother Brand is brought back but one brother, Caine, is murdered (framed on Corwin) while somebody tries to assassinate both Brand and Corwin. At the heart of all the plots lies the Jewel of Judgement, a magical artifact once used to draw the original Pattern.
Finally, things come to a head in The Courts of Chaos. The extent of the various interwoven conspiracies are made known, and the entirety of reality is at stake in a battle fought at the very end of the universe, on the brink of the Abyss beyond which lies nothingness itself. You'll notice I'm more vague about these - part of the fun is discovering the plot twists and plot turns yourself.
One thing I really loved about this saga is the start, where Corwin uses vague statements to wheedle out the truth from sister Flora and brother Random without them realising that he has no knowledge of himself, let alone them. The Pattern behind the Pattern, revealed at the end of The Sign of the Unicorn, is a great metaphor for the wheels within wheels that run through the plot of the saga – nothing is entirely what it seems, everything is part of somebody else’s greater scheme; and yet reading this for the second time, Zelazny does scatter enough hints throughout that point at the underlying truths.
Zelazny took inspiration from PJ Farmer’s World of Tiers series, notably the family that can shape reality, and the central figure with amnesia. I think Zelazny’s is better, however. The climax, with Order (as signified by the Pattern) being undone by Chaos, comes more from Moorcock, and there are incidents in The Courts of Chaos involving talking trees and philosophical ravens that also feel like the episodic and more hallucinatory elements of Moorcock’s Elric stories.
The ending, however, is very satisfying and forms a very nice capstone to the series as a whole. The wry first-person narrative from Corwin’s perspective is also good; it mixes some unreliable narrator with proximity for the reader. In the middle the narrative does get a bit bogged down with exposition, almost as if Zelazny is laying out the story so far for his own benefit to get his thoughts straight before continuing, but somehow, perhaps because the plots are so enjoyably convoluted, it didn’t slow things down for me. Definitely one of my favourites.
Themes
I couldn’t help but notice that Sam, Jack, and Corwin are all members of a ruling elite who turn against the elite and try to change things for the betterment of everyone. In Lord of Light and Jack of Shadows, however, both of them also go through a period of tyranny (admittedly in Sam’s case unwillingly while he is possessed by one of the rakasha). Corwin does not, but it’s strongly implied that prior to his amnesia on Shadow Earth he was not an especially pleasant person.
Zelazny borrows from myth and fiction as well. The most obvious borrowing of myth from the works discussed here is Lord of Light. Jack of Shadows has overtones of Celtic myth, but the sphinx-like figure Lightbringer, imprisoned at the top of a mountain brings to mind Gustav Doré illustrations of Dante (Lightbringer = Lucifer, after all). Amber features the Shakespearean names of Oberon and the Forest of Arden (implying, I think, that Shakespeare’s mind touched upon Amber), with much of The Guns of Avalon taking place in shadows with elements of Arthurian myth.
Inspirations
As with most of these books, nothing jumped out as being directly lifted for D&D. The exception is the Expert Module X2: Castle Amber (by Tom Moldvay), which is a castle full of an eccentric family that lies in an alternate reality. The module, however, owes more to Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne series than Zelazny except in name only. There are elements from the Amber setting that you could nick, not least the Trumps, magical playing cards that the Amberites use to communicate with each other, and travel.
Maybe Jack of Shadows, being a trickster figure, has some elements that fed into the thief/rogue (and the later shadowdancer), but otherwise Zelazny draws from the same kind of tertiary sources that Gygax does as well, such as elements of mythology. The rakasha of Lord of Light, for example, draw on the same original rakshasa myths as the D&D rakshasa. Having said that, the rakasha would give an interesting slant to running D&D rakshasa, making them more spirit creatures in the first place. I wonder, now, if this kind of myth isn’t the inspiration behind the Ravers in Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series? The Ravers also have names that partly stem from Indian mythology – samedhi, moksha, and turiya.
I will mention, however, Amber Diceless Roleplaying (written by Erick Wujcik and published under his Phage Press imprint). It’s based directly in the Amber setting; characters are defined by four characteristics (Psyche, Strength, Endurance, and Warfare) that are bid upon by secret auction by the players from a pool of creation points. Points can also be used for other powers, with excess either way resulting in good or bad “stuff”, i.e. luck. Who wins in a contest is determined by the GM by comparing the relative levels of the characteristics, other factors, and so forth.
I used to own this, but sold it on Ebay years ago. I kind of wish I hadn’t, though, because even if you don’t use the system, nor play games in the Amber setting, it contains some great and very readable advice on designing campaigns and running games. Really, really good.
And that, at long last, is the end of Appendix N. I may pursue the newer works from Appendix E in the 5th Edition Players Handbook, and there are some older works that I found in the Bibliography of the original Basic Set (which finally settles where I’d heard of ER Eddison’s The Worm Ourobouros before). I may do something else. What I will do, to make this series a nice round number, is return with some final thoughts.
But for now, as Corwin says at the end of The Courts of Chaos; goodbye, and hello, as always.
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