Threshold

By Roger Zelazny

The first in a six-volume series, Volume 1: Threshold contains all of Zelazny's short works from his early years through the mid-1960s—a period of experimentation and growth that flowered into gems such as "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," "The Graveyard Heart," "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth," and "He Who Shapes." The stories in this series are enriched by editors' notes and Zelazny's own words, taken from his many essays, describing why he wrote the stories and what he thought about them retrospectively.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NESFA Press
• Release date: Oct 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781610373524

Book preview

Threshold

Volume 1:

The Collected Stories of

Roger Zelazny

edited by

David G. Grubbs

Christopher S. Kovacs

Ann Crimmins

Post Office Box 809

Framingham, MA 01701

www.nesfapress.org

The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny

volume 1:Threshold

volume 2: Power & Light

volume 3: This Mortal Mountain

volume 4: Last Exit to Babylon

volume 5: Nine Black Doves

volume 6: The Road to Amber

bibliography: The Ides of Octember

© 2009 by Amber Ltd. LLC

Out of Nowhere © 2009 by Agberg, Ltd.

Before Amber © 2009 by Carl B. Yoke

‘…And Call Me Roger’: The Literary Life of Roger Zelazny, Part 1 and story notes © 2009 by Christopher S. Kovacs, MD

Frontispiece Portrait © 1972 by Jack Gaughan

Dust jacket illustration and photograph of Michael Whelan © 2009 bry Michael Whelan (www.MichaelWhelan.com)

Dust jacket design © 2009 by Alice N. S. Lewis

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic, magical or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

First Ebook Edition, October 2023

Updated from the Fourth Edition, First Printing of the printed book

Epub ISBN: 978-1-61037-352-4

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-61037-024-0

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-886778-71-9

Hardcover:

First Edition, First Printing, February 2009

Fourth Edition, First printing, January 2021

NESFA Press is an imprint of the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.

NESFA® is a registered trademark of the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.

A Word from the Editors

This six volume collection includes all of Zelazny’s known short fiction and poetry, three excerpts of important novels, a selection of non-fiction essays, and a few curiosities.

Many of the stories and poems are followed by A Word from Zelazny in which the author muses about the preceding work. Many of the works are also followed by a set of Notes¹ explaining names, literary allusions and less familiar words. Though you will certainly enjoy Zelazny’s work without the notes, they may provide even a knowledgeable reader with some insight into the levels of meaning in Zelazny’s writing.

My intent has long been to write stories that can be read in many ways from the simple to the complex. I feel that they must be enjoyable simply as stories…even for one who can’t catch any of the allusions.

—Roger Zelazny in Roger Zelazny by Jane M. Lindskold

The small print under each title displays original publication information (date and source) for published pieces and (sometimes a guess at) the date it was written for previously unpublished pieces. The small print may also contain a co-author’s name, alternate titles for the work, and awards it received. Stories considered part of a series are noted by a § and a series or character name.

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1 The notes are a work in progress. Please let us know of any overlooked references, allusions, or definitions you may disagree with, for a possible future revision.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Sketch of Zelazny by Jack Gaughan

The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny

Copyrights

A Word from the Editors

Introductions

Out of Nowhere by Robert Silverberg

Before Amber by Carl B. Yoke

Stories

A Rose for Ecclesiastes

And the Darkness Is Harsh

Mr. Fuller’s Revolt

The Old Deal

Youth Eternal

The Outward Sign

Passion Play

The Graveyard Heart

Horseman!

The Teachers Rode a Wheel of Fire

Moonless in Byzantium

On the Road to Splenoba

Final Dining

The Borgia Hand

Nine Starships Waiting

Circe Has Her Problems

The Malatesta Collection

The Stainless Steel Leech as by Harrison Denmark

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth

A Thing of Terrible Beauty as by Harrison Denmark

Monologue for Two as by Harrison Denmark

Threshold of the Prophet

A Museum Piece

Mine Is the Kingdom as by Harrison Denmark

King Solomon’s Ring

The Misfit

The Great Slow Kings

Collector’s Fever

The Night Has 999 Eyes

He Who Shapes

Articles

Sundry Notes on Dybology and Suchlike

…And Call Me Roger: The Literary Life of Roger Zelazny, Part 1

Curiosities

Conditional Benefit

Hand of the Master

The Great Selchie of San Francisco Bay

Studies in Saviory

Poetry (scattered throughout)

Braxa

Ecclesiastes’ Epilogue

Bok

Diet

Slush, Slush, Slush

The Agnostic’s Prayer

On May 13, 1937

Cactus King

Four Poems

• Our Wintered Way Through Evening, and Burning Bushes Along It (Alternate title: Indian Days in KY)

• In the Dogged House

• Future, Be Not Impatient

• Flight

Sense and Sensibility

The World of Stat’s a Drunken Bat

The Cat Licks Her Coat

From a Seat in the Chill Park

Rodin’s The Kiss

To His Morbid Mistress

Old Ohio Folkrag

How a Poem Means

Concert

Iceage

Hart Crane…

Southern Cross

I Used to Think in Lines That Were Irregular to the Right

Hybris, or The Danger of Hilltops

St. Secaire’s

In Pheleney’s Garage

The Black Boy’s Reply to William Butler Yeats

Rite of Spring

Decade Plus One of Roses

See You Later, Maybe…

Back Matter

Publication History

Acknowledgments

NESFA Press Books

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Sketch of Zelazny - by Jack Gaughan

The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny

Copyrights

A Word from the Editors

Contents

Title

Introductions

Out of Nowhere - by Robert Silverberg

Before Amber - by Carl Yoke

Stories

A Rose for Ecclesiastes

Braxa (poem)

Ecclesiastes’ Epilogue (poem)

Bok (poem)

And the Darkness Is Harsh

Mr. Fuller’s Revolt

Diet (poem)

The Old Deal

Youth Eternal

Slush, Slush, Slush (poem)

The Outward Sign

The Agnostic’s Prayer (poem)

Passion Play

On May 13, 1937 (poem)

Cactus King (poem)

The Graveyard Heart

Four Poems:

* Our Wintered Way Through Evening, and Burning Bushes Along It (Alternate title: Indian Days in KY)

* In the Dogged House

* Future, Be Not Impatient

* Flight

Horseman!

The Teachers Rode a Wheel of Fire

Sense and Sensibility (poem)

Moonless in Byzantium

On the Road to Splenoba

Final Dining

The Borgia Hand

Nine Starships Waiting

Circe Has Her Problems

The Cat Licks Her Coat (poem)

The Malatesta Collection

From a Seat in the Chill Park (poem)

Rodin’s The Kiss (poem)

To His Morbid Mistress (poem)

The Stainless Steel Leech

Old Ohio Folkrag (poem)

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth

A Thing of Terrible Beauty

How a Poem Means (poem)

Monologue for Two

Concert (poem)

Iceage (poem)

Threshold of the Prophet

Hart Crane… (poem)

Southern Cross (poem)

I Used to Think in Lines That Were Irregular to the Right (poem)

A Museum Piece

Hybris, or The Danger of Hilltops (poem)

Mine Is the Kingdom

St. Secaire’s (poem)

In Pheleney’s Garage (poem)

King Solomon’s Ring

The Black Boy’s Reply to William Butler Yeats (poem)

The Misfit

Rite of Spring (poem)

The Great Slow Kings

Collector’s Fever

The Night Has 999 Eyes

Decade Plus One of Roses (poem)

He Who Shapes

See You Later, Maybe… (poem)

Articles

Sundry Notes on Dybology and Suchlike

…And Call Me Roger: The Literary Life of Roger Zelazny, Part 1

Curiosities

Conditional Benefit

Hand of the Master

The Great Selchie of San Francisco Bay

Studies in Saviory

Back Matter

Publication History

Acknowledgments

NESFA Press Ads

Threshold

Volume 1:

The Collected Stories of

Roger Zelazny

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Introductions

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Out of Nowhere

by Robert Silverberg

He came out of nowhere. That was probably not how it seemed to him, but it certainly was how it seemed to me: a brilliant new writer with a strange surname, suddenly filling the pallid science-fiction magazines of the early 1960s with astonishing, unforgettable stories that were altogether unlike anything that anyone (not even Bradbury, not even Sturgeon, not even Fritz Leiber) had published in those magazines before.

The first encounter that science-fiction readers had with the work of Roger Zelazny came with the August 1962 issue of Fantastic, an undistinguished and long-forgotten penny-a-word magazine. It was a story just eight hundred words in length called Horseman!, and this is how the hitherto unknown 25-year-old author opened it:

When he was thunder in the hills the villagers lay dreaming harvest behind shutters. When he was an avalanche of steel the cattle began to low, mournfully, deeply, and children cried out in their sleep.

He was an earthquake of hooves, his armor a dark tabletop of silver coins stolen from the stars, when the villagers awakened with fragments of strange dreams in their heads. They rushed to the windows and flung their shutters wide.

And he entered the narrow streets, and no man saw the eyes behind his vizor.

It sings, flamboyantly. The metaphors tumble one over another⁠—when he was thunder in the hills, and when he was an avalanche of steel, and he was an earthquake of hooves, and his armor a dark tabletop of silver coins stolen from the stars. The syntax is idiosyncratic, when he wants it to be: the villagers lay dreaming harvest, a small grammatical connective omitted in what we would before long come to recognize as a characteristic Zelazny touch. Everything is vivid and immediate, everything is furiously alive, romantic and melodramatic, and we are plunged all at once into a strange, dramatic, fantastic situation, instantly conjuring us into the world of Sir Lancelot or perhaps Scheherazade. In the first few lines of his first published story Zelazny had announced his presence among us and had told us what kind of writer he was going to be.

That same month came a second story, Passion Play, like the other a mere two pages long, this one in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic’s equally mediocre companion, Amazing Stories. It opens in an entirely different but equally Zelaznian manner:

At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of rejoicing. Spring, like the hands of a well-oiled clock, noiselessly indicates the time. The average days of dimness and moisture decrease steadily in number, and those of brilliance and cool begin to enter the calendar again. And it is good that the wet times are behind us, for they rust and corrode our machinery; they require the most intense standards of hygiene.

Here we get Zelazny the poet in prose: notice the scansion and cadence of that first sentence, At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of rejoicing. Zelazny the wry comedian is here, too, telling us that the most intense standards of hygiene must be observed by robots hoping to fend off rust and corrosion.

The general effect of Passion Play is a quieter, less fantastic one than that of Horseman!. The manner is cooler, more controlled, much less given to rhetorical flourish. He gives us simile instead of metaphor; he gives us science-fictional imagery, machinery vulnerable to rust, instead of the medieval villagers and armored stranger of the other story. There is power in that paragraph; there is soaring individuality of vision. Both stories, in hindsight, are recognizably Zelazny, yet they vary widely, within the compass of their few pages, in what they achieve.

One would have had to be looking very closely at those two little stories when they first appeared to realize that they signalled the arrival in our midst of a master of prose technique and a paragon of the storytelling art. I doubt that very many people came to that conclusion on the basis of just two small stories, although Cele Goldsmith, the enterprising editor who had accepted them for Amazing and Fantastic, surely was pleased by her find. (She published two more short-shorts of his in 1962, The Teachers Rode a Wheel of Fire in Fantastic and Moonless in Byzantium in Amazing.) Gradually, though, over the year that followed, he let us know that that was the case, appearing with another dozen or so stories in the two Cele Goldsmith magazines, one of them, Nine Starships Waiting, betraying by its title to those with eyes to see its author’s scholarly familiarity with Jacobean drama; and then, in case anyone still had not noticed, he published what would become his first classic story, A Rose for Ecclesiastes, in the November 1963 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. No one failed to notice that one. It was nominated for the Hugo award. (The Nebula award had yet to come into existence.) Judith Merril picked it for her Year’s Best Science Fiction collection. And it was chosen, a few years later, as one of the twenty-six great stories included in the first volume of the definitive Science Fiction Writers of America anthology, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, voted by the members of that organization into sixth place on the all-time list. It was the only representative of recent science fiction in a book that was heavily weighted toward the classics of the 1930s and 1940s and included no other story published after 1956. It has been reprinted countless times ever since.

(It is worth noting that a decade later it was revealed that Ecclesiastes was actually written a year or so before Zelazny’s first professional sales. His friend Thomas Monteleone, in his 1973 M.A. thesis on Zelazny’s work, made it known that Zelazny had been slow to offer the story for publication because he thought its scientific inaccuracies would draw embarrassing criticism. So it was no sudden leap to a new level of proficiency; the author of all those tiny stories for Amazing and Fantastic had been capable of a major work of that sort all along.)

After A Rose for Ecclesiastes it was impossible to ignore his presence among us. 1964⁠—a year complicated by many personal misfortunes for the young writer⁠—saw him publish just one major story, The Graveyard Heart, but 1965 brought a flood of brilliant novellas and novels⁠—He Who Shapes, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, …And Call me Conrad, and many, many others⁠—gaining him great acclaim and, ultimately, a shelf full of Hugo and Nebula awards. (In 1966, the year the Nebula was instituted, Zelazny carried off two of the five trophies, one for He Who Shapes as best novella and one for Doors of His Face as best novelet. He was still not yet thirty.) He seemed to be everywhere at once, and his performance was never anything other than dazzling. By the time his 1967 novel, Lord of Light, won the Hugo award and narrowly missed the Nebula, he was reckoned among the masters of the field. I think no writer of the time, with the possible exception of the equally individual and gifted Samuel R. Delany, was discussed and analyzed with such intensity by his peers. No one with any sense thought of studying Zelazny’s work with an eye toward imitating it, since his voice was so unmistakably his own that anyone adopting his method would manage to produce nothing more than pastiche, at best. But the propulsive manner of his storytelling and the power and gusto of his style were worth careful consideration by anyone who hoped to stay in the thick of things in that exciting, experimental time.

Over the decades ahead he went on to produce a host of novels⁠—Isle of the Dead, Damnation Alley, Today We Choose Faces, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and many more, including the numerous books of the popular Amber series. Nevertheless, he continued to produce the occasional short story and novelet, and again and again, nearly to the end of his career, won Hugo and Nebula awards for the best of his output⁠—three Nebulas and six Hugos in all by the time of the premature death of this superbly gifted, beloved, and much lamented master of science fiction and fantasy at the age of 58 in 1995.

Roger’s death brought a powerful sense of loss to everyone who had read his fiction or knew him as a friend. I belonged to both groups. As a reader and as a professional colleague I will always remember the impact of those great early stories and their successors of the decades that followed. And so I miss the author of A Rose for Ecclesiastes and The Graveyard Heart and …And Call Me Conrad and all the rest of those wonderful tales, keenly aware that there is no way of knowing now what marvels of inventiveness were about to emerge from his fertile mind.

But also he was my friend, and it still pains me, many years after his death, to realize I will never hear his quiet voice again or see that sly little smile. 58 isn’t an appropriate age for dying⁠—especially when one is as youthful and vigorous and full of life and creative energy as Roger still was. I knew him almost thirty years, and I had hoped to know him thirty years more, and now that is not to be. In all those three decades I never heard him utter an unkind word about anyone. (Nor did I ever hear anybody utter an unkind word about him.) He was a calm, gentle man, a man of great patience, high good humor, and warm good will, as I learned when the inordinately punctual Robert Silverberg showed up an hour late for dinner with him on two successive visits to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Roger had lived since 1975. I was late for a different silly reason each time, having to do with time-zone problems on one occasion and a faulty wristwatch on the other. Roger met each occasion of my tardiness with amusement and charm, as though it was a normal condition of the universe that I would always turn up an hour late for dinner, and there was no more reason to be displeased by it than by the discovery that water will not run uphill. That was altogether typical of him. No doubt he had moments of anger now and then in his life; but I was never witness to one.

In all senses of the word Roger was a joyous man to know. That sense of infectious joy runs through the many stories of these books. This series is his monument. I would much rather still have the man and let the monument wait; but the universe does not give us a choice about that, and we should be glad, at least, that Roger Zelazny was among us for those 58 years and that he left this robust group of stories for our unending delight.

⁠— Robert Silverberg

Before Amber

by Carl B. Yoke

I shot a stone at the sun setting into Lake Erie, and we started to count. Twenty-one, two, three, four, five, six, and then it died and plopped beneath the orange-tinted, glassy water. Damn, I said and frowned at him.

Not as good as my thirty-two, he teased.

I’ll catch you yet.

No way.

It was hard to see in the gathering darkness, but we were determined to find more skippers, so he went up and I went down the beach, looking for some. We hadn’t found many really good ones since we had arrived a half hour earlier.

The beach was littered with empty beer bottles, driftwood, old tires, ash-filled fire pits, dead fish, and used condoms. There was also a lot of stuff we couldn’t identify and weren’t about to pick up.

I kicked a piece of what looked to be a torn white skirt from in front of a weathered branch and uncovered a piece of gray shale. This is too good to be true, I thought. It was perfect, smooth from Lake Erie waves, just the right thickness, and about three inches in diameter. I picked it up, brushed it off on the leg of my jeans, hefted it a few times, and practiced my throw.

Just then I heard, Yoke! Yoke! Come here!

I turned. Roger was up the beach about thirty yards, waving to me. Come see what I found! I couldn’t see much in the darkness, so I hurried to where he was standing.

Look at this, man! he began as he pointed down to a decomposing fish about ten inches long. Beetles scurried over it, its eyes were gone, and it was encrusted with sand.

It woulda’ been perfect, he said with a broad grin. Instead of those two little ones.

I started to laugh. I knew exactly what he meant. He laughed, too, as I turned and threw my skipper at the sunset. It hopped like a sixth grader jacked up on sugar, and I was sorry I hadn’t started counting it right from the beginning because it went a very long way.

But it didn’t matter now; we had already moved on to something else. We were reliving the last few days of ninth grade at Shore Junior High. We had planned that a terrible smell would come from a room on the second floor of the east wing. It would last well into the summer⁠—two dead fish inside one of the permanently bolted-shut desks would guarantee it⁠—a present directly from the beach at the end of East 222nd street to Mr. Wilson. It was his home room, and we were getting even.

The plan started when Roger launched an epic sneeze from the front row of Mr. Wilson’s ninth grade history class. We all went into hysterics because the blast was so violent that there were actually wet spots on the board. Mr. Wilson, whose lecture on the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac had been interrupted, was startled, and he was not amused. And though Roger apologized and said that he couldn’t help it because his allergies were acting up, Mr. Wilson felt he needed to punish him. Even more importantly, he knew he needed to get the class back under control. So he decided that Roger should write a five hundred word paper on the battle, which he had obviously been ignoring, to be read in front of the class the next day.

Roger felt more than a little put out, but the next day when Mr. Wilson called on him to read, he was ready. Looking a bit nervous but deadpan serious and holding a couple of sheets of notebook paper, he began. "The Monitor sighted the Merrimac first and fired: bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang," and so on. Halfway through the paper the Merrimac fired back: bang, bang, bang … Roger never finished. Mr. Wilson was livid. The class was on the floor with laughter.

We continued to laugh as Wilson hauled Roger down the hall to the principal’s office where he got a lecture and was told to write a serious, thousand word paper on the famous battle which he would read the following day to the class. This time he did as he was told, and while we tried not to laugh, there were several periodic snickers.

The events really happened but are far more than just fond musings. Indeed they are windows into my relationship with Roger and snapshots into his early character development.

We always knew that revenge was best served cold, but we also held ourselves to a higher code, so we never actually followed through with any plans that would have put us into real trouble. We would never have done anything illegal, immoral, or unethical. Planning was the fun part of such ventures, anyway.

The first anecdote shows two important aspects of our relationship. First, we were always bouncing ideas off one another, and second, we were very competitive in an entirely friendly way; ours was a throwing down the gauntlet kind of relationship. We competed to see who could bring new information to the table to discuss, or who could out-achieve the other, whether it was climbing to the top of Morrow Rock in California and then racing down different sides to see who could get to the bottom first, who could outscore the other on IQ or achievement tests, or who could win the next award. As we matured, the contests pushed our individual growth forward.

We always ran pretty evenly, but regardless of any particular outcome, our relationship was founded on mutual admiration, never jealousy. Loyalty and respect were always part of it, too.

Roger was my dearest and oldest friend. When he died on June 14, 1995, I had known him longer than I’d known any other person on Earth, except for my mother. We could literally complete each other’s thoughts.

Our friendship began more than half a century earlier at Noble School in Euclid, Ohio. And while the rumor persists that we shared a desk in first grade, that really was not the case. I knew him in the first grade from the playground, but we were in different homerooms. He struck me as a strange kid. But then in second grade we did share a desk because it was war time, and no city was spending money on schools. Anyway, when I got to Mrs. Farber’s second grade, I found myself sharing a desk with that strange kid Roger Zelazny. That desk, as it turned out, was a perfect metaphor.

It took me a while to get to know him in more than a superficial way. He was secretive and shy. But when our teacher learned that we were reading way ahead of the rest of the class, she sent us to the school library to read whatever we wanted. I was interested in the myths, legends, and fairy tales. And Noble School’s library was a treasure trove⁠—in fact all the Euclid school libraries were superb for their time. But it seemed that every time I went looking for a particular book, that Zelazny kid had it out. The same was true of the standard children’s books, such as Dr. Doolittle, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Eventually Roger and I started to see who could read the most. Our bragging to one another led to discussions not only of the books but also other issues, concerns, and interests.

Then one day in the fourth or fifth grade, as I was heading out the door for home, Roger handed me a couple of sheets of folded notebook paper and asked me to read them. I nodded, said something that amounted to all right, and shoved them into my pocket⁠—I was a walker, and I had many worlds to explore: a couple of mysterious woods, several ponds and streams filled with fish and tadpoles, and a field or two filled with mice, interesting bugs, and garter snakes. I forgot about Roger’s note until I finished my homework. Then I dug it out of my coat pocket and started to read.

It was a long, rhymed poem entitled The Yoke Monster, portraying me as a huge, hairy, smelly thing that swung through trees like an ape, liked to splash in water but never really bathed, and ate little furry creatures, disgusting bugs, and what we now call road kill.

I was very angry. And I decided after the first stanza that at recess the next day I would beat him up. I was a project kid⁠—we did a lot of fighting in the project⁠—that’s how we settled things. We knew who we could beat up and who to get out of the way for. We had no drugs or guns. But we were tough⁠—we had booze, cigarettes, and occasional sex. Then a strange thing happened. Even though I was angry, I liked Roger, so I gathered up the rest of the poem and read on. And after a while I started to laugh in spite of myself. It really was very funny.

So, I composed myself, and a few days later showed up at school with a proper response, The Zelazny Monster. It was also funny but meaner and nastier. Thus were born the two characters that would inhabit The Record Stories and a deepening friendship that would last for more than half a century.

Once we started, some rules, patterns, and practices quickly developed. Each story could include anything that did not violate the basic, evolved mythology: the characters became loveable, friendly and less scary, and the stories had to contain gentle humor.

The Record Stories, all written individually, related the adventures and misadventures of Yok and Zlaz, two nearly immortal, monster-like beings of a little known Earth species that lived in the catacombs below Paris and above Hell, just outside the city of Lucetania. As the characters evolved, so did the mythology of Lucetania. Yok and Zlaz were creatures who had enormous appetites. They ate a lot and slept for inordinately long periods of time. They were extremely intelligent, wonderfully creative, and superbly curious. They had great senses of humor.

The mon (both singular and plural, a shortened form of monster but also a corruption of man and men) did not like to work, except at their hobbies and passions. But because they were extremely clever (or at least appeared to be), they were blackmailed and very much overpaid by Lucetania’s leader (The Pres) to go on missions no other agents would take. The kingdom was always in danger from the forces of Hell and its many allies. Almost always, the missions also involved saving humans and other groups on the surface. Saving humans was an unintended consequence of saving Lucetania because mon generally found humans ignorant and boring, so they ignored them. In later years and later stories, the threats to Lucetania were more complex and sometimes involved alien races.

Yok and Zlaz were generally lazy, often drunk (consuming enormous quantities of a local drink called zyphoam), and over sexed. They were somewhat shady by Lucetanian law, but because of their usefulness to the Pres, their indiscretions were ignored or forgiven. Time and again they saved the city by what appeared to be a miraculous means but in the process often caused enormous destruction. It was their fatal flaw. Nonetheless, they were Lucetania’s two best agents. They never failed, not because they really were the brightest or most talented, but because added to their resourcefulness and intelligence was more than a dollop of good luck, collotial (from the word colossus) they called it.

The monsters were nonthreatening, and the plots often developed around the inadequacies of the heroes. Though Yok and Zlaz were very bright, they were often naïve and failed to see the obvious. For example, in one story, Zlaz took his space ship on a long trip but forgot to fuel it, and it crashed on an uninhabited planet. In another Yok used the wrong spell and petrified a large, fin-backed dinosaur that eventually got buried and became a now-famous stand of rocks in a West Virginia state park.

Since almost any subject matter was acceptable, each writer’s new story challenged the other author. If I introduced a variation into the mythology, it was up to Roger to accept the innovation, play off of it by expanding or modifying it, or explain it so that it did not violate the mythology. To ignore the variation entirely was simply not permitted.

Yok and Zlaz evolved as we matured and reflected how we saw ourselves in high school and college. The stories’ plots were informed by what we knew or learned. And our infinite curiosity, eclectic tastes, and challenge to outdo one another made the stories different. Part of the fun of writing was to make what we saw, heard, or read show up in a logical way in the stories. Our sources ranged from comic books to philosophy but were particularly heavy on myth, legend, and fairy tales. Movies, television shows, comic strips, pop and later folk music also quickly got folded into our thinking.

The themes of the stories were growing up, having fun, play, curiosity, immortality, and relationships with girls, among others. Things were hardly ever what they seemed, which provided surprise and created suspense. Form and chaos, in the sense that nothing is ever destroyed, ran through the entire mythology. Early on, we had recognized that form was always ripped from chaos, then it evolved, and when eventually destroyed become part of some new form: creation, destruction, re-creation. Nothing in the universe seemed to be wasted; it simply transformed. There was symmetry and some sort of logic and reason in the universe that not only appealed to us but comforted us.

This was not a guarantee that individual consciousness would survive, of course. But Roger believed that he had projected astrally. For him this confirmed that there was another kind of reality and suggested that individual consciousness might indeed survive the death of the physical body.

So there we were, in the early fifties, writing stories in what later came to be called a shared universe. We were doing what the advertising industry called rewriting the image, like Charles Adams did in The New Yorker.

We almost never wrote in true collaboration. I can recall only once that we did so. It involved the creation of two model newspapers for a journalism class in the eleventh grade. We created The Martian Chronicle and The Venusian Herald. We wrote fake stories for them, mocked up the pages, and drew the pictures in lieu of real photographs and colored them in.

The Lucetanian mythology reflected who we were (or pretended to be) and evolved primarily from events in our real lives. No matter what either of us got into, one of us had the right information, found the right information, stumbled across the right address, found the right tool, remembered an article, or connected to the right person to solve the problem. For example, as seniors, we were the property crew for a school play, The Admirable Crichton. We often volunteered for jobs off school grounds since it gave us a legitimate excuse to leave early. Roger had a 1950 Ford, and we were good at stretching a twenty minute ride to pick up a piece of furniture into an hour or more that included a stop at Euclid Race dairy for chocolate milkshakes.

In this case, though, on the afternoon of opening night, we were still missing a small but important ottoman. The people who owned it were on vacation but had promised to be back in time. We didn’t know what to do, so we hung around the school, trying to be helpful. Finally, the director told us that the people had returned, and if we hurried, we had just enough time to get the ottoman before the play started.

Even though it was already dark, everything went well at first. We found the house in what is now Richmond Heights, loaded the ottoman, and headed back to the school. Just as we came down the Richmond Road hill, we saw the gates on the railroad tracks at 160th Street go down and the red lights flash. Roger raced to the crossing, stopped, and waited. We saw nothing, so after a reasonable time, Roger slipped the car into gear and pulled around the crossing gate and on to the tracks. Of course, the car stalled. He tried frantically to start it, but the engine would not kick over.

A long minute passed, and we heard a train whistle. Coming around a bend to the east was a locomotive. The crossing bells were clanging, the red lights were flashing, and I reached for the passenger side door handle to bail out. Then we both remembered Roger’s Ford was a stick shift.

Jump it! we yelled almost together. Roger popped the clutch. The car lurched forward. He did it again, and the car lurched again. We finally cleared the tracks, pushed the car around the last gate, and listened to a bunch of comments about how stupid we were from adults in cars going the other way.

We hopped back in, and Roger tried once more to start the car. The engine turned over. We got the ottoman to the school for the start of the play.

We did have a lot of luck⁠—or maybe we really were very good. I won a regional essay contest in the sixth grade, and later scholarships and fellowships for academic work, and later some national awards. I published sports stories in the Euclid News Journal while still in high school and as a senior won the school literary magazine contest for best short story. Roger had won that award the year before and several other writing awards at Case Western Reserve. His big break came, however, when Cele Goldsmith picked Passion Play off the slush pile and realized she had discovered a unique talent. Her careful mentoring brought out the best in Roger’s writing.

For reasons I have never been quite able to figure out (we came from very different cultures), we liked a lot of the same things. We read Pogo, L’il Abner, The Phantom, Terry and the Pirates, Popeye, and Prince Valiant, to name a few, listened to radio’s Captain Midnight, Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, 2000 Plus, Have Gun - Will Travel, Inner Sanctum, Boston Blackie, The Green Hornet, The Adventures of Sam Spade, The Shadow, and one of our favorites, I Love a Mystery, with Jack, Doc, and Reggie. On television we watched Mr. Peepers, Bold Venture, Space Cadet, Captain Video, and several others. We followed the adventures of Tarzan, Brick Bradford, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers in several mediums, read the science fiction and fantasy writers of the times: Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, Williamson, Leiber, Kuttner, Moore, Hamilton, Brackett, Haggard, Merritt, and Lovecraft, and read the mythologists, particularly Bullfinch and Campbell. When we found we could buy pulp magazines at Moss Drug Store, we bought Imagination, Amazing, Other Worlds, Planet, and others as they came and went. We investigated and discussed Richard Shaver’s I Remember Lemuria, hypnotism, narco-hypnotism, yoga, astral projection, Rosicrucianism, and other exotic topics.

And always we read the classics of fiction, drama, and poetry.

Yet in our relationships with most of our schoolmates, we felt paradoxically like outsiders. I say paradoxically because we were both editors of the school paper and well liked. I was on Senior Cabinet and the Senior Prom Committee. Roger was on Student Council. I dove on the swim team. We won literary awards. We dated and went to the senior prom. But we simply found we were not interested in the same things as, with a few exceptions, our classmates; our interests ranged far beyond theirs.

We shared the anxieties of the fifties: the cold war, atom bomb drills, censorship. Because of McCarthy and Nixon we both had to sign affidavits that we were not, and never had been, Communists⁠—we were editors of a high school paper, for God’s sake.

We were always concerned about humanness and humanity. The people Roger met were adventurers; they were to be explored and learned from. Ideas, themes, and characters, not only from his own experience but from other works of literature, were to be examined in detail, understood, and worked into new stories in new ways. No matter how diverse⁠—such ideas as the wandering Jew, the Alice novels, mirrors, shadows, immortality, Shakespeare⁠—were rewritten to serve his story needs. A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad provides an exceptional example of this sort of creativity. Zelazny brilliantly recasts the ideas in parts XXXII and XXXIII to frame his novella, For a Breath I Tarry, giving it a different perspective about humanness.

It was his genius to be able to do this so well.

Critics know that great stories need great plots, great characters, and great ideas, but Zelazny’s very best work even exceeds this. His best stories are lean and spare⁠—every word and image counts⁠—they make profound observations about the human condition; they have poetic vision and are told in poetic language. Those who read them want to hold on to them for their beauty.

I am positive that many of his stories are great literature⁠—The Man Who Loved the Faioli, The Engine at Heartspring’s Center, Permafrost, The Keys to December, 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Lord of Light⁠—to name a few.

Critic Joe Sanders once wrote, "It is not simply what he had done already but what he might do that makes Zelazny important."⁠¹ As we dumb down western culture and fill the world with derivative and predictable stories, I, for one, greatly miss his creative genius.

⁠— Carl B. Yoke

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1 Unfinished Business by Joe Sanders. Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, Vol. 2, ed. T. D. Clareson, Popular Press, 1979, p 180-196 and p 205-207

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Stories

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A Rose for Ecclesiastes

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1963.

Hugo nominee 1964 (short story), #3 on 1999 Locus all-time poll (novelette),

#5 on 1971 Astounding/Analog all-time poll (short fiction),

#6 greatest SF story of all time in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1970.

I

Iwas busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into Martian on the morning I was found acceptable. The intercom had buzzed briefly, and I dropped my pencil and flipped on the toggle in a single motion.

Mister G, piped Morton’s youthful contralto, the old man says I should ‘get hold of that damned conceited rhymer’ right away, and send him to his cabin. Since there’s only one damned conceited rhymer…

Let not ambition mock thy useful toil. I cut him off.

So, the Martians had finally made up their minds! I knocked an inch and a half of ash from a smoldering butt, and took my first drag since I had lit it. The entire month’s anticipation tried hard to crowd itself into the moment, but could not quite make it. I was frightened to walk those forty feet and hear Emory say the words I already knew he would say; and that feeling elbowed the other one into the background.

So I finished the stanza I was translating before I got up.

It took only a moment to reach Emory’s door. I knocked twice and opened it, just as he growled, Come in.

You wanted to see me? I sat down quickly to save him the trouble of offering me a seat.

That was fast. What did you do, run?

I regarded his paternal discontent:

Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone else’s…

Hamlet to Claudius: I was working.

Hah! he snorted. Come off it. No one’s ever seen you do any of that stuff.

I shrugged my shoulders and started to rise.

If that’s what you called me down here⁠—

Sit down!

He stood up. He walked around his desk. He hovered above me and glared down. (A hard trick, even when I’m in a low chair.)

You are undoubtably the most antagonistic bastard I’ve ever had to work with! he bellowed, like a belly-stung buffalo. Why the hell don’t you act like a human being sometime and surprise everybody? I’m willing to admit you’re smart, maybe even a genius, but⁠—oh, hell! He made a heaving gesture with both hands and walked back to his chair.

Betty has finally talked them into letting you go in. His voice was normal again. They’ll receive you this afternoon. Draw one of the jeepsters after lunch, and get down there.

Okay, I said.

That’s all, then.

I nodded, got to my feet. My hand was on the doorknob when he said:

I don’t have to tell you how important this is. Don’t treat them the way you treat us.

I closed the door behind me.

*        *        *

I don’t remember what I had for lunch. I was nervous, but I knew instinctively that I wouldn’t muff it. My Boston publishers expected a Martian Idyll, or at least a Saint-Exupéry job on space flight. The National Science Association wanted a complete report on the Rise and Fall of the Martian Empire.

They would both be pleased. I knew.

That’s the reason everyone is jealous⁠—why they hate me. I always come through, and I can come through better than anyone else.

I shoveled in a final anthill of slop, and made my way to our car barn. I drew one jeepster and headed it toward Tirellian.

Flames of sand, lousy with iron oxide, set fire to the buggy. They swarmed over the open top and bit through my scarf; they set to work pitting my goggles.

The jeepster, swaying and panting like a little donkey I once rode through the Himalayas, kept kicking me in the seat of the pants. The Mountains of Tirellian shuffled their feet and moved toward me at a cockeyed angle.

Suddenly I was heading uphill, and I shifted gears to accommodate the engine’s braying. Not like Gobi, not like the Great Southwestern Desert, I mused. Just red, just dead…without even a cactus.

I reached the crest of the hill, but I had raised too much dust to see what was ahead. It didn’t matter, though; I have a head full of maps. I bore to the left and downhill, adjusting the throttle. A crosswind and solid ground beat down the fires. I felt like Ulysses in Malebolge⁠—with a terza-rima speech in one hand and an eye out for Dante.

I rounded a rock pagoda and arrived.

Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped down.

Hi, I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a pound and a half of grit. Like, where do I go and who do I see?

She permitted herself a brief Germanic giggle⁠—more at my starting a sentence with like than at my discomfort⁠—then she started talking. (She is a top linguist, so a word from the Village Idiom still tickles her!)

I appreciate her precise, furry talk; informational, and all that. I had enough in the way of social pleasantries before me to last at least the rest of my life. I looked at her chocolate-bar eyes and perfect teeth, at her sun-bleached hair, close-cropped to the head (I hate blondes!), and decided that she was in love with me.

Mr. Gallinger, the Matriarch is waiting inside for you to be introduced. She has consented to open the Temple records for your study. She paused here to pat her hair and squirm a little. Did my gaze make her nervous?

They are religious documents, as well as their only history, she continued, sort of like the Mahābhārata. She expects you to observe certain rituals in handling them, like repeating the sacred words when you turn pages⁠—she will teach you the system.

I nodded quickly, several times.

Fine, let’s go in.

Uh⁠— She paused. Do not forget their Eleven Forms of Politeness and Degree. They take matters of form quite seriously⁠—and do not get into any discussions over the equality of the sexes⁠—

I know all about their taboos, I broke in. Don’t worry. I’ve lived in the Orient, remember?

She dropped her eyes and seized my hand. I almost jerked it away.

It will look better if I enter leading you.

I swallowed my comments, and followed her, like Samson in Gaza.

*        *        *

Inside, my last thought met with a strange correspondence. The Matriarch’s quarters were a rather abstract version of what I might imagine the tents of the tribes of Israel to have been like. Abstract, I say, because it was all frescoed brick, peaked like a huge tent, with animal-skin representations like gray-blue scars, that looked as if they had been laid on the walls with a palette knife.

The Matriarch, M’Cwyie, was short, white-haired, fifty-ish, and dressed like a Gypsy queen. With her rainbow of voluminous skirts she looked like an inverted punch bowl set atop a cushion.

Accepting my obeisances, she regarded me as an owl might a rabbit. The lids of those black, black eyes jumped upwards as she discovered my perfect accent. ⁠—The tape recorder Betty had carried on her interviews had done its part, and I knew the language reports from the first two expeditions, verbatim. I’m all hell when it comes to picking up accents.

You are the poet?

Yes, I replied.

Recite one of your poems, please.

I’m sorry, but nothing short of a thorough translating job would do justice to your language and my poetry, and I don’t know enough of your language yet.

Oh?

But I’ve been making such translations for my own amusement, as an exercise in grammar, I continued. I’d be honored to bring a few of them along one of the times that I come here.

Yes. Do so.

Score one for me!

She turned to Betty.

You may go now.

Betty muttered the parting formalities, gave me a strange sideways look, and was gone. She apparently had expected to stay and assist me. She wanted a piece of the glory, like everyone else. But I was the Schliemann at this Troy, and there would be only one name on the Association report!

M’Cwyie rose, and I noticed that she gained very little height by standing. But then I’m six-six and look like a poplar in October: thin, bright red on top, and towering above everyone else.

Our records are very, very old, she began. Betty says that your word for that age is ‘millennia.’

I nodded appreciatively.

I’m very eager to see them.

They are not here. We will have to go into the Temple⁠—they may not be removed.

I was suddenly wary.

You have no objections to my copying them, do you?

No. I see that you respect them, or your desire would not be so great.

Excellent.

She seemed amused. I asked her what was so funny.

The High Tongue may not be so easy for a foreigner to learn.

It came through fast.

No one on the first expedition had gotten this close. I had had no way of knowing that this was a double-language deal⁠—a classical as well as a vulgar. I knew some of their Prakrit, now I had to learn all their Sanskrit.

Ouch! and damn!

Pardon, please?

It’s non-translatable, M’Cwyie. But imagine yourself having to learn the High Tongue in a hurry, and you can guess at the sentiment.

She seemed amused again, and told me to remove my shoes.

She guided me through an alcove…

…and into a burst of Byzantine brilliance!

*        *        *

No Earthman had ever been in this room before, or I would have heard about it. Carter, the first expedition’s linguist, with the help of one Mary Allen, M.D., had learned all the grammar and vocabulary that I knew while sitting cross-legged in the antechamber.

We had had no idea this existed. Greedily, I cast my eyes about. A highly sophisticated system of esthetics lay behind the decor. We would have to revise our entire estimation of Martian culture.

For one thing, the ceiling was vaulted and corbeled; for another, there were side-columns with reverse flutings; for another⁠—oh hell! The place was big. Posh. You could never have guessed it from the shaggy outsides.

I bent forward to study the gilt filigree on a ceremonial table. M’Cwyie seemed a bit smug at my intentness, but I’d still have hated to play poker with her.

The table was loaded with books.

With my toe, I traced a mosaic on the floor.

Is your entire city within this one building?

Yes, it goes far back into the mountain.

I see, I said, seeing nothing.

I couldn’t ask her for a conducted tour, yet.

She moved to a small stool by the table.

Shall we begin your friendship with the High Tongue?

I was trying to photograph the hall with my eyes, knowing I would have to get a camera in here, somehow, sooner or later. I tore my gaze from a statuette and nodded, hard.

Yes, introduce me.

I sat down.

For the next three weeks alphabet-bugs chased each other behind my eyelids whenever I tried to sleep. The sky was an unclouded pool of turquoise that rippled calligraphies whenever I swept my eyes across it. I drank quarts of coffee while I worked and mixed cocktails of Benzedrine and champagne for my coffee breaks.

M’Cwyie tutored me two hours every morning, and occasionally for another two in the evening. I spent an additional fourteen hours a day on my own, once I had gotten up sufficient momentum to go ahead alone.

And at night the elevator of time dropped me to its bottom floors…

*        *        *

I was six again, learning my Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. I was ten, sneaking peeks at the Iliad. When Daddy wasn’t spreading hellfire, brimstone, and brotherly love, he was teaching me to dig the Word, like in the original.

Lord! There are so many originals and so many words! When I was twelve I started pointing out the little differences between what he was preaching and what I was reading.

The fundamentalist vigor of his reply brooked no debate. It was worse than any beating. I kept my mouth shut after that and learned to appreciate Old Testament poetry.

⁠—Lord, I am sorry! Daddy⁠—Sir⁠—I am sorry! ⁠—It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be…

On the day the boy graduated from high school, with the French, German, Spanish, and Latin awards, Dad Gallinger had told his fourteen-year old, six-foot scarecrow of a son that he wanted him to enter the ministry. I remember how his son was evasive:

Sir, he had said, I’d sort of like to study on my own for a year or so, and then take pre-theology courses at some liberal arts university. I feel I’m still sort of young to try a seminary, straight off.

The Voice of God: But you have the gift of tongues, my son. You can preach the Gospel in all the lands of Babel. You were born to be a missionary. You say you are young, but time is rushing by you like a whirlwind. Start early, and you will enjoy added years of service.

The added years of service were so many added tails to the cat repeatedly laid on my back. I can’t see his face now; I never can. Maybe it was because I was always afraid to look at it then.

And years later, when he was dead, and laid out, in black, amidst bouquets, amidst weeping congregationalists, amidst prayers, red faces, handkerchiefs, hands patting your shoulders, solemn faced comforters… I looked at him and did not recognize him.

We had met nine months before my birth, this stranger and I. He had never been cruel⁠—stern, demanding, with contempt for everyone’s shortcomings⁠—but never cruel. He was also all that I had had of a mother. And brothers. And sisters. He had tolerated my three years at St. John’s, possibly because of its name, never knowing how liberal and delightful a place it really was.

But I never knew him, and the man atop the catafalque demanded nothing now; I was free not to preach the Word. But now I wanted to, in a different way. I wanted to preach a word that I never could have voiced while he lived.

I did not return for my senior year in the fall. I had a small inheritance coming, and a bit of trouble getting control of it, since I was still under eighteen. But I managed.

It was Greenwich Village I finally settled upon.

Not telling any well-meaning parishioners my new address, I entered into a daily routine of writing poetry and teaching myself Japanese and Hindustani. I grew a fiery beard, drank espresso, and learned to play chess. I wanted to try a couple of the other paths to salvation.

After that, it was two years in India with the Old Peace Corps⁠—which broke me of my Buddhism, and gave me my Pipes of Krishna lyrics and the Pulitzer they deserved.

Then back to the States for my degree, grad work in linguistics, and more prizes.

Then one day a ship went to Mars. The vessel settling in its New Mexico nest of fires contained a new language. ⁠—It was fantastic, exotic, and esthetically overpowering. After I had learned all there was to know about it, and written my book, I was famous in new circles:

Go, Gallinger. Dip your bucket in the well, and bring us a drink of Mars. Go, learn another world⁠—but remain aloof, rail at it gently like Auden⁠—and hand us its soul in iambics.

And I came to the land where the sun is a tarnished penny, where the wind is a whip, where two moons play at hotrod games, and a hell of sand gives you the incendiary itches whenever you look at it.

*        *        *

I rose from my twistings on the bunk and crossed the darkened cabin to a port. The desert was a carpet of endless orange, bulging from the sweepings of centuries beneath it.

I, a stranger, unafraid⁠— This is the land⁠— I’ve got it made!

I laughed.

I had the High Tongue by the tail already⁠—or the roots, if you want your puns anatomical, as well as correct.

The High and Low tongues were not so dissimilar as they had first seemed. I had enough of the one to get me through the murkier parts of the other. I had the grammar and all the commoner irregular verbs down cold; the dictionary I was constructing grew by the day, like a tulip, and would bloom shortly. Every time I played the tapes the stem lengthened.

Now was the time to tax my ingenuity, to really drive the lessons home. I had purposely refrained from plunging into the major texts until I could do justice to them. I had been reading minor commentaries, bits of verse, fragments of history. And one thing had impressed me strongly in all that I read.

They wrote about