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The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny #3
This Mortal Mountain
The third in a six-volume series, Volume 3: This Mortal Mountain contains Zelazny's short works from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Zelazny's breadth of interests developed into a variety of styles displayed in such rich stories as "This Mortal Mountain," "The Steel General," "Damnation Alley," "The Man Who Loved the Faioli," and the Hugo and Nebula-nominated "The Engine at Heartspring's Center". 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 in retrospect.
575 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2009
15 people are currently reading
280 people want to read
About the author
Roger Zelazny
749 books3,919 followersRoger Joseph Zelazny was an American fantasy and science fiction writer known for his short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966), and the novel Lord of Light (1967).
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July 25, 2025
Zelazny's slump
This Mortal Mountain is volume three of the masterful Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny. (For an overview of the series, see my review of the first volume, Threshold.) While this volume, covering the years 1967-1977 maintains the high standards of scholarship of the series, the source material is less impressive. (Let me be clear -- I'm grading on a curve here. Substandard Zelazny still knocks the socks off most other writers.) Zelazny's short story output decreased in quantity and quality during these years. Indeed, Zelazny explains the origin of the final story in this volume, "The Engine at Heartspring's Center", published in 1974, as follows:
First, it was during this time that Zelazny began to put most of his literary effort into novels. He explains as follows
The editors point out, however, that the short-story slump can't be blamed entirely on novel-writing -- Zelazny's total output decreased during this period. This was mostly because he undertook an awe-inspiring self-education project during this time. As Christopher S. Kovacs writes,
The stories are also not as good, in my opinion, in this volume as in the previous two. I read them and think to myself, "Clever idea...", but they grab me by the head rather than the heart. Because I have already read almost everything Zelazny published during his lifetime, I know there is better to come.
My favorite two stories in this volume were "Way Up High" and "Here There be Dragons". These were an experiment for Zelazny -- two middle-grade children's stories written in collaboration with artist Vaughn Bodé. They were new to me. Because of an intellectual property dispute with Bodé, they were published only late in Zelazny's life -- in 1992. They appear in this volume without illustrations.
In summary, this period saw a decrease in the quantity and quality of Zelazny's short fiction. It was, I believe, only temporary, and I look forward to the three volumes yet to come.
Blog review.
This Mortal Mountain is volume three of the masterful Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny. (For an overview of the series, see my review of the first volume, Threshold.) While this volume, covering the years 1967-1977 maintains the high standards of scholarship of the series, the source material is less impressive. (Let me be clear -- I'm grading on a curve here. Substandard Zelazny still knocks the socks off most other writers.) Zelazny's short story output decreased in quantity and quality during these years. Indeed, Zelazny explains the origin of the final story in this volume, "The Engine at Heartspring's Center", published in 1974, as follows:
Tom Monteleone, visiting one afternoon, pointed out to me that I had not written a short story in over two years. So I did this one right after he left to prevent the interval's growing any longer.There were a few reasons for this slump.
First, it was during this time that Zelazny began to put most of his literary effort into novels. He explains as follows
Word for word, novels work harder for their creators when it comes to providing for the necessities and joys of existence. Which would sound cynical, except that I enjoy writing novels, too.First, I find it charming that Zelazny feels it is necessary to justify doing work for which he gets paid. Most Americans make that choice without ever feeling any need to apologize. Second, getting paid for his work had suddenly become more important to Zelazny -- he and his wife quit their jobs with the Social Security Administration in 1969. Zelazny's writing abruptly became their sole income. It seems extraordinary to me that a writer such as Zelazny really had to worry about his ability to keep the wolf from the door. However, the Chonicles of Amber, which would become his most popular works and main meal ticket, were just getting started.
The editors point out, however, that the short-story slump can't be blamed entirely on novel-writing -- Zelazny's total output decreased during this period. This was mostly because he undertook an awe-inspiring self-education project during this time. As Christopher S. Kovacs writes,
He started by reading one book in each science, aiming to read 10 books in each area. He read history ... and biography or autobiography. ... In 1972 he added poetry to the program... To keep current in sf, he read current works and the classics.It is not surprising that this program had an effect on his output.
The stories are also not as good, in my opinion, in this volume as in the previous two. I read them and think to myself, "Clever idea...", but they grab me by the head rather than the heart. Because I have already read almost everything Zelazny published during his lifetime, I know there is better to come.
My favorite two stories in this volume were "Way Up High" and "Here There be Dragons". These were an experiment for Zelazny -- two middle-grade children's stories written in collaboration with artist Vaughn Bodé. They were new to me. Because of an intellectual property dispute with Bodé, they were published only late in Zelazny's life -- in 1992. They appear in this volume without illustrations.
In summary, this period saw a decrease in the quantity and quality of Zelazny's short fiction. It was, I believe, only temporary, and I look forward to the three volumes yet to come.
Blog review.
December 28, 2015
Another fantastic, well done continuation of the collected works & the life of Roger Zelazny. NESFA really did a fantastic job with this as they have with the others in the collection. The amount of research & documentation they did is staggering. They collected comments & old correspondence from Zelazny's friends & peers. The sheer number of authors that he interacted with is amazing. A list of them reads like the Who's Who of the SF & Fantasy community. The insight into that community is wonderful.
The stories were fantastic, as always. They were also well documented, each with a summary explanation of the allusions made & with related comments either by Zelazny, his editor or peers. Exactly what I've come to expect from the previous works. More fantastic was the corrected conversation between Morningside & Jack from "Jack of Shadows". It never seemed to be quite right & now I know why. There was also a deleted scene from "The Guns of Avalon" that was interesting, but not critical.
I had one complaint with the book, the lack of a few pictures. In the previous books, once or twice it was mentioned that Zelazny wrote a story based on a picture. In this volume, it was mentioned several times fairly close together. Often enough that I put the book down & tried to find them on the Internet without any luck. Even thumbnails would have been nice. A fairly minor complaint, but a real one. If I could knock off a 1/4 star for it, I would. I've heard that early in 2010, there might be a 7th volume that will correct this.
All told, this is another fantastic effort by NESFA. I highly recommend it to anyone, but it's a must if you're a fan of Zelazny's work, as I am.
The stories were fantastic, as always. They were also well documented, each with a summary explanation of the allusions made & with related comments either by Zelazny, his editor or peers. Exactly what I've come to expect from the previous works. More fantastic was the corrected conversation between Morningside & Jack from "Jack of Shadows". It never seemed to be quite right & now I know why. There was also a deleted scene from "The Guns of Avalon" that was interesting, but not critical.
I had one complaint with the book, the lack of a few pictures. In the previous books, once or twice it was mentioned that Zelazny wrote a story based on a picture. In this volume, it was mentioned several times fairly close together. Often enough that I put the book down & tried to find them on the Internet without any luck. Even thumbnails would have been nice. A fairly minor complaint, but a real one. If I could knock off a 1/4 star for it, I would. I've heard that early in 2010, there might be a 7th volume that will correct this.
All told, this is another fantastic effort by NESFA. I highly recommend it to anyone, but it's a must if you're a fan of Zelazny's work, as I am.
April 7, 2022
Something that will mark this series pretty much from this volume on and all the way through to the end is that the stories in the collection will be generally divided into two categories: the Famous Ones, and everything else. The Famous One will be justifiably famous, either because they will be award-winners or heavily nominated or just fan-favorites, while the "everything else" will encompass a lot of stories that you'll finish and think "that was pretty good."
That's mostly because even Zelazny's throwaways have a element of craft to them that makes them feel that someone at least spent some effort thinking them through instead of just dashing them off, even if the end result doesn't pierce you to your very soul. Zelazny was never less than professional but its probably not until the second "Amber" series that you start to feel that his sense of quality control had started to become a bit . . . elastic. But that may have more to do with how he wrote that series, and not a weakening of his skills as a writer.
If a mass quantity of Zelazny is your thing, then this may be the volume for you. For not only does it seem to pack the most Zelazny prose per square inch of any of the volumes due to most of the stories being fairly short, it is also absolutely crammed with his poetry (the table of contents page fills the entire page).
Its also got deleted sex scene from one of the "Amber" books, if that also happens to be your thing. Though, spoiler alert: its not particularly risque. Unfortunately for the people who are into both sex scenes from "Amber" and Zelazny's poetry he never seemed fit to combine the two, which I guess is a shame.
All this means we have a collection with a definitely more even feel. A couple years on from the all time career highlights of "Lord of Light" and ". . . And Call Me Conrad" he seemed to have switched out some of his stratospheric talent for an absolute gushing faucet of prolific activity. In practice, this means that instead of all the attention being focused solely on a couple of stories that stand head and shoulders over the rest, everything's a little closer to each other in quality, with the Famous Ones just having that little extra something to put them over the top. In other words, you're reading the stories of a very good writer instead of a shimmering deity sent down to this earth to dazzle us (seriously, reading SF magazines of the 50s in chronological order . . . once Zelazny shows up its like a comet heading straight for your face).
The most famous story in here is probably not the one you were expecting and its famous mostly because they went and made a terrible movie out of it. "Damnation Alley" appears here in its original form, before Zelazny was convinced to turn it into a novel (and apparently diluted the original's impact). Its still a fun, if gritty read . . . in a near future world where a chunk of the country has been turned into a literal Hell on Earth theme park, a hardened criminal named Hell Tanner must go on a kind of cannonball run across the US to bring some vaccines to Boston. Its ridiculous in a good way, the kind of thing you need some personality to pull off and fortunately at this point Zelazny has it in spades. It doesn't quite have the heft of his earlier work (basically its tricked out war cars riding across a landscape and being attacked by either the weather or giant mutated animals, with some roving post-apocalyptic gangs thrown in for good measure) but you can also see quite a few places where someone could have massively screwed it up. As mentioned, Zelazny almost screwed it up when plumping it out to novel length, but it was enough for someone to grab Jan-Michael Vincent AND George Peppard (two of my Saturday afternoon TV shows stars in the same film!) AND Jackie Earle Haley for a script that basically tossed out everything else about the novel except for "hellscape" and "war cars" and didn't even seem to do that right. It did terrible, but Zelazny got credit for it and it probably made him some money so I don't think he was too sad about it.
Probably more along the lines of what people were looking for from Zelazny was Nebula nominee "This Mortal Mountain", about a guy who likes climbing mountains . . . but in this case Zelazny pushes things to extremes by having the mountain be so tall it practically pokes out of the atmosphere . . . and it might be trying to keep them from climbing it. But Zelazny treats it like if "Into Thin Air" was a heist movie, as he assembles the old gang and tries to make the ascent. The climax sort of pivots out into left field but not nearly enough to sink the story.
As usual, there's a streak of stories that are stuffed with references to every kind of mythology that Zelazny could get from the library, so you get a couple stories based on weird love ("The Man Who Loved the Faioli", "Angel, Dark Angel"), one where a personification of buildings takes its revenge on us ("The Window Washer") and another that's a bit harder to describe ("He That Moves"). But the real surprises are a really savage two-pager ("A Hand Across the Galaxy" and it really is merciless) and two stories written basically for children that were meant to be collaborations with the artist Vaughn Bode. The first of those stories, "Here There Be Dragons" is fun but its "Way Up High" that's honestly touching, what seems at first a silly story about a girl who meets a talking pterodactyl that just seems to be hanging out slowly metamorphosizes into something a bit sadder and stranger. The closest comparison I can make is that it evokes the old Game Theory song "The Last Day That We're Young" in its describing how you don't often realize you've passed from one era of your life to another until you've already crossed the boundary, just in time to realize you're never going to get back there again.
But lest you think he was completely shooting for accessibility during this period, you get thrown a curveball like "The Steel General", which is an excerpt from "Creatures of Light and Darkness" . . . without the context of the surrounding novel it’s a loopy experience and I can't imagine it was much more comprehensible even in context (imagine if "Lord of Light" had Egyptian gods and was utterly impenetrable). It was a novel that Zelazny didn't even intend to publish, but when he told Samuel Delany about it, the other author talked a publisher into requesting the manuscript and that led to its publication. Along those lines, the much shorter "The Man at the Corner of Now and Forever" does a fragmented story style fairly well, demonstrating how he could harness the experiments to good use when he wanted to.
And if you're thinking the title of that last story evokes a certain Harlan Ellison tale, the cantankerous writer himself appears in a collaboration, "Come to Me Not in Winter's White" that manages to blend both Zelazny's imagination with the spikiness that can only come from a writer bold enough to trademark his own name. Its memorable, though part of me prefers the whimsical and more conventional "My Lady of the Diodes", which is a sort of heist tale where a man is partnered with his super smart computer, until he falls in love with someone who isn't the computer.
The rest of the stories are . . . mostly fun. There's a weird assassin tale ("No Award"), some kind of weird were-person story ("Alas, Alas, This Woeful Fate"), a couple short ones that don't overstay their welcome and finally back to the truly strange with "The Engine at Heartspring's Center". At what seems to be a euthanasia resort, a composite man wanders a beach and eventually has a tender relationship with a struggling woman. It ends on a piercing note that sometimes hit Zelazny's works that features extraordinarily long-lived characters . . . either its an exuberance at being alive or a slow burning suicidal despair. This one tends to the latter and its poignant.
What it does prove, ultimately, is that Zelazny had plenty of gas left in the tank as he eased into the mid-70s and slowly became more commercially famous with the advent of the "Amber" books. Their eventual popularity tended to overshadow the pretty fine work he was still doing with shorter stories and even if he's not scaling the heights that he was during his peak, he was still hitting the high notes with a frightening ease. Almost without fail there's something inventive or thought-provoking to recommend in each of these stories, even the ones that appeared one in some random obscure magazine and haven't been read much since. As I mentioned at the start of this, the first two volumes of this series are going to get the most attention, and probably deservedly so, but it definitely not a plunge off a cliff coming into this volume and I don't think its that controversial to say that Zelazny never did ever come back to earth but settled into a nice even glide that gave him a view of the wide vistas that he seemingly never got tired of looking at and being fascinated by.
That's mostly because even Zelazny's throwaways have a element of craft to them that makes them feel that someone at least spent some effort thinking them through instead of just dashing them off, even if the end result doesn't pierce you to your very soul. Zelazny was never less than professional but its probably not until the second "Amber" series that you start to feel that his sense of quality control had started to become a bit . . . elastic. But that may have more to do with how he wrote that series, and not a weakening of his skills as a writer.
If a mass quantity of Zelazny is your thing, then this may be the volume for you. For not only does it seem to pack the most Zelazny prose per square inch of any of the volumes due to most of the stories being fairly short, it is also absolutely crammed with his poetry (the table of contents page fills the entire page).
Its also got deleted sex scene from one of the "Amber" books, if that also happens to be your thing. Though, spoiler alert: its not particularly risque. Unfortunately for the people who are into both sex scenes from "Amber" and Zelazny's poetry he never seemed fit to combine the two, which I guess is a shame.
All this means we have a collection with a definitely more even feel. A couple years on from the all time career highlights of "Lord of Light" and ". . . And Call Me Conrad" he seemed to have switched out some of his stratospheric talent for an absolute gushing faucet of prolific activity. In practice, this means that instead of all the attention being focused solely on a couple of stories that stand head and shoulders over the rest, everything's a little closer to each other in quality, with the Famous Ones just having that little extra something to put them over the top. In other words, you're reading the stories of a very good writer instead of a shimmering deity sent down to this earth to dazzle us (seriously, reading SF magazines of the 50s in chronological order . . . once Zelazny shows up its like a comet heading straight for your face).
The most famous story in here is probably not the one you were expecting and its famous mostly because they went and made a terrible movie out of it. "Damnation Alley" appears here in its original form, before Zelazny was convinced to turn it into a novel (and apparently diluted the original's impact). Its still a fun, if gritty read . . . in a near future world where a chunk of the country has been turned into a literal Hell on Earth theme park, a hardened criminal named Hell Tanner must go on a kind of cannonball run across the US to bring some vaccines to Boston. Its ridiculous in a good way, the kind of thing you need some personality to pull off and fortunately at this point Zelazny has it in spades. It doesn't quite have the heft of his earlier work (basically its tricked out war cars riding across a landscape and being attacked by either the weather or giant mutated animals, with some roving post-apocalyptic gangs thrown in for good measure) but you can also see quite a few places where someone could have massively screwed it up. As mentioned, Zelazny almost screwed it up when plumping it out to novel length, but it was enough for someone to grab Jan-Michael Vincent AND George Peppard (two of my Saturday afternoon TV shows stars in the same film!) AND Jackie Earle Haley for a script that basically tossed out everything else about the novel except for "hellscape" and "war cars" and didn't even seem to do that right. It did terrible, but Zelazny got credit for it and it probably made him some money so I don't think he was too sad about it.
Probably more along the lines of what people were looking for from Zelazny was Nebula nominee "This Mortal Mountain", about a guy who likes climbing mountains . . . but in this case Zelazny pushes things to extremes by having the mountain be so tall it practically pokes out of the atmosphere . . . and it might be trying to keep them from climbing it. But Zelazny treats it like if "Into Thin Air" was a heist movie, as he assembles the old gang and tries to make the ascent. The climax sort of pivots out into left field but not nearly enough to sink the story.
As usual, there's a streak of stories that are stuffed with references to every kind of mythology that Zelazny could get from the library, so you get a couple stories based on weird love ("The Man Who Loved the Faioli", "Angel, Dark Angel"), one where a personification of buildings takes its revenge on us ("The Window Washer") and another that's a bit harder to describe ("He That Moves"). But the real surprises are a really savage two-pager ("A Hand Across the Galaxy" and it really is merciless) and two stories written basically for children that were meant to be collaborations with the artist Vaughn Bode. The first of those stories, "Here There Be Dragons" is fun but its "Way Up High" that's honestly touching, what seems at first a silly story about a girl who meets a talking pterodactyl that just seems to be hanging out slowly metamorphosizes into something a bit sadder and stranger. The closest comparison I can make is that it evokes the old Game Theory song "The Last Day That We're Young" in its describing how you don't often realize you've passed from one era of your life to another until you've already crossed the boundary, just in time to realize you're never going to get back there again.
But lest you think he was completely shooting for accessibility during this period, you get thrown a curveball like "The Steel General", which is an excerpt from "Creatures of Light and Darkness" . . . without the context of the surrounding novel it’s a loopy experience and I can't imagine it was much more comprehensible even in context (imagine if "Lord of Light" had Egyptian gods and was utterly impenetrable). It was a novel that Zelazny didn't even intend to publish, but when he told Samuel Delany about it, the other author talked a publisher into requesting the manuscript and that led to its publication. Along those lines, the much shorter "The Man at the Corner of Now and Forever" does a fragmented story style fairly well, demonstrating how he could harness the experiments to good use when he wanted to.
And if you're thinking the title of that last story evokes a certain Harlan Ellison tale, the cantankerous writer himself appears in a collaboration, "Come to Me Not in Winter's White" that manages to blend both Zelazny's imagination with the spikiness that can only come from a writer bold enough to trademark his own name. Its memorable, though part of me prefers the whimsical and more conventional "My Lady of the Diodes", which is a sort of heist tale where a man is partnered with his super smart computer, until he falls in love with someone who isn't the computer.
The rest of the stories are . . . mostly fun. There's a weird assassin tale ("No Award"), some kind of weird were-person story ("Alas, Alas, This Woeful Fate"), a couple short ones that don't overstay their welcome and finally back to the truly strange with "The Engine at Heartspring's Center". At what seems to be a euthanasia resort, a composite man wanders a beach and eventually has a tender relationship with a struggling woman. It ends on a piercing note that sometimes hit Zelazny's works that features extraordinarily long-lived characters . . . either its an exuberance at being alive or a slow burning suicidal despair. This one tends to the latter and its poignant.
What it does prove, ultimately, is that Zelazny had plenty of gas left in the tank as he eased into the mid-70s and slowly became more commercially famous with the advent of the "Amber" books. Their eventual popularity tended to overshadow the pretty fine work he was still doing with shorter stories and even if he's not scaling the heights that he was during his peak, he was still hitting the high notes with a frightening ease. Almost without fail there's something inventive or thought-provoking to recommend in each of these stories, even the ones that appeared one in some random obscure magazine and haven't been read much since. As I mentioned at the start of this, the first two volumes of this series are going to get the most attention, and probably deservedly so, but it definitely not a plunge off a cliff coming into this volume and I don't think its that controversial to say that Zelazny never did ever come back to earth but settled into a nice even glide that gave him a view of the wide vistas that he seemingly never got tired of looking at and being fascinated by.
November 26, 2019
This impressive collection keeps going strong at Volume 3. If I have any complaint, it is that the immersion in so much Zelazny at a time can desensitize you to his creativity. So many of these stories are worthy of their own review, but it’s hard to sit and digest when the next page beckons. Damnation Alley stands out as the popular kid in this ragtag group and I had no idea this short story led to a full length novel which then led to a movie which then led to a disappointing Netflix search.
Again, 5 stars because these stories and historical notes are what Zelazny fans treasure.
Again, 5 stars because these stories and historical notes are what Zelazny fans treasure.
January 22, 2010
Currently on Damnation Alley (one of my top 5 Zelazny stories). Enjoying the endnotes in this book as much as I did for the first two in the series....
January 17, 2026
What's there to say? It's non-stop Zelazny, and it's all interesting and challenging. Okay, there was that one poem that wouldn't end, but otherwise, a delight to watch a dedicated craftsman at work!
January 1, 2015
reviews.metaphorosis.com
4 stars
Roger Zelazny deserves every bit of his status as a legendary SFF author. At his best (which he often was - see Lord of Light), his prose verged on poetry without ever losing its readability. His short fiction (gathered in several partial collections over the years) was as good, if not better. So, running across a complete collection of his short works is as exciting to an SF fan as finding that a (more) affordable version of the [Jack] Vance Integral Edition is being published. Zelazny and Vance were not only among the top SF writers, but were two of the absolute best for those who love good writing for its own sake.
Which is why the editorial policy behind this collection (published by NESFA) is so puzzling. Curious decisions include: - stories are not in chronological order, nor in series groups, nor in topical order. Yes, there's a general chronological sequence here, but stories are often presented out of order, for no evident reason. - Zelazny aspired to be a poet, and there's a lot of his poetry here. Ironically, for a writer whose prose was so beautifully poetic, his actual poetry is pretty poor. The poems are scattered throughout the volumes of the collection - often topically linked with the following story. It's a little hard to argue with the editors on this - several hundred pages of poetry in one place would have seriously weakened one of the volumes in the set. And if the poetry had just been left out entirely, you'd wonder about it, and how good it must have been. - Several excerpts from novels. Frankly, I just resent this. I have the novels - they're mostly available for purchase. I bought this set for the short stories. - One little quibble. One the inside back jacket, Michael Whelan gets as much space as Zelazny himself. Yes, he's a famous (if overrated) artist, but hey, he just did the one cover, not the six volumes of content.
Strange sequencing, etc. aside, the collection is well done. There is excellent information on publication dates and how the stories fit the various series. There are many previously unpublished (or underpublished) pieces. There are carefully collated comments from Zelazny about each story, and there are (over-) copious interpretive notes about the allusions in each story. Also, there's a nicely written biographical piece included in each volume. While they're all respectful of Zelazny's talent, they're not sycophantic in tone. There are also introductions by guest notables for each volume - some good, some that lead you to question why the editors selected people who clearly did not know Zelazny well.
Finally - the stories themselves. If you're a Zelazny fan, this collection is well worth your time. Otherwise, it's not your best introduction. Some of the underpublished (e.g. in a fanzine) stuff just isn't that good. And the strange sequencing ends up undercutting the effect of the really great stories that are also here. I'm a long time, committed Zelazny enthusiast, and I'm confident that this is not the collection I'd give my spouse in order to share my burning enthusiasm for Zelazny's work. If you're already a fan, though, this will satisfy your completist desires, and give you access to a lot of new work, uneven though it may be.
February 20, 2017
This is one collection of Zelazny's short stories published in SF magazines from appx. 1965-1975. The stories in this collection are fast-paced, action-oriented, and often have a "surprise-reveal" ending that is characteristic of SF fiction from this period. My favorites: "There Be Dragons Here" and "Way Up High," two stories apparently written for a YA audience, and both having very engaging tone and voice. - Not juvenile at all. "There Be Dragons Here" is a semi-spoof of dragon-and-knight tropes, and "Way Up High" is a poignant reflection on the passing of extinct things. This collection is definitely worth skimming for stories that you enjoy!
February 5, 2011
As I said in my recap of the first two volumes of this series, everything is awesome, especially the notes after each story that give some insight into Zelazny’s writing. Also, the biographical stuff and the speeches and essays at the end are great.
With that out of the way, here’s a list of all the stories in the book (not including poetry/articles/whatever). I’ve bolded the ones I felt stood out.
This Mortal Mountain
The Man Who Loved the Faioli
Angel, Dark Angel
The Hounds of Sorrow
The Window Washer
Damnation Alley
The Last Inn on the Road (with Dannie Plachta)
A Hand Across the Galaxy
The Insider (as by Philip H. Sexart)
Heritage
He That Moves
Corrida
Dismal Light (series: Francis Sandow)
Song of the Blue Baboon
Stowaway
Here There Be Dragons
Way Up High
The Steel General
Come to Me Not in Winter's White (by Harlan Ellison™ and Roger Zelazny)
The Year of the Good Seed (with Dannie Plachta)
The Man at the Corner of Now and Forever
My Lady of the Diodes
Alas! Alas! This Woeful Fate
Sun's Trophy Stirring
Add Infinite Item
The Game of Blood and Dust
The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current
No Award
Is There a Demon Lover in the House?
The Engine at Heartspring's Center
Stories I’d read before obtaining this book but didn’t re-read this time around include “Angel, Dark Angel,” “The Last Inn on the Road,” “Corrida,” “Stowaway,” and “Come to Me Not in Winter’s White.” I say this because those stories were less likely to get the coveted bold since I didn’t remember them as well. Maybe they’re more awesome than I’m giving them credit for. (Probably.) I also didn’t read “The Steel General,” because it’s a section of Creatures of Light and Darkness, and I haven’t read that book yet.
Also, I’m starting to notice a lot of repeat information in the essays and speeches, simply because Zelazny made more than one speech about the same subject. But they're still interesting, for the most part.
With that out of the way, here’s a list of all the stories in the book (not including poetry/articles/whatever). I’ve bolded the ones I felt stood out.
This Mortal Mountain
The Man Who Loved the Faioli
Angel, Dark Angel
The Hounds of Sorrow
The Window Washer
Damnation Alley
The Last Inn on the Road (with Dannie Plachta)
A Hand Across the Galaxy
The Insider (as by Philip H. Sexart)
Heritage
He That Moves
Corrida
Dismal Light (series: Francis Sandow)
Song of the Blue Baboon
Stowaway
Here There Be Dragons
Way Up High
The Steel General
Come to Me Not in Winter's White (by Harlan Ellison™ and Roger Zelazny)
The Year of the Good Seed (with Dannie Plachta)
The Man at the Corner of Now and Forever
My Lady of the Diodes
Alas! Alas! This Woeful Fate
Sun's Trophy Stirring
Add Infinite Item
The Game of Blood and Dust
The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current
No Award
Is There a Demon Lover in the House?
The Engine at Heartspring's Center
Stories I’d read before obtaining this book but didn’t re-read this time around include “Angel, Dark Angel,” “The Last Inn on the Road,” “Corrida,” “Stowaway,” and “Come to Me Not in Winter’s White.” I say this because those stories were less likely to get the coveted bold since I didn’t remember them as well. Maybe they’re more awesome than I’m giving them credit for. (Probably.) I also didn’t read “The Steel General,” because it’s a section of Creatures of Light and Darkness, and I haven’t read that book yet.
Also, I’m starting to notice a lot of repeat information in the essays and speeches, simply because Zelazny made more than one speech about the same subject. But they're still interesting, for the most part.
December 11, 2016
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2720440.html
Third of the definitive NESFA six-volume collection of Zelazny's short fiction, poetry and prose. Most of the stories were ones I already knew from collections published in or shortly after Zelazny's lifetime, the most striking exceptions being the texts of two children's books, Here There Be Dragons and Way Up High, whose original publication was delayed for years because of a dispute with underground artist, Vaughn Bodē, whose illustrations were part of the story (sadly not reproduced here). There are several extracts from Creatures of Light and Darkness, originally published separately but not really comprehensible outside the framework of the novel. There is also the original short version of Damnation Alley, which as you'd expect is punchier than the novel-length version, and the deleted Corwin/Dara sex scene from The Guns of Avalon, which I'm sorry to say is less exciting than it sounds.
The short fiction is leavened by noted to the stories (helpful), poetry (not actually all that good, and much of it recycled from the novels) and book-ended by some essays by Zelazny himself and by a third installment of Christopher Kovacs' literary biography. I was pleased to read an anecdote in this last from a panel which I attended at Boskone 2007; it made me feel personally integrated into the narrative.
Anyway, for those who don't know Zelazny's work at all, any of these volumes would be quite a decent introduction; for those of us who are fans, it's nice to have everything between one set of covers.
Third of the definitive NESFA six-volume collection of Zelazny's short fiction, poetry and prose. Most of the stories were ones I already knew from collections published in or shortly after Zelazny's lifetime, the most striking exceptions being the texts of two children's books, Here There Be Dragons and Way Up High, whose original publication was delayed for years because of a dispute with underground artist, Vaughn Bodē, whose illustrations were part of the story (sadly not reproduced here). There are several extracts from Creatures of Light and Darkness, originally published separately but not really comprehensible outside the framework of the novel. There is also the original short version of Damnation Alley, which as you'd expect is punchier than the novel-length version, and the deleted Corwin/Dara sex scene from The Guns of Avalon, which I'm sorry to say is less exciting than it sounds.
The short fiction is leavened by noted to the stories (helpful), poetry (not actually all that good, and much of it recycled from the novels) and book-ended by some essays by Zelazny himself and by a third installment of Christopher Kovacs' literary biography. I was pleased to read an anecdote in this last from a panel which I attended at Boskone 2007; it made me feel personally integrated into the narrative.
Anyway, for those who don't know Zelazny's work at all, any of these volumes would be quite a decent introduction; for those of us who are fans, it's nice to have everything between one set of covers.
March 22, 2015
Pretty much the same opinion as when I read Volume 1. Enjoyed Volume 4 the best so far.
April 7, 2016
An excellent collection of Zelazny's work, with annotations and commentary.
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