 A brief look at the author’s last novel of the 1970s, which focuses on a metaphysical road to “anywhere and anywhen”. Roger Zelazny’s best-known work from the 1970s is his five-volume Chronicles of Amber fantasy series, but he wrote numerous other books during those years. Zelazny had quit his job in 1969, so the ‘70s were his first decade as a full-time professional writer. His books show, and were arguably sometimes compromised by, his need to write commercially and earn a living. For example, he bowed to editorial pressure to restructure his novel Today We Choose Faces (1973) because as he put it, “I was younger then and more in need of the money at the time.” Roadmarks was Zelazny’s last novel of his productive 1970s. Dealing with a metaphysical, magical road to “anywhere and anywhen”, it is a kind of contemporary fantasy structured as a road trip. To those few able to access it, the Road stretches infinitely backwards and forward in time, and its access points connect a fertile multiverse. Zelazny’s protagonist meets a version of Adolf Hitler, looking for a world where Nazi Germany won World War II. Elsewhere, the Marquis de Sade obtains a gadget that gives him control over a tyrannosaurus rex. It is a setting with tremendous potential. Unfortunately, Roadmarks never comes close to achieving that potential, or exploring its concept thoroughly. The adventures of Red Dorakeen and his estranged son Randy gesture only vaguely at the possibilities. Frustratingly, virtually the entire novel is set on the Road, which is presented as a kind of dusty highway perhaps in the American southwest. Characters talk often of visiting “C11” or “C27”, but the mentions of these centuries are exactly that - just mentions. Red and Randy are bound to the Road, and their thinly-sketched enemies come from exotic times and locales that Zelazny never lets us in on. Zelazny did not plan his novels with any thoroughness, and instead opted to let the story unfurl more naturally. This is one of the reasons why the Amber novels are so disappointing, because Zelazny so often seems to be spinning his wheels, waiting for a narrative direction to present itself. The lack of direction is more forgivable in Roadmarks. The novel seems to some extent to be a kind of re-writer of the Amber books. Both focus on an estranged father-son relationship - a recurring Zelazny theme - and on characters who explore (and perhaps create) new worlds as they travel. There are some clever and inspired elements, but little is made of them. Red and Randy each travel with their own artificially intelligent, talking poetry collection. Red is accompanied by “Flowers”, a copy of The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire (1857), while Randy is assisted by “Leaves”, a copy of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855). One might hope that these books would have their own distinctive personalities, reflecting their contents, but they sadly do not. Like the Road itself, Roadmarks seems to stretch backwards and forwards. While it recalls the Amber books, it also anticipates Zelazny’s later novel Eye of Cat (1981). Both Roadmarks and Eye of Cat deal with otherworldly assassins dispatched on vague missions - in this case, Red is the target of ten killers as part of a kind of edict called the Black Decade. Why does this happen? Red doesn’t know, the killers don’t know, and it seems clear that Zelazny didn’t know either. While interesting in the wider context of the author’s work, Roadmarks is a frustrating novel that scarcely even attempts to make good on its intriguing premise. It does little to counteract the common notion that Zelazny’s best efforts were in the 1960s.
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Weekly blog exploring classic science fiction, with a focus on the 1950s to the 1990s. |
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