I first read this book back in the late 60s, when it was brand new and nothing like it had appeared in SF before. I found it brilliant and mysterious, the latter in part because back in my teens I knew so little about the Hindu and Buddhist religions and myths Zelazny was spinning off. I am at least somewhat less ignorant nowadays, if not hugely so.I still think the book is brilliant, but not nearly so mysterious. It's a bit like looking at faded pictures of your parents, and realizing you are now older than they were then.One of the intellectual pleasures of this book for the reader is the putting-together of the world-building set-up, its mysteries gradually revealed, so any thumbnail sketch of same acts as a pretty big spoiler. But I want to make some comments below that depend on them, so I will do the synopsis at the end, and anyone spoiler-sensitive to a half-century-old book can stop reading in time.I was immediately, upon this reread – the first in decades, and I think the first since I started my own writing career – conscious of the voice, which is omniscient, with its fascinating strengths and interesting abilities to hide weaknesses. Omniscient tends to be emotionally distancing, but has the advantage of being able to pack huge amounts of information into little page-time, allowing for a lot of rich and – relatively, because this is Zelazny, who prudently explains as little as possible – detailed world-building.The episodic structure, starting the story near its end and proceeding through assorted novella-length flashbacks, stems from its being something of a fix-up, incorporating stories that were originally sold separately to various magazines, I believe. It all pulled together beautifully, however, managing to be more than the sum of its parts.The narrator's style might be described as "high-falutin' smart ass", I suppose, florid and often beautiful language undercut by jokes and running jokes, allowing the writer to be poetic without damaging his guy street-cred.The sexism fairy has struck this book pretty hard in the intervening decades since my last read, I'm afraid. I have a high tolerance for this because I remember the original social context, and Lord of Light was hugely better than some other books of the time. But the core emotional story is undoubtedly a bromance, where the two generationally-dissassociated not-quite-rivals for a woman's love, Sam and Yama, actually end up with their most important relationship being with each other. After the climax they end up off having new adventures free of any taint of domesticity, leaving the female leg of the putative love triangle entirely disempowered and put in her place. Grant you, Candi-Kali is a well-observed example of what I have dubbed the Borderline-Personality Girlfriend, which does add complexity. Sam is I think correct in his evaluation that any attempt at a long-term relationship with her cannot end well, and he speaks from experience. But it is very convenient for the narrative that this frees our main guy-pair from any on-going duties in the matter.It's a very blokey book. Most of the chapter climaxes are epic battles, big fights to establish male-male bio-social dominance, aka politics. For a narrative inspired by some of the ur-sources of Indo-European patriarchal tradition, this is actually spot-on. Only the few female figures who fight guy-style get to share center stage for long, or else are support staff. Well, it's a war story; this is sort of fair.World-building spoilers now. The background is: this alien and eerie planet was settled many generations earlier by a shipload of mainly South Asian colonists. At the same time, technology was developed for electronically/magically uploading personalities into new, fresh bodies, conveniently grown to adult size in vats. As time went on, mutant superpowers arose among some of the colonists/crew, and a cadre of same set themselves up as the Hindu pantheon, controlling reincarnation and keeping all the high tech to and for themselves. Sam, our hero -- and formerly apparently the colony ship's engineer, given his powers over electrical phenomena -- is increasingly offended by this, and sets himself up as a one-man (but several-generations-long) revolution against heaven, using Buddhism as his template for resistance. His banner is material progress, denied by the gods who go around suppressing any tech that is discovered or rediscovered by the peons. So far so good; I, personally, am heavily in favor of education, flush toilets, and electricity for all.But to anyone with some biology background, the existence and maintenance of the wide-spread reincarnation technology is wildly contradictory to the posited keep-the-masses ignorant trope. I really don't see how this society, were it anything like economically realistic, could have it both ways, except by authorial fiat. So the world-building falls down at its central conceit.Some of the underlying SF tropes, fun as they are in context, also get the hairy eyeball from me these days. The big one, of course, is the denial of biology, reproduction, and death as the substrate of human existence. Death is dodged by the reincarnation tech. Family (and women) become unimportant as one buys one's new, unrelated body from a vat, without anyone visible having to do any scut work to make it possible. This embodies what seems to me a (largely) young male SF ideal that imagines the self as generated from one's own forehead at the age of twenty-two, without any status-draining obligations to any other human beings, especially women, for one's existence. Very solipsistic. Very common in the genre, and I don't really have a solid explanation of why it is so popular, but it has been popular for a very long time.Despite my more mature reservations, I found that bits and scenes and characters and dialogue from Lord of Light have lived vividly in my memory for decades. I highly recommend the book as a piece of SF history and a fun read.Ta, L.(And for another bit of random SF history, I note in passing that one of my copies of the book is from Gordy Dickson's library, sold off after his death.)
Nutshell: douchebags leave earth, acquire technological immortality, and then, completely reasonably and necessarily, re-enact Hindu mythology.This concludes my reading of Zelazny, and confirms the general pattern of prior books: chaotic presentation, no discipline, immortal protagonists, silly resolutions. This one tries to do something with Hindu mythology and buddhist theology, much like Creatures of Light and Darkness messed with Egypt and This Immortal flirted with Greece. Opening section has much promise, with reference to Indian theological concepts (nirvana, samsara, karma, ahimsa). That gets dropped pretty soon thereafter, and the religion & mythology become simply window dressing. Karma becomes a technician’s bailiwick: “the use of psych-probes on those up for renewal” (66), through which “body merchants” read over "your past life, weigh the karma, and determine your life that is yet to come. It’s the perfect way of maintaining the caste system” (67). Bad karma is defined by the state, of course (68), and each person maintains, apparently, a “prayer account” and a “sin account” with the body merchants and karma masters (69). So, yeah, all very interesting.Main conflict is between Accelerationism and Deicracy; former want to push forward with industrial development, whereas latter want to affix human civilization at a dark ages level, while high tech religious tools for reincarnation and karma are used for biopolitical management. For instance, wine is lost, though one character has preserved some, “from vanished Urath” (55). Accelerationist Buddha objects that they “should be assisting them, granting them benefits of the technology we had preserved, rather than building ourselves an impregnable paradise and treating the world as a combination game preserve and whorehouse” (78). Deicrats' motivation is basically rightwing paternalist: “it is because they are not ready for it […] and will not be for many centuries” (id.) Technology would result in savage wars: “They are our children” (id.). Brahma’s main task is “destroying all signs of progress” (79). Again, all very well laid out and damned interesting.Great indication that, when humans showed up on this planet, they wiped out the indigenous life, styling them rakshasa and confining them in concentration camps (that was protagonist Buddha’s historical role, for which he is long remembered): “‘I did that which had to be done, to preserve my own species. Men were weak and few in number. Your kind fell upon them and would have destroyed them.’ ‘You stole our world, Siddhartha. You chained us here’” (148).After that it turns into a friggin’ mess: a parade of deities and demons, who politic behind each others’ backs--hard to track, and not very worthwhile, all together, as it generally leads to some kind of unrepresentable combats between immortals. Overall, then, great opening regarding religion, class, economic development, ideology, imperialism, genocide--all wasted in trivial middle and by inexplicable finale. (Only redeeming feature of later bits is that Nirrti, goddess of decay, appears, but is actually Christian, and commands legions of flesh-eating zombies. I chuckled for an appropriate duration at an appropriate volume.)Recommended for those who facilitate the passage of spirits from their fleshy envelopes, readers who play on fascist banjos, and people whose fertility deities are worse than marxists.
What do You think about Lord Of Light (2010)?
"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god.""Enig*ma (noun) : something hard to understand or explain." I have only read Lord of Light once, and I think a proper review would require a re-read. That being said, here goes. First the good news. I loved being dropped into the middle of Zelazny's incomprehensible world without so much as a compass. He forces the reader to work a bit and understand the surroundings. Are these people Hindu dieties? Who's this talking monkey? The example I often think of is the first 100 pages of Steve Erikson's Gardens of the Moon - what the heck was going on? In this type of design, the author makes a promise to the reader that either through tasty informational nuggets (if the author is good) or a explanatory vomit in a single scene (if the author is bad), the mysteries will be explained - that is the payoff. I don't want to turn this into a spoiler review, but suffice it to say, Zelazny delivers the nuggets.I also loved the concept. I've never read anything quite like it. Strangeness is, as Dan Simmons explains, a prerequisite for a good novel. Lord of Light has strangeness to spare. According to Zelazny, "Lord of Light was intentionally written so that it could be taken as a science fiction or a fantasy novel. On the one hand, I attempted to provide some justifications for what went on in the way of the bizarre; on the other, I employed a style I associate with fantasy in the telling of the story. I wrote it that way on purpose, leaving some intentional ambiguity, because I wanted it to lie somewhat between both camps and not entirely in either. I did this because I did not see much stuff being written at that time which fit that description; because I wanted to see whether I could do it; and because I was curious as to how such a book would be received.” What may have bothered me is that it is certainly difficult to appreciate the subtleties of the interaction between the characters, their motivations and anything Zelazny is trying to say about religion, politics, or technology while you are trying to figure out what is going on! That's why, despite my enjoyment of this enigma on one level, I was left with a 3.5 feeling. A second read would surely bump that up, potentially significantly.
—Kane
Most of the Chronicels of Amber were short Novels or that eventually got published in one binding. The Amber books were really good, at least the first ten or so.
—Adam
Lord of Light reads like mythology, with occasional, subtle dips into science fiction. The technology is of the sufficiently advanced variety, that looks and acts like magic. Or divine powers, as the case may be. The mythology is heavily borrowed from Hinduism and Buddhism. I know very little about either, and I kept wondering what somebody who did would think of all of this.Maybe it just hit me at the wrong time, but although this was a pleasant read it didn't blow me the way, the way it has so many other people. Good, but not spectacular.
—Sesana
