I think there were going to be more Amber novels. Goddamnit, I'm not even a fan of the Amber stuff and I'm pissed off that he's gone all over again.

I thought I heard somewhere that Zelazny had told friends that he intended that Amber end with him, but his estate has arranged for other writers to continue them.

Theo, yup - what I meant was, if I'm remembering right, he'd had two or three more he wanted to write himself. And then prostate cancer.

MotherFUCKER.

What a damned waste.

edit: remembering a nice moment, a few weeks ago. When Plei and Paul and Jilli and Pete were here, and I took them off to the Mission, we stopped in at Borderlands. Someone had told Plei she really needed to read this book of Zelazny's, but she couldn't remember the name, just vaguely what it was about.

I immediately dialed home, handed the phone to Nic, and Plei said about six words. She listened for a moment, hung up, and handed me back the phone. "Nic says it's Lord of Light I'm supposed to get."

He knows his Rog, he does.

Unicorn Variations was great. "More beer!"

I took them off to the Mission, we stopped in at Borderlands.

Is that the shop with the hairless cat?

Is that the shop with the hairless cat?

Yes, and a very nice gothboy employee who (when I asked for his opinion on vampire novels) quizzed me about my preferences in the genre, then recommended a whole bunch of books to me.

The hairless cat was neat. The selection of horror fiction was better.

The hairless cat was neat.

I admit, when I walked in, the cat was *right there,* and I recoiled. Because who expects that? But then I petted it and talked to it, and it hung out with me for a few minutes before disappearing through its cat door to the underworld.

It's a sphinx cat, damnit! A queen. Her name is Ripley. Nic and I are both in love - we think she's stunning.

All book stores need cats.

Amber is tricky to get into if you're not grabbed immediately. I really want the big "Great Book of Amber" volume that's out there.

The first series has a few gender role presumptions that make me twitch, but the second series is just wonderful. The ending of the last volume felt a little rushed, and I've always wondered if he was writing against a mental clock.

Oh, gosh, there is at least one book that someone finished and published, it's about a demon and a pocket universe, and it's so very obvious which parts Zelazny wrote and which were filled in from notes.

I wonder why Zelazny doesn't seem to get the play and notoriety as Asimov and Clarke?

I wonder why Zelazny doesn't seem to get the play and notoriety as Asimov and Clarke?

Possibly because of the "world-class scientist" status of the other two? I mean, Uncle I was an essayist, a scientist, a researcher and a general science writer, as I recall, as well as writing fiction. And truth to tell, among the dozen or so science fiction books that I do love, Clarke has one (I consider Childhood's End one of the great novels of the last century, period, genre irrelevant, right up there with A Canticle for Liebowitz), and Isaac has none. But both of them were seen as "educators", which back in the when-old-days conferred legitimacy.

Which sucks. Because fiction, yo.