Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny (1937 – 1995) was first published in 1979. I had heard it can be a difficult read due to its structure and style. I would agree with that, but that sort of stuff works out at least midway through the novel. The problem is that, at best, I can describe this novel as “interesting” when there is so much about it that should have developed into awesome and tremendous.
This is the second Zelazny novel that I have read, I do own several more to get through, but my interest in them is waning quite a bit. As with the previous novel that I read, This Immortal (1966), I get this feeling that Zelazny thinks he is the only chap to ever crack open a history book and he must be some kinda special because he has read some literature. To me he comes across as supercilious and obnoxious, which makes me grumpy. Do not get me wrong – I like erudite, intelligent, and clever authors. I like to read books that have some meat to them and the authors have big brain activity. I just do not want a cocky, snarky chap waving his ancient Greek quotes around at me. Nor do I need the lengthy French poems to prove he can read French poems.
Listen, I admit this is non-rational. Its just the feeling I get reading these novels. Others do feel differently, I am sure.
Problems with this novel: the novel is too short and too brisk to give the ideas and layout the room it needs to develop and breathe. Like I said above, so many neat ideas in such an unusual format that it is a supremely interesting novel. But capping at 189 pages, it does not give the reader enough of what is really, really good. It does not allow the ideas to play out. And here is the thing: every one of us has great ideas, I am certain of it. It is in the execution of the ideas that truly tests our ideas and our skill. Move that idea from theory into praxis, my friends. Half-baked potential is always going to be just that. Frankly, the ideas in this novel are so interesting that they deserve a better execution – and the readers are robbed of that.
Or maybe our author could not get the novel further………. Maybe it was 1979 and after the last segments were written the author felt “good enough” and “oh, aren’t I avant garde!” and that was it.
Dragons. I hated the whole element/theme of dragons in this. I do not want to be crass, but I found it stupid.
From what I have already said, you would think I just hated this novel. I did not. In fact, I really liked it. I loved banging down the Road in a beater truck that is also a Transformer when it gets the aid of Baudelaire’s “Alexa” device. I totally loved the books qua A.I., in other words. I also think this is one of the better time-manipulation stories because a Road with exits and on-ramps that relate, in some way, to history is fantastic. I mean, Zelazny is also brazen and bold because in chapter 2 (or one, however you like) we meet a character named Adolph looking for the time-place where “he won.” So, Zelazny shows us straight-away that he is not going to play it safe, let’s say, with his times and characters.
There are constant cigars, odd scenes in roadside hotels, and a completely strange robot that has at some point sustained damage and now spends its time as a potter in a cave. All of these elements do a great job of keeping the reader off-guard and making the storyline lively. However, some of the motives of the characters are absent or vague and underwritten. One guy is looking for his father, for no real reason. One guy is trying to “find himself.” A couple of characters are just hangers-on, somehow voluntarily tying their fate to the randomness of other characters. So, at the end, the novel has to end abruptly and without resolutions. There never was a point to it anyway. It was an exercise in ideas, not in novel-writing or character development or something.
I would certainly have loved a “sequel” or a spin-off wherein the author let us have more fun with the robots or characters from history. I think the hero-agenda that Zelazny is known for is present here, but it does not spoil anything. We can have a new hero for the sequel without taking anything away from Red Dorakeen (the main character). This is not really wishful thinking about what the novel might have been or what might have followed it. It is more so a realizing that this novel wanted me to waste my time on the Road as well. However, I am not as special, I guess, as Red Dorakeen and the purposelessness of a long road ahead with no particular destination does not appeal.
I have no idea what to say about Timyin Tin. Its like a caricature of a Shaolin monk. I find this a lot in society; it does not surprise me. But I feel Timyin Tin should have gotten more page-time or less, or another novel or just been omitted altogether. I am at a loss with this character. He needs a whole different novel series or something
Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time (1961) does it better. And Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) does, too. No, those are not the same as Roadmarks, but I would hands down give those five stars. For all its interesting quirkiness, Roadmarks is fairly empty. Readers should read this novel so they know what the heck the rest of us are talking about. Yes, its a bit difficult. Yes, it is strange. A very interesting novel is the best I can say.
3 stars
Over the weekend I finished The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt (1935). The novel was first published in 1994 and is the first in the Academy series. There is a long gap between this novel and the next in the series, so I am not fully convinced this book was supposed to be a series. The second novel, Deepsix, was published in 2001 and the last few pages of The Engines of God really seem like they are finalizing and there is no further except in the imagination of readers. I read the ACE edition with cover art by Bob Eggleton.
I finished The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov yesterday and I really appreciate a lot about the novel. It was first published in 1957 and is the second in the R. Daneel Olivaw “series.” I read the Spectra/Bantam edition with cover art by Stephen Youll. I read the first novel, 
The worst part of the novel is the main character’s attitude. Lord have mercy, there are points when he is so sour, petulant, snarky, and impatient I want to clobber him. I mean, I can understand some of his discomfort and his confusion, but his constant poor attitude is really grating. I would exonerate the other characters if they had, at any point, walloped Elijah Baley a nice good one. I mean, I like Elijah, but I really wanted to punch him in this novel. Anyway, Elijah suffers enough without me beating him up because he is undergoing a massive bout of agoraphobia. Amusingly, I finished reading this novel outdoors on a sunny day in which the sky was so clear and blue, I did have a hint of some of what Baley was experiencing. I looked up and watched a Boeing 777 overhead and felt that the world was so utterly open and expansive……
The fifth book I have finished this January is Reliquary by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. It was published in 1997 and is the direct sequel to Relic, which I wrote 
In the 1950s, Frederik Pohl (1919 – 2013) edited collections of new science fiction stories. Pohl, an established author and familiar to the writing circles, managed to get the VIPs and MVPs of the science fiction world to include in these anthologies. I read the first anthology and enjoyed it immensely. That edition has a story by Clifford D. Simak (1904 – 1988) that still hammers at my soul from time to time. My favorite story in this second anthology is probably the one by Algis Budrys. I really ought to have read this anthology much sooner after reading the first because these are such high quality collections. Both the first and this second anthology were published in 1953. I read the Ballantine Books editions for both.
The Hal Clement story, Critical Factor, is quite good, however some readers might struggle through it. Its hard science and Clement makes the reader think. There is something esoteric and intangible about how Clement anthropomorphizes and develops characters that you always would know if its his story or not. His characters are always so thoughtful and almost always seem to have tendencies to be better and move toward the good. Anyway, it is not an easy read because Clement’s science meets up with his imagination and honestly, it is so beyond the human experience that its tough to figure out what the heck the characters are or are trying to do. I dropped a star in my rating because Clement did not fully immerse the reader because he had to make the characters use nouns/language that would be a referent for the reader, but at the same time, the characters would have zero referent for those words and therefore would not really use them. I certainly do not have a way around this, but it feels awkward. After you finish this story, a reader might not fully understand it, but I think they know they read a helluva story. Clement’s imagination was extreme, this is mighty.
is the story for the eighth episode of the third season of The Twilight Zone (1961). I do not know if I have seen that or not. The story did not feel familiar when I read it, so I want to say I probably have not seen the episode. Anyway, this is probably a must-read story for science fiction, horror, fiction fans. Its not super long, there is really no reason why readers cannot pick this up and get through it. The things that make it so good are that the frustration, fear, and immensity of the situation are palpable. These sensations are presented with an economy of words, an undercurrent of sympathy, and a subtle huge concept lurking throughout. Peaksville… population 46. A young boy with some major impact named Anthony is a massive creation by Bixby and even though the story might seem vaguely unsurprising, it is still disconcerting and disturbing. In other words, this story, like so many in this book, is good for the reader’s brain. Readers enjoy, as much as that makes sense, this harrowing tale.
The Secret People by John Wyndham (1903 – 1969) is the author’s first novel, although he published it under a pseudonym. It was first published in 1935; I read the Coronet 1977 edition with cover art by Colin Hay. I really like the cover art, but I don’t really think it representative of the novel. I had not read any Wyndham before, but I like to start, generally, early in an author’s career and work my way forward.
So, this novel has a really good juxtaposition of anthropology and sociological elements with fugitive/action novel storyline. I was really impressed with this structure. I still cannot believe this is Wyndham’s first novel. Again, comparing this novel – its structure and plotting – to a lot of the novels of the last twenty years I have to say that this one is really superior. In terms of novel qua novel, this one is really good. As I consider a list of things about this novel, I do not have many complaints. Characters? solid. Plot? solid. Science fiction stuff? solid. Novel structure? solid. Action and suspense? solid. There are not a lot of weak points here whatsoever. Any complaints would be nitpicking, I think, and overall it was a very imaginative, immersive story that entertained me quite nicely. It was also a bit different than anything I have read (underground people, caves, the New Sea) and I really enjoyed that it was imaginative and unique.
I am pleased to have started 2023 with reading a vintage science fiction novel. I read Meeting at Infinity by John Brunner (1934 – 1995). This novel was first published in 1961. I read the ACE edition with cover art by John Schoenherr. The book begins with a short prologue and has twenty-one chapters.
The White Mountains by John Christopher (1922 – 2012) was first published in 1967 and is the first in the Tripods series written by Christopher. There are four small books in the series, which was written as juvenile fiction or young adult fiction. My copy has 195 pages and they are fast-turning pages.
If you, as I did, decide to “pseudo-hurricane evac,” you cannot bring every book on your tbr-mountain. As distressing as this is, it is possible to just take one single book along with you. And mainly, this is for space constraints. To be honest, I did not evac for safety reasons, but for sanity reasons. So, I was not really worried about the destruction some locations had, but sitting around in power outages while 50-mph wind whips nature at you is not exactly relaxing. So, what book did I grab? Well, I grabbed Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Mainly because I figured it would last a day or two and I really had been meaning to knock it off of the tbr list for awhile.
Because at the end of the day, Crouch has his main character working on a problem – and it is not the problem of quantum physics or how to return to a specific universe. It is actually: what is happiness? how does one have a happy life? of what does a happy life consist – and how do our choices determine this?
The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simak (1904 – 1988) was first published in 1967. I read the Berkley paperback with the Richard Powers (1921 – 1996) cover art. My copy was only 216 pages, but I think it took over a week to read – because I had just gotten home from travel and for whatever reason, my mind was feeling listless and disinterested. This is the eighth Simak novel that I have read, though, so I feel he and I are old friends, so to speak.
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