Roger Zelazny, writer of novels reminiscent of Lord of Light and A Night within the Lonesome October, was certainly one of science fiction’s most treasured voices. Sci-fi writer and editor Warren Lapine credit Zelazny’s books with rescuing him from the lifetime of a juvenile delinquent.

“Roger Zelazny is a writer’s writer,” Lapine says in Episode 534 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “He makes people want to write. You read what he’s doing, and you can tell he’s having so much fun, you’re like, ‘I’ve got to be able to do that.’ And so I immediately wanted to become a writer. Well, you don’t drop out of school and learn how to write, so I was suddenly a straight-A student, and I went to college, and I had a whole different life than I ever would have had, had it not been for Roger Zelazny.”

Lapine’s newest undertaking is Immer, Zlaz, which collects lots of of letters that Zelazny wrote to his finest buddy Carl Yoke. Zelazny was a non-public one that hardly ever spoke about his opinions or private life, and his letters supply a uncommon glimpse into his thought course of. “It’s just really, really fascinating,” Lapine says. “If you want to know who Roger Zelazny was, these letters do that for you.”

Zelazny’s early work was showered with reward, however critics have been much less enthused together with his later output, reminiscent of the favored 10-volume Amber collection. But Lapine says that critics are off base after they dismiss Amber as light-weight, business writing. “Most of the critics in science fiction don’t even have a degree in English lit, and so they haven’t even got a clue,” Lapine says. “All the stuff that’s going on in Amber, the levels and the number of literary allusions in there is absolutely gobsmacking. There’s almost a literary allusion on every single page. But if you haven’t read all that stuff, you’re not going to catch it. If you haven’t read any of the Jacobean plays, you’re going to miss all those.”

In latest years Lapine has labored intently with the Zelazny property to convey a lot of Zelazny’s older titles again into print. He believes strongly that the entire writer’s dozens of books are price studying. “Even his most slight book is better than a lot of writers’ best books,” Lapine says. “I know we’ll have other people who will be able to show just as much virtuosity, but it hasn’t happened yet in my lifetime—before or since his passing. There’s just nothing like reading Zelazny.”

Listen to the entire interview with Warren Lapine in Episode 534 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And try some highlights from the dialogue beneath.

Warren Lapine on assembly Zelazny:

I’m interviewing Roger, and I’ve acquired the tape there, and at some factors he’s sitting within the chair the wrong way up, together with his head hanging the place folks’s toes could be, speaking within the path of the microphone of the tape recorder, and he’s spinning round within the chair. At one level he’s standing on prime of the chair, speaking right down to it, after which he’s standing on the highest of the again of the chair. He was in fixed movement, simply sort of twirling round within the chair, up and down and round. I’ve by no means had anybody I’ve interviewed be something like that. It was fascinating. And he by no means broke a sequence of thought. He was actually centered, actually good at answering interview questions. But it was surreal.

Warren Lapine on Deus Irae:

[Zelazny] confirmed the chunk that he had written to Philip K. Dick, and Dick acquired unblocked and instantly wrote the subsequent chapter and despatched it to Roger, after which Roger learn it, after which he’d write a chapter and ship it again to Philip Okay. Dick. And what’s actually attention-grabbing for me in these letters is you may see that when the letters begin, Philip Okay. Dick is in a horrible place. He has no cash, no prospects, nothing’s going proper for him. And within the final letter, he’s speaking about how [Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?] is doing splendidly. The cash is coming in, and this ebook offered higher than something he’d ever written earlier than. Philip Okay. Dick was simply in a lot of a special and higher place than he had been after they have been writing to one another through the very early days with the ebook.

Warren Lapine on George R. R. Martin:

Reading [Immer, Zlaz] as we speak, a contemporary reader will suppose that Roger is dropping George R. R. Martin’s identify everywhere in the rattling place. But what they received’t understand is that [George] hadn’t written A Game of Thrones but, and he wasn’t half as effectively referred to as Roger. So [Roger] was simply speaking about his buddy. It could really feel like he’s dropping the identify of probably the most well-known fantasy writer on the earth, however he wasn’t. … I bear in mind after I first met George, and folks could be like, “Who’s George R. R. Martin?” I’d be like, “Oh, he wrote Fevre Dream.” That was his best-selling novel, a New York Times best-selling vampire novel. That’s what he was recognized for. I bear in mind hanging out with him at conventions, and there was no one round however a few us. Now you couldn’t get near him at a conference.

Warren Lapine on Zelazny versus the critics:

Some persons are like, “It’s like he had all these magic tricks, and he just kept putting them back in his bag.” And I’m like, “Well, how many times do you want to watch him pull a rabbit out of the hat?” I imply, if he’s pulling the identical rabbit out of the identical hat, when does it cease being a trick? He was doing all these tips, and doing all these items he wished to see about, and I’ve by no means fairly understood why—as soon as he was completed attempting all these experiments that he was after—that they thought he ought to hold experimenting on stuff that didn’t have any curiosity for him. They all wished him to maintain being this dazzling author who went locations nobody had ever gone. And he was identical to, “But I was done with that now. I knew where the edges were.”

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