by
Steve Lazarowitz
April 2002
HIDDEN THEMES IN SCIENCE FICTION
A very long time ago, I realized that in virtually every Roger Zelazny book I've read, someone lit a cigarette. A small detail that might have escaped me, but for the fact that I don't smoke. And now, years later, a minuscule fact that sparked an idea for the column you now read. It happens like that sometimes.
It has been said many times that writing is a form of therapy. If true, writers (including myself) are trying to work out psychological issues through their work. As a point of interest, I turned this thought process on some of my favorite authors and here is what I came up with.
Roger Zelazny, in addition to being fixated by cigarettes, also must have been fascinated by mythology. Many of his books are mythological in origin. He takes the mythos of a specific culture and bends it into something else entirely.
This is most obvious in his works like Lord of Light, which includes the Hindu pantheon and The Creatures of Light and Darkness, which incorporates Egyptian mythology. Zelazny even took on Native American folklore in Eye of Cat. But it doesn't end there.
In his book A Night in the Lonesome October, Zelazny weaves a story using mass-media monsters, including vampires, Frankenstein, werewolves and more. Again, he does not write about these characters in a standard sense, any more than Creatures of Light and Darkness reads like the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Rather he uses these cultural icons as a springboard or backdrop and forms a completely new story from them.
Even the Amber books, his most famous work, is riddled with references to Arthurian legend. This is evident from the names of the protagonists of the two Amber series. First came Corwin, who was a knight of the round table, and then later, his son Merlin, who I'm sure needs no introduction. Corwin even travels to Avalon in the second book, which is where King Arthur was laid to rest (in at least one account).
So far, my search for a common theme seems successful, so I decided to move to yet another author. Naturally it had to be one with which I was intimately familiar, so I chose Jack Chalker. Mr. Chalker seems to be fascinated by transformations. Characters in his books are always shifting shapes, evolving into different species, even changing genders.
In his most famous series, The Well of Souls, each character that enters the Well changes into one of 144 different species and begins a life in a world populated by similar creatures. In the Four Lords of the Diamond series, an agent is beamed into the body of another person, infiltrating them and their lives to accomplish some goal. In the Soul Riders series (my personal favorite), journeying into the fog-like flux that surrounds the cities will cause all sorts of unexpected changes. Characters in this series change more than in any other.
In The Dancing Gods series, one of the characters is a shape shifter and transformations are rampant, as they seem to be in all his books, at least all that I've read. What does this say about the man? I sure I'm not qualified to say.
Another author I've read quite a bit of is Philip Jose Farmer. I particularly remember two series; Riverworld and the World of Tiers. Both excellent series.
There might be any number of common threads, but each series features a quest to get to a distant, geographically isolated goal. In Riverworld the object was to get to the foot of a giant river, along which all of humanity had been resurrected. The mystery of who had the technology to perform such a feat was the central quest and the end of the river was where the answer was to be found.
In World of Tiers, the world was set up on a number of different levels, like plates on a central cylinder. Each world was slightly smaller than the one beneath it, almost creating a cylindrical pyramid of flat planes, stacked above each other. The protagonist started on the bottom tier and tried to journey to the top. Why? To find out about the race that possessed such awesome technology, much as in Riverworld. The answer could only be found on the top tier; the very last world.
Another thing I noticed when reading Farmer's work, is that I was always more satisfied with the journey than the ending. I loved the setups and the adventures themselves, but they tended to go on for so long, that by the time the protagonist reached his goal, I had almost lost interest. Perhaps I felt the endings were contrived to fit the beginnings, and so was often disappointed, though I still liked the Riverworld series enough to reread it.
What about my own work then? I thought about it and couldn't find a common thread. Was I to be the one to disprove my own theory?
Until a few minutes ago it seemed that way. Then I mentioned the problem to Samandi Adams, my long time friend and editor. It took her a few seconds to find it, but it was there, right in front of me all along.
My books are all about being out of control. The characters in my books are constantly being shuffled about by outside forces, trying desperately to hold it together, but never being able to really take charge of their lives.
In Alaric Swifthand, poor Alaric never had a chance. Wrongly blamed for the murder of a noble's daughter, Alaric must try to clear his name, while trying to avoid being captured. In Reflections of a Recovering Servant, Stracc finds also finds himself falsely accused of a crime. Unlike Alaric however, he doesn't have the option of fleeing, as he is already in custody by the time he finds out the charges against him. In A Leaf in the Wind, Nagennif is literally the pawn of the Gods, as Hakaiti, goddess of magic, uses him to try to settle a score with her sister Sheava, the goddess of war and cruelty. The very title of the book is a euphemism for Nagennif, who is very much blown about, with no control over his own destiny.
What does this say about me?
Perhaps I have also allowed life to push and pull me as it will, offering very little resistance. Perhaps I resent the forces of the cosmos that have left me working for twenty years in retail. It is even possible that my writing is an attempt to find a way to control myself, as opposed to allowing events around me to dominate.
As time goes on, I wonder if I will see the pattern shift as I begin to take control of my own destiny. I can only hope it will be so.
And yet I also wonder what then might my work evolve into? What will it say about me ten years from now?
I guess I'd better stay in touch with Samandi.
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