Suppose we lived in an alternate universe where Roger Zelazny was born a quarter century after his actual birth date, so that he would be in the prime writing phase of his life right now. And, as Roger just had a nifty little idea for a world called Amber, he would sit down to write it now instead of in the 1970's.
How would it be different?
For example, I don't think that smoking is as prevalent now as it was in the 1970's, so I doubt that there would be so many scenes with folks lighting a cigarette unless Roger wanted to recapture that 1950's pulp feel.
Also, large books weren't as common back in the 1970's as they are today. (My hardback Lord of the Rings is something like 1100 pages; the newest Jim Butcher Cinder Spires book is over 600 and it's just the first of a series.) Now that GRR Martin's gigantic Game of Thrones books are out, as well as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time and so many others that fill the shelves of B&N, it seems like the thick and hefty novel is the norm and it's possible that Roger would have written something much more wordy than what we got.
What about main influences. In our world, guys like Neil Gaiman and George RR Martin were influenced by Zelazny. In this alternate world, where other guys came first, who might have been Roger's inspiration and how might they have changed the style of Amber?
Sorry if it's a dumb topic. It just popped into my head and I was curious if anyone had any thoughts on this.
Quote from: finarvyn;959801Also, large books weren't as common back in the 1970's as they are today...
I'm just going to mull this one a bit, considering the Chronicles of Amber I read as a kid belonged to my mom and were two large hard bound volumes on the bookshelf. In the 70s.
Zelazny's style tended towards concision, he started with short stories and novellas and slowly adapted to the novel. I just can't imagine him writing the kind of sprawling undisciplined prose that is so common in so much modern day fantasy and sf.
Quote from: Krimson;959829I'm just going to mull this one a bit, considering the Chronicles of Amber I read as a kid belonged to my mom and were two large hard bound volumes on the bookshelf. In the 70s.
Yes, but each of the volumes was actually a collection of several books which were originally published individually. The early SFBC omnibus editions had 2 books in it (338 pages) and 2 books in it (434 pages), neither of which is a really huge volume by the standards of many of the books today. More recent SFBC omnibus editions had the five Corwin books in one volume and the five Merlin books in one volume. Dunno the page count there since I never bought those. (This also makes me wonder why the Merlin books never got a two-volume omnibus set. No idea.)
My curiosity is more along the lines of "would Nine Princes in Amber look different if written today?", or "would Guns of Avalon look different if written today?", and so on.
Quote from: Voros;959866Zelazny's style tended towards concision, he started with short stories and novellas and slowly adapted to the novel. I just can't imagine him writing the kind of sprawling undisciplined prose that is so common in so much modern day fantasy and sf.
Agreed, but I wonder if this was because the market at the time seemed to be supporting and encouraging that format of literature or if it was because that was the way he liked to write.
Quote from: finarvyn;959894Yes, but each of the volumes was actually a collection of several books which were originally published individually. The early SFBC omnibus editions had 2 books in it (338 pages) and 2 books in it (434 pages), neither of which is a really huge volume by the standards of many of the books today. More recent SFBC omnibus editions had the five Corwin books in one volume and the five Merlin books in one volume. Dunno the page count there since I never bought those. (This also makes me wonder why the Merlin books never got a two-volume omnibus set. No idea.)
My curiosity is more along the lines of "would Nine Princes in Amber look different if written today?", or "would Guns of Avalon look different if written today?", and so on.
I was just amused growing up in the 70s in a place with many large hardcovers on the shelf. Anyhow I'll try and make a serious response later. I need to mull this over.
My guess would be that Zelazny would have given us stronger and more active female characters (as only Flora, Fiona, and Dara get to do much of anything in Corwin's books), and we'd have gotten a lot more more insight into the Courts of Chaos, likely in the form of a parallel narrative.
I don't think Zelazny would have balked at writing longer books, either. Changeling and Madwand were each novel-length, and his works with Sheckley were even longer.
About smoking. I think I read an interview where Zelazny said when he was stuck he went out to smoke and had Corwin do the same. Half way through Merlin he discovered smoking was bad so he quit. Merlin did to for the most part.
If he was writing today when he got stuck Corwin might start fiddling with his phone. And nothing else would ever be written.
Quote from: finarvyn;959896Agreed, but I wonder if this was because the market at the time seemed to be supporting and encouraging that format of literature or if it was because that was the way he liked to write.
I would guess that there was an actual market for sf short stories and novellas of an overtly modernist form and style via The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had to have had some effect. He was lucky enough to come around at a time when you could write formally experimental sf and still enjoy commercial success. He does mention Hemingway's minimalism as one influence on the novels:
"Ernest Hemingway would write and see the whole story, and then he would intentionally remove something, rewriting the story without it. In his mind, that thing would still be there. Even though the reader doesn't know what it is, it would influence everything else in the story. The reader would feel there was something there even though he couldn't put his finger on it."
So to me his interests obviously pushed him to shorter forms. The Amber novels are remarkably compressed with incident compared to not only modern fantasy but even the pulp fantasy of the era. They're a hybrid of pulp and modernism, just not as overtly as his earlier work. Even his longer novels are hardly lengthy compared to the standards of the 80s and beyond.
Quote from: Jason D;959911My guess would be that Zelazny would have given us stronger and more active female characters (as only Flora, Fiona, and Dara get to do much of anything in Corwin's books)...
I can't believe I overlooked that one. Ouch. Particularly since my ADRP group is usually 50% or higher female.
I agree that the princesses would be more active, and that Corwin would dismiss them less readily - I see him as an unreliable narrator on that point anyway. He's possibly correct regarding Flora, but I think the later books of his quintology indicate that Deirdre and certainly Fiona are far more capable than he realizes.
Other changes are harder for me to predict. Bringing the novel forward in time, especially if we assume that Corwin therefore wakes in 2017 earth, changes both the author and the character. Corwin's most recent experiences will be different, reshaping his actions in NPIA - though theoretically, those few decades should not make much of a difference to him once he regains his memories.
Everyone has Trumps and we use them to look at cats and argue with strangers.
Quote from: Headless;960430Everyone has Trumps and we use them to look at cats and argue with strangers.
Sounds like something Dworkin would do.
While I certainly do think we'd have gotten stronger female characters, I also hear the commentary on verbosity and sorta cringe. One of the great thing about them is that you can just glide through them, experiencing detailed, epic contests in a page, and entire campaigns of activity over a dozen. That talent is lost on most modern authors.
It's a crying shame, really. When people say "kids don't read as much because they lack the attention span," I wonder how much of that is true and how much it is because that people like RZ could write in a few pages what GRRM takes five hundred to do?
I'd hope the books would be exactly as long as they are, but I have my doubts.
Quote from: Lord Darkview;961059While I certainly do think we'd have gotten stronger female characters, I also hear the commentary on verbosity and sorta cringe. One of the great thing about them is that you can just glide through them, experiencing detailed, epic contests in a page, and entire campaigns of activity over a dozen. That talent is lost on most modern authors.
It's a crying shame, really. When people say "kids don't read as much because they lack the attention span," I wonder how much of that is true and how much it is because that people like RZ could write in a few pages what GRRM takes five hundred to do?
I'd hope the books would be exactly as long as they are, but I have my doubts.
I'm not saying that uber-long books are better, but I think they are the trend. I agree that "just as they are" is an excellent thing. I was just pondering how they might have differed if written for today's market.
GRRM use to be a really concise writer with a real skill for tight and effective plotting. But as the Ice and Fire series has progressed those virtues have become increasingly short in evidence. Check out his sf/horror short stories and novellas to see how far he's come.
If the series were written 20 years later, the Corwin Cycle would happen in the 90s, and the Merlin cycle would have been written in the last decade. I'm sure Merlin would somehow figure out how to use the Internet to browse shadow by turning a laptop into a Trump card or something. By the time of the later novels, as Headless mentioned, he would probably be looking at pictures of cats on his iPhone which would be hooked up to the Logrus somehow.
Quote from: Voros;961669GRRM use to be a really concise writer with a real skill for tight and effective plotting. But as the Ice and Fire series has progressed those virtues have become increasingly short in evidence. Check out his sf/horror short stories and novellas to see how far he's come.
Maybe he needs an editor, much the same way that Neal Stephenson, and maybe Stephen King (though I disagree with that), are said to need one. Sometimes as authors become more popular, they are given more rope, but then they sort of hang themselves with it.
I think that Editors have lost a lost of their influence today. Look at Stranger in a Strange Land. The original was published without the middle, transitional section due to Heinlein's editor at the time. Frankly, I think it made a better book. The contrast between the first and last sections in as-published version server the story well. The redacted portion just didn't move the story as well. Or look at Donaldson's Mordant's Need books. Really should have been one largish book. A good editor wouldn't have let him ramble on like he did. I think with some authors it's a little like pop bands. The music may be crap, but the fans go nuts, so they get away with shit less famous people couldn't as long as the money flows (to the publisher or the record label as the case may be).
QuoteI agree that the princesses would be more active, and that Corwin would dismiss them less readily
I think the whole problem with "what if the Chronicles were written today" is that they either wouldn't be the Chronicles or they couldn't get published. All of Zelazny's protagonists in every one of his books is a sardonic white alpha male who upends the existing order and creates a new one, cementing himself at the top of it.
If you think that's going to get past the No Award brigade, you're naive.
Quote from: daniel_ream;967909All of Zelazny's protagonists in every one of his books is a sardonic white alpha male who upends the existing order and creates a new one, cementing himself at the top of it.
See, now that is a valid point of discussion. There is no reason why Oberon's wives would need to be of a single ethnicity, so no reason why the major players in the Chronicles would have to be Caucasian. This could be a big difference, at least from a tv-series casting perspective.
Quote from: finarvyn;967942See, now that is a valid point of discussion. There is no reason why Oberon's wives would need to be of a single ethnicity, so no reason why the major players in the Chronicles would have to be Caucasian. This could be a big difference, at least from a tv-series casting perspective.
Yes, I remember all the "Zelazny doesn't explicitly say" arguments from the Amber mailing list twenty years ago. And if one felt the need, one could exploit that to earn diversity points with the SJW brigade by transparently shoehorning a diversity agenda into a work where it's neither necessary nor helpful.
But I fear you miss my point. I said "...all of Zelazny's
protagonists". Corwin, Merlin, Mahasamatman, Pol Detson, many others - they all fit a type Zelazny quite liked. A type that's simply unmarketable in SF lit today.
Quote from: daniel_ream;968027Yes, I remember all the "Zelazny doesn't explicitly say" arguments from the Amber mailing list twenty years ago. And if one felt the need, one could exploit that to earn diversity points with the SJW brigade by transparently shoehorning a diversity agenda into a work where it's neither necessary nor helpful.
But I fear you miss my point. I said "...all of Zelazny's protagonists". Corwin, Merlin, Mahasamatman, Pol Detson, many others - they all fit a type Zelazny quite liked. A type that's simply unmarketable in SF lit today.
But not Kai Wren, nor the main character in Creatures of Light and Darkness, who we'll not name for fear of spoiling people. Many of his short stories also don't feature a white protagonist, either, including the one told from the perspective of a Japanese woman;).
And why do you think the Mahasamatman isn't South Asian:D?
Quote from: Malleus Aforethought;967834I think that Editors have lost a lost of their influence today. Look at Stranger in a Strange Land. The original was published without the middle, transitional section due to Heinlein's editor at the time. Frankly, I think it made a better book. The contrast between the first and last sections in as-published version server the story well. The redacted portion just didn't move the story as well. Or look at Donaldson's Mordant's Need books. Really should have been one largish book. A good editor wouldn't have let him ramble on like he did. I think with some authors it's a little like pop bands. The music may be crap, but the fans go nuts, so they get away with shit less famous people couldn't as long as the money flows (to the publisher or the record label as the case may be).
I agree but it is true of only certain writers. I find Heinlein's juveniles of a much higher standard in terms of structure and character than Starship Troopers, the book where he broke away from the editor he thought was 'restricting' him. In this case retricting him from including pointless OT gun and women rants in a classic like Red Planet. After ST he just got worse and worse and the books got more and more wooly.
Quote from: daniel_ream;968027But I fear you miss my point. I said "...all of Zelazny's protagonists". Corwin, Merlin, Mahasamatman, Pol Detson, many others - they all fit a type Zelazny quite liked. A type that's simply unmarketable in SF lit today.
Okay, you've got me there and I did overlook that part. As others have noted, there are
some characters that don't fit that model (Kai Wren from
Lord Demon is an excellent example) but the vast majority of his characters are similar in their ethnicity.
On the other hand, I suspect that most authors naturally default to their own gender and ethnic background when they write since that's what they know best. Tolkien, for example, was known to be a hobbit.... ;)
Yes, given that the social structure of hobbits is heavily borrowing from rural England, AFAICT;).
So, to summarize what we have so far -- looks like we have identified five areas of potential change:
1. Less smoking
2. Tendency towards longer, more verbose language
3. Stronger, more active female characters
4. Modern tech, like cell phones or using the internet as a Trump
5. Broader ethnicity among main characters
I doubt that any of these would be "deal breakers" for my enjoyment of the series. Any or all of them might change the "feel" of the books, however.
Anything else to add?