Short stories and order...

[Rainsford]

I was curious if anyone knows the chronological order in which the short stories takes place... I'm on Hand of Oberon again and will be reading the short stories soon...

[Jason D]

These:

   The Shrouding and the Guisel
A Salesman's Tale
Coming to A Cord

occur in that order and take place simultaneously with

   Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains

then the narratives meet in:

   Hall of Mirrors

[finarvyn]

Here is the order that I believe they all best fit together:

The Betancourt Prequels: [1]
01. The Dawn of Amber (2002)
02. Chaos and Amber (2003)
03. To Rule in Amber (2004)
04. Shadows of Amber (2005)
05. Sword of Chaos (never written)

Corwin's Saga:
06. Nine Princes in Amber (1970)
07. The Guns of Avalon (1972)
08. Sign of the Unicorn (1975)
09. The Hand of Oberon (1976)
10. The Courts of Chaos (1978)

The Randall Which-Way Books: [2]
11. Seven No-Trump (Random POV; 1988)
12. The Black Road War (Derek POV; 1988)

Merlin's Saga:
13. Prolog to "The Trumps of Doom" (Merlin POV; 1985)
14. "The Salesman's Tale" (Luke POV; 1994) [3]
15. The Trumps of Doom (1985)
16. Sign of Chaos (1986)
17. Blood of Amber (1987)
18. Knight of Shadows (1989)
19. Prince of Chaos (1991)

The Zelazny Short Stories:
20. "The Shroudling and the Guisel" (Merlin POV; 1995) [4]
21. "Coming to a Cord" (Frakir POV; 1995) [5]
22. "Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains" (Corwin POV; 1995) [6]
23. "Hall of Mirrors" (Corwin POV; published 1996) [7]

By Roger Zelazny and Ed Greenwood
24. "A Secret in Amber" (Corwin POV; 1995) [8]

NOTES:
[1] The Betancourt novels are clearly prequels, even if they are not accepted by many readers of the series. On the other hand, there are many readers who don't accept Merlin's stories either, so there you go.
[2] The Randall which-way stories could technically go almost anywhere following Corwin's Saga. However, since they deal with King Random and Derek (son of Erik), it seems to make more sense to place them closer to the stories which feature Random and Erik. As with the Betancourt novels, the level of acceptance is in debate. At least these were sanctioned by Roger, since he wrote an introduction for each of them.
[3] "The Salesman's Tale" starts off with a direct reference to Merlin in the Crystal Cave, which seems to place it right about the time of Trumps of Doom.
[4] Roger's introduction to "The Shrouling and the Guisel" states that it occurs directly following Prince of Chaos.
[5] Roger's introduction to "Coming to a Cord" states that it occurs directly following "The Shroudling and the Guisel".
[6] I think that it's clear that "Hall of Mirrors" was designed to be the start of a whole new plot thread, which makes it the final entry in the Amber series. As "Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains" occurs directly before "Hall of Mirrors", I placed them together in the sequence.
[7] The copyright says 1996, but I suspect it wasn't written after Roger's death so it must have been early 1995.
[8] I don't even know if this should be included or not, but it was a collaborative you-write-then-I-write effort which doesn't follow any of the other storylines. I stuck it on the end, after Mirrors, simply because it was written last.

This is all complicated a bit by the fact that Roger actually wrote them in a slightly different order. The introduction to "Coming to a Cord" gives the order that Roger wrote them as (1) Salesman, (2) Blue Horse, (3) Shroudling, and (4) Cord. At this point Mirrors had not yet been written. Taking Blue Horse and sliding it in front of Shroudling certainly won't mess up the storyline but it seems to work better to put Blue Horse and Mirrors back-to-back for continuity.

Hope that helps.

[Jason D]

It's a rare day someone surprises me with Amber trivia, but I've never even heard of this:

By Roger Zelazny and Ed Greenwood
24. "A Secret in Amber" (Corwin POV; 1995) [8]

Where did this appear? And has it re-appeared anywhere?

[finarvyn]

It's a rare day someone surprises me with Amber trivia, but I've never even heard of this: Where did this appear? And has it re-appeared anywhere?

Amberzine #12.

[Rainsford]

Thank you very much...

[weilide]

It's a rare day someone surprises me with Amber trivia, but I've never even heard of this:



Where did this appear? And has it re-appeared anywhere?

It also appears in The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume Six but is very short, accounting for only a page or two of text. It was written collaboratively, with the authors alternating every few lines as they met at conventions over the years.

[finarvyn]

And not a very good story, either, since it really doesn't have a direction or a resolution. It's kind of neat to see some random threads get started, but since nothing gets concluded it's perhaps more frustrating than beneficial.

Just one guy's opinion.

[ChaosDrgn]

[3] "The Salesman's Tale" starts off with a direct reference to Merlin in the Crystal Cave, which seems to place it right about the time of Trumps of Doom.

I have to disagree with this one. I'm trying to remember if it's Prince of Chaos or not, there is a scene where Luke is holding his bloodied palm over the Pattern "blackmailing" it so that it will let Coral and Merlin leave. He's making a reference that it's a good thing Merlin left it so well stocked because he was going to use it to hide from the Pattern.

[RPGPundit]

NOTES:
[1] The Betancourt novels are clearly prequels, even if they are not accepted by many readers of the series. On the other hand, there are many readers who don't accept Merlin's stories either, so there you go.

The big difference being that the Merlin novels were actually written by Roger Zelazny, whereas Betancourt's garbage was not only written by a b-grade hack, they were expressly contrary to Roger Zelazny's last wishes regarding Amber.

RPGpundit

[finarvyn]

The big difference being that the Merlin novels were actually written by Roger Zelazny, whereas Betancourt's garbage was not only written by a b-grade hack, they were expressly contrary to Roger Zelazny's last wishes regarding Amber.

Okay. I'm guessing we all know that.

My intent was to provide a chronological order for the series, not to beat the same dead horse.

[jibbajibba]

The big difference being that the Merlin novels were actually written by Roger Zelazny, whereas Betancourt's garbage was not only written by a b-grade hack, they were expressly contrary to Roger Zelazny's last wishes regarding Amber.

RPGpundit

I often wonder why Zelazny imposed that. He had already allowed Neil Randall to write The Black Road War (not very good), Seven No Trump (really quite good) and the Visual Guide (truely awful) as well as co-authoring A Secret In Amber.
Its really a shame cos I expect a lot of pretty good authors would have contributed to an Amber anthology as opposed to getting Betancourt's garbage (bad writer, awful plot, weak characters, no originality - but only judging from the first book as I couldn't stand it.).

Imagine a series of short stories from Gaiman, Greenwood, Thomas, Norton etc.. would have been sweet.

[finarvyn]

There are a couple of things happening here:

1. The two which-way books were considered by Roger to be more like kids' books and as such he didn't think that his readers would try to fit them into the cycle.

2. The game logs in Amberzine were limited in publication quantity, which helped him to retain control over the Amberverse. And as "game logs" they weren't technically fiction, although most of us thought of them like more short stories. (Although not canon.)

3. I don't believe that Roger ever expected Greenwood's story to actually be published. It was a fluke thing that the two of them did over the years and it only amounts to a couple pages of material, tops.

Bottom line was that Roger apparently didn't think that any of these external sources really "counted" as Amber material, even though he allowed them to exist.

I do wish he had authorized a true shared-world anthology. There are some big-name authors who refused to have anything to do with the franchise before Betancourt agreed, and it would have been fun to see what Gaiman or Brust could have done with the characters.

[RPGPundit]

It might have been, but it also might have been crap. And I think Roger rightly feared that Amber could end up like the Cthulhu Mythos or Conan, with later authors, despite some being of good quality, also fundamentally changing the essence of the story he was trying to tell, particularly since while you might have had a small group of great authors releasing an anthology of Amber-set stories that might have been really entertaining, you could also just as easily have ended up with Amber's own equivalent of R.A. Salvatore releasing a never ending stream of hundreds of absolutely crap Amber-serial novels. Imagine Brande coming back from the dead and turning into a brooding two-dimensional Drzzt-clone in 50 utterly formulaic trash-novels, or something along those lines.

RPGpundit

[jibbajibba]

It might have been, but it also might have been crap. And I think Roger rightly feared that Amber could end up like the Cthulhu Mythos or Conan, with later authors, despite some being of good quality, also fundamentally changing the essence of the story he was trying to tell, particularly since while you might have had a small group of great authors releasing an anthology of Amber-set stories that might have been really entertaining, you could also just as easily have ended up with Amber's own equivalent of R.A. Salvatore releasing a never ending stream of hundreds of absolutely crap Amber-serial novels. Imagine Brande coming back from the dead and turning into a brooding two-dimensional Drzzt-clone in 50 utterly formulaic trash-novels, or something along those lines.

RPGpundit

I would agree with that if he had done a JK Rowling and really kept a tight grip on the story. I mean he had already authorised The Visual Guide which is shit (and the adventure books) And thanks to a lack of tight control HP Lovecraft will live on long after Zelazny's name is forgotten. Arkham Assylum has entered the world's literature as an archetype.
And of course the result of his actions was that rather than his work being taken on by a friend like August Derleth who was sensitive to the source material we get the Benatcort novels which are just about as bad as it could get.

And for those folks that haven't tried those adventure books I recommend them. Seven No Trump is actually very good (Black Road War less so) and definitely captures a feel for the Amberverse and I don't think they are particularly childish either.