Romantic Times and the Zelazny Hero
by billwillingham on Oct.16, 2009, under James Enge and Matthew Sturges
One of my favorite writers of all time, Roger Zelazny, came up in the interesting ongoing discussion between Matt Sturges and James Enge. That seems a thin thread on which to elbow my way into the conversation, but it will have to suffice, since A) I’d been preparing to write about this anyway, and B) no more substantial justification seems likely to come along.
First a career-defining (mine, not his — okay possibly his too, but who am I to decide that?) passage from Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky:
“But I’m telling you straight: I think you were born into the wrong age.”
“Sir?”
“I think you are a romantic. Now this is a very romantic age, so there is no room in it for romantics; it calls for practical men. A hundred years ago you would have made a banker or lawyer or professor and you could have worked out your romanticism by reading fanciful tales and dreaming about what you might have been if you hadn’t had the misfortune to be born into a humdrum period. But this happens to be a period when adventure and romance are a part of daily existence. Naturally it takes very practical people to cope with it.”
I quoted this passage because it’s clear to me that this is the quintessential Roger Zelazny protagonist: the eminently practical man in a fantastic and romantic world. From Lord of Light’s Great Souled Sam, to Dilvish, to Amber’s Corwin (or feel free to substitute any of a hundred other examples from his other books), the Zelazny hero is one who faces the trials and troubles of his always bizarre and magical world with unshakable practicality.
This isn’t a Zelazny line, but it could have been: “Then the volcano erupted, blasting its full compliment of ghost dragons into the sky, burning the sky first and then the seven god cities adrift in it. As the cities began to list, founder and then fall, trailing black ash and fire, I sat on the next slope over to smoke a cigarette, finish my coffee and ponder my next move.”
This is what first drew me into Zelazny’s world(s) and kept bringing me back, time and again, until I’d exhausted his works. Fantasy and its related genres were much too replete with incompetents (why didn’t Gandalf or any other of those purportedly wise yahoos at the Council at Rivendale think simply take the ring to Mount Doom on those giant eagles?), the terminally timid, and the simply dumb. I wanted smart, capable heroes who faced tough challenges. Zelazny never failed to provide the practical man I needed to guide me through a wealth of wondrous lands.
As a writer I blatantly, and with malice aforethought, take my cue from the Heinlein passage above, from his gentlemen adventurers like Oscar Gordon and Johnny Rico, and from the archetypical Zelazny hero, who may come in the guise of the half-fallen god, a robotic Lucifer in rebellion against his creator, or a bottled demon, but who is always the practical man in these romantic times.
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October 16th, 2009 on 3:27 pm
One thing that Zelazny did so very well, and which is a halmark of the kind of mashup-fiction that Sturges is talking about, was to take things that shouldn’t go together at *all*–characters, settings, themes, ideas–and somehow make it all sing in harmony. Tim Powers has built a career out of precisely this kind of Frankensteined assemblage of elements, as has Michael Moorcock and Phil Farmer, to cite other examples.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, and to try putting myself on Sturges’s side of the fence temporarily, I think what he objects to primarily are the combinations of *obvious* elements from different sources. Putting Tesla together with his historical contemporaries (or fictional characters from the period) is too *easy*. Putting Tesla together with an immortal caveman and a robot from the future, now *that* would be interesting…
October 16th, 2009 on 3:44 pm
If I can also stray onto the Matt side of the mashup argument for just a wee bit, I also have problems with those mashups wherein every atom of the joy of such an unlikely coupling is already revealed in the title, or the premise. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with Zombies being the best example. No one needs to actually read the book to get the full value of the gag. That isn’t a story. It’s a stunt.
I share Matt’s low tolerance for stunts.
October 16th, 2009 on 5:41 pm
CR: “Putting Tesla together with his historical contemporaries (or fictional characters from the period) is too *easy*. Putting Tesla together with an immortal caveman and a robot from the future, now *that* would be interesting…”
Right! Or splicing the Faust story with Job and making all the characters machines. Or the killer-robot who teams up with the last human vampire. The stories work because they’re not just gags.
I wonder, though, Bill, if the Zelazny hero is really as practical as all that? Corwin can be pretty sentimental at times, and even the sinister Jack of Shadows is motivated by love. I doubt either one would have sent Brigid O’ Shaughnessy to the slammer for the misdemeanor of killing Miles Archer.
October 16th, 2009 on 11:17 pm
Sam Spade wasn’t the pure practical hero for many reasons, one being that he was deeply motivated by vanity, veniality and a truly wonderful host of other lesser virtues, subtly played by Bogart. Look at the expedience with which he had Archer’s name removed from the office door and windows — before Archer’s body was even cold. He sent Brigid O’ Shaughnessy to the slammer not because it was the right thing to do, or at least not entirely for that reason, but because she tried to make a sap out of Sam Spade, and no one makes a sap out of Sam Spade.
Sentiment and practicality aren’t mutually exclusive, to a degree, and does not negate my point, where Corwin is concerned. And Jack is one of the few Zelazny characters that doesn’t fit the mold, since his a (twisted to be sure) redemption story, requiring that his character be a defective one to begin with.
I suspect one of the required aspects of the type of character I am talking about is that he has already gone through enough of the various crucibles of life, that his essential self has been forged. Jack was still very much a work in progress.
October 17th, 2009 on 3:50 pm
I love the glance of insight to your own writing foundation, too. I can see Snow and Bigby for sure in the concept of practicality within a romantic world. It clicks a few defining factors into place.
I’m not quite sure where to put your own Jack on those levels, though one might even say he’s practical to the point of brushing aside morality to accomplish his goals. It’d certainly be a different side of ‘practical’ than that to which we’d be accustomed (which makes it all the more intriguing). I suppose he’d be too selfish for true practicality, but there’s a certain utility in his actions which lend to the argument.
And as you say, sentiment and practicality aren’t mutually exclusive.
One assumes the Giant Eagles wouldn’t venture into Mordor, like nearly everyone else, until after Sauron was defeated.
October 17th, 2009 on 4:35 pm
Jack wasn’t practical. He was just a dick. Occasionally clever, but never smart. If all of the characters in a story, especially a sprawling ensemble story, were the same, then it would be one boring story.
October 17th, 2009 on 5:00 pm
@ billwillingham
It’s fascinating to read you tracing your debts to Zelazny and his ‘practical man in a fantastic world.’ I’ve read too little RZ, but this sort of figure/sensibility is compelling wherever one finds it. And if I, as a newbie writer just starting to sell fantasy stories, may indulge in a fanboyish moment, I can point to two sources that taught ME how compelling such figures can be: The 1001 Nights (with their grubby protags surrounded by magic), and a simply wonderful series from the 80s called…Elementals!
October 17th, 2009 on 5:45 pm
Sure. Thank you. That’s a generous compliment.