Name: Lord of Light
ISBN: 9780380448340

Roger Zelazny

Lord of Light

Omar

"Do you recall how, when we strove upon the balcony, you mocked me? You told me that I, too, took pleasure in the ways of the pain which you work. You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light. A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires... his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old--but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man and mocked-guilt!

Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rules their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons. Lord of Light.

Finished 90% of the book and realized that I didn't want to slug my way through the last 10%. The general story and world is interesting, but I didn't find any of the characters appealing nor did I care much for their drama. The gods, Buddha, etc are all in constant war and I couldn't care less. Some want accelerationism, teach humans new technologies, others don't. And after 270 pages I was still indifferent to the whole thing. 

Gavin

The world is a fire of sacrifice, the sun its fuel, sunbeams its smoke, the day its flames, the points of the compass its cinders and sparks. In this fire the gods offer faith as libation. Out of this offering King Moon is born.

Rain, oh Gautama, is the fire, the year its fuel, the clouds its smoke, the lightning its flame, cinders, sparks. In this fire the gods offer King Moon as libation. Out of this offering the rain is born.

The world, oh Gautama, is the fire, the earth its fuel, fire its smoke, the night its flame, the moon its cinders, the stars its sparks. In this fire the gods offer rain as libation. Out of this offering food is produced.

Man, oh Gautama, is the fire, his open mouth its fuel, his breath its smoke, his speech its flame, his eye its cinders, his ear its sparks. In this fire the gods offer food as libation. Out of this offering the power of generation is born.

Woman, oh Gautama, is the fire, her form its fuel, her hair its smoke, her organs its flame, her pleasures its cinders and its sparks. In this flame the gods offer the power of generation as libation. Out of this offering a man is born. He lives for so long as he is to live.

When a man dies, he is carried to be offered in the fire. The fire becomes his fire, the fuel his fuel, the smoke his smoke, the flame his flame, the cinders his cinders, the sparks his sparks. In this fire the gods offer the man as libation. Out of this offering the man emerges in radiant splendor.


About a holy war among posthumans: a glorious appropriation where the buddha wages war on the Hindu pantheon (view spoiler)[- i.e. a revolutionary faking sainthood wages war on fascist posthumans keeping the masses in holy poverty. We need a better word than fascism for what they are - decadent authoritarians. "Deicrats". 
The body merchants are now the Masters of Karma. Their individual names are now kept secret, after the manner of the gods, so that they seem as impersonal as the Great Wheel, which they claim to represent. They are no longer merely body merchants, but are allied with the Temples... The definition of bad karma is anything our friends the gods don't like.

It contains a very literal conflict thesis between science and religion: whenever the ordinary humans look to be getting too industrial, the gods reach out and firebomb them. The trope mix is pretty strong: we have fake religion, generation ship atavism, elitist supremacism, all taking place on a weird Death World (hide spoiler)]

Zelazny's mythic, gnostic style here is divisive, but I found it a successful mix of melodrama and irony. (You are familiar with the degraded form of this: the dialogue of Joss Whedon.) 

  The day of the battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden...

"Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one's ruling passions. Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is “Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them."
"So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?"
"You choose the wrong adjective."
"You've already used up all the others."
"It appears that our minds will never meet on this subject."
"If someone asks you why you're oppressing a world and you reply with a lot of poetic crap, no. I guess there can't be a meeting of minds”

Unsentimental melodrama: like Twin Peaks or Martin McDonagh. As savage and bawdy as scripture. 

  light leaping like spears from their burnished sides; cloaks of fur afire, white plumes of massively breathed air trailing above and behind them, golden-gauntleted and sun-eyed, clanking and skidding, rushing and whirling, they came

(How good is "massively breathed"?)

It’s all weirdly personal - hand to hand, face to face. As portentous and flashy as anime, as cynical and material as the great books of east Europe. 

  It looked like a fallen prayer tower or a giant's house key or some necessary part of a celestial instrument of music that had slipped free of a starry constellation and dropped to the ground. It seemed to be somehow incomplete, although the eye could not fault its lines. It held that special beauty that belongs to the highest orders of weapons, requiring function to make it complete.


His hell was a many-colored place, somewhat mitigated only by the cold blue blaze of a scholar's intellect, the white light of a dying monk, the rose halo of a noble lady who fled his sight, and the dancing, simple colors of children at play.

What is the true father of a man? The circumstances which brought together the two bodies which begat him? Was it the fact that, for some reason, at one moment in time, these two pleased one another beyond any possible alternatives? If so, why? Was it the simple hunger of the flesh, or was it curiosity, or the will? Or was it something else? Pity? Loneliness? The desire to dominate? What feeling, or what thought was father to the body in which I first came into consciousness...

“Doubt, Lady, is the chastity of the mind, and I bear its seal upon my own."

He's good on the political interpretation of religion. Also on luck seeming supernatural when prolonged - even some pre-theocracy humans think Sam is divine.

There's lots of Christian tinged sf (Lewis, Wolfe, Miller, Lafferty), but this is the first Hindu inflected story I've seen. (Even Clarke's Rama isn’t very eastern.) Non-Western extrapolation is a popular idea these days - think Binti and Riot Baby, . But mostly people don't look to the Polish-Irish to do it, but I got chills from some of his selections from the Upanishads.

  his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old-but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new...


(view spoiler)[The surface-level disenchanting reading puts the humans as colonisers and genocides, with the name "demon" for the natives a classic dehumanising ploy of the oppressor. But the demons are shown as far worse than the “gods”. So when he allies with the demons Sam is trading some risk of ending the world, of making the world into a hell, for a chance to impose his own values over the petty and static values of the Deicrats. (hide spoiler)]

The dystopia is not particularly strong. It's just an unusually stable feudalism. A true dystopia will surveil its prey up to physical limits, as Vinge knows. (view spoiler)[Even so, Sam's century-long culture-jamming insurrection is very satisfying to read: (hide spoiler)]

  An army, great in space, may offer opposition in a brief span of time. One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding.



(view spoiler)[The dire necromancer is a Christian. (hide spoiler)]


  “Which one is the right way [to live]?"
"Huh? You're asking me that? How should I know?"
"Mortals call you Buddha."
"That is only because they are afflicted with language and ignorance.”

Kelsey Lynn

(14/63+) In my Hugo Read-Through
      Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1968. This is his second Hugo Novel win, his first being “… And Call me Conrad” in 1966. It took me two tries to finally get into this book, and I couldn’t be happier I finally read it. 
      When I initially started this book I was turned off by how much more religion there was than science. It was reading as a fantasy book and less like a science fiction one. While I understand the Hugo’s are open to fantasy, at this point in the read there hasn’t been one yet so I was honestly thrown off and had to prep myself for it. When I finally got back to restarting, it became clear that in my unfair initially judgement I almost missed out on a truly unique book. After the first chapter or so the fantasy aspect is all but gone and is replaced with a story of men and women playing gods. Literally. After the colonization of a new planet, the initial crew abuse their knowledge and power to elevate themselves to place of reverence and power in the eyes of the future generations. It is a thoroughly interesting, fun, and well written read.
      The story starts in the present, where a bunch of “fallen gods” named from the Hindu pantheon resurrect a man named Sam. They believe this man to be the actual Buddha, reincarnated in their fake god society. They have brought him back from his banishment to aid them in their fight against “heaven”, the over the top society the other gods have made for themselves above the planet. After this initial chapter the book then returns to the past, to tell the story of Sam, his fight against the gods (some of which are now asking his aid) and his initial banishment. 
     What this book heavily succeeds in is balancing its very fantastical concept with a heavy science fiction backbone. The world/planet the story takes place on is a planet colonized by humans. The initial crew of the ship discovers a way to prolong their lives by transferring their consciousness into new bodies, and thus harness “immortality”. They keep their previous technology secret from future generations of this developing world and keep it for themselves. Arguing the human’s must develop naturally and figure things out themselves or they will destroy themselves with the power. But in reality it’s rather clear that they are using it to elevate themselves into a revered status, one where the humans think they’re gods and worship them. They live a life a plenty and luxury while the new human race struggles to develop. They control the resurrection machine, and only allow certain people to advance through the ranks and become demi-gods and gods while keeping the rest of the world in a dark ages. In addition to all this, the original crew have switched bodies so many times that they barely know whose who anymore.
      The majority of the gods are happy with this setup, as it provides them with power, wealth and much more. However, there are the “accelerationists” who believe that technology should be given to the people and they should be allowed to modernize. This is the major issue in the story and what pits people against each other. We follow Same as he spends his time thwarting the ant-accelerationist. Not because he’s an accelerationist (which is a grey area) but mainly cause the crew turned god annoys him, as he’s one of the original crew too.
      The author successfully pieces the current story together while hinting at the original crew that colonized the planet so many generations ago. For every touch of fantasy he throws in machines and technology to explain it, or to bring you back to the reality of the situation. That these are just men in a far flung future. 
      Sam is an amusing, butthead of a character. He’s sassy and not what you’d expect of the “Buddha” and he was fun to read. I really enjoyed his interactions with other people, especially with his ex-crewmates. His character reminded me of Conrad in Zelazny’s other Hugo winner. The two characters are handled very similarly and are both apathetic about their immortality and the accidental myths that are formed when someone lives for so long. They both remember that they are men (well Conrad thinks of himself as a man). They see nothing special in their immortality. Zelazny really seems to enjoy the idea that over time anything can become a myth and how someone can be around long enough to see their simple memories turned into myths of other people. Both characters go by many names and these names become interchangeable depending on who they’re talking to.
     I feel that Zelazny improved greatly on Conrad with Sam. The experiences and people that help flesh Sam are better expressed than with Conrad. There are a lot of characters in this book, but I never felt lost or confused, for the most part all characters had purpose and furthered the story. 
      My biggest let down is that the end felt rushed. There was such great story telling and build up, but the actually finale was rushed and short. The rest is so strongly written that I got over the slightly botched ending pretty quickly. Though it’d be nice to have an ending on par with the rest of the book.
TLDR
I loved this book, the balance of Science Fiction with Fantastical elements was perfectly balanced. The idea of a crew making themselves gods by keeping technology from the new human race was unique and made for a great story. 
"One rules through one's ruling passions. Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them."
"So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?"
"You choose the wrong adjective."
"You've already used up all the others.”"

Imagine a distant world where gods walk as men, but wield vast and hidden powers. Here they have made the stage on which they build a subtle pattern of alliance, love, and deadly enmity. Are they truly immortal? Who are these gods who rule the destiny of a teeming world? Their names include Brahma, Kali, Krishna and also he who was called Buddha, the Lord of Light, but who now prefers to be known simply as Sam. The gradual unfolding of the story - how the colonization of another planet became a re-enactment of Eastern mythology - is one of the great imaginative feats of modern science fiction.

Andrew Sztehlo

It’s a goddamn masterpiece. Some of the best prose I’ve read in all of genre fiction, ranking alongside JRR Tolkien, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Ursula K Le Guin. Add to that an interesting exploration of mythology, some of the most epic battles put to word, and a set of beautifully flawed human characters who struggle in and against the roles said mythology has prescribed them, and this is a fucking great read. I need to read more Zelazny, right now.

Lord of Light

Reviews

Highlights