Why revisit a series whose first novel was published in 1970? It’s a classic with far reaching impact, sure, but why dig into it? Especially when you’re a flighty non-academic?
Well let me tell you.
This series, especially the first back, had more of an impact on me than anything else I’ve ever read. I first encountered it as a child and it just soaked into me. I’ve read the books multiple times, I played in a Diceless game that went on for years (I want to say almost a decade but I might be rounding up by a few years), I’ve created role play characters based on Amberites without realizing they’d drawn from Amberites until years later. I mean, I’m sorry, but I’d forgotten that Corwin’s son Merlin spent his childhood playing a flute in a grave yard making bones dance around? And he grew up to move to California and own a sail boat and program computers? But that “played a flute to make bones dance” thing lodged in a part of my brain, deep inside, so deeply I wasn’t even aware it came from someplace outside of me.
I did a re-read recently after not having read the books in years. Part of it was to see if I still wanted to run a Diceless game centering around Corwin’s pattern, part of it was to see if they actually held up. The sad answer is WOW, the gender dynamics are… absolutely awful in the early books, especially the first one. If I were reading the book for the first time ever I probably wouldn’t finish it. Nobody’s spanking the women, at least; but the men aren’t willing to see the women, including their sisters, as human beings. Part of this is the genre – fantasy mashed together with detective noir. Part of it is the era – people generally gave women less respect then, if women existed in books at all. Part of it is Zelazny growing and evolving. Although he never centers female characters his female characters become more interesting and involved, more actual people, and his male characters start treating them with actual respect and consideration.
But the real kicker, the real impetus for starting this project?
I was listening to a podcast by a guy who bills himself as a huge fan of the series, but who got factual details about the book wrong. I’m talking in the first chapter Corwin notes that a guy who isn’t a doctor comes to give him shot of anesthetic. He explicitly asks the guy if he’s an M.D. The guy says no. It’s not inferred, it’s not implicit, it’s explicit. Podcast Host refers to the dude as a doctor.
This sort of thing continued.
He also pronounced names wrong and puzzled over a few references and slang terms, a few historical details, getting them wrong or just not understanding them. My dude, it’s 2025. AI has infested google and it no longer works as well as it once did but it’s still there and there’s other search engine options besides. I forget which specific term set me off but that, along with Zelazny’s reference to “unegged beer,” inspired me to put this document together.
I’m going to miss stuff, of course. I won’t realize it’s a reference or quote, or I’ll recognize it as such but consider it so obvious/well known when it isn’t that I won’t note it. Feel free to drop a comment regarding stuff I’ve missed – or gotten wrong!
One big caveat regarding this project is that I’m bipolar and frankly I might drop into a trough and abandon it. I’ve started a lot of projects while manic, constructing intricate scaffolds, only to eventually fall off them and lie on the ground staring up unable to comprehend how I ever got started or thought I’d succeed. So wish me luck.
Unless noted otherwise, all art is by me.
