Lord of Light

I had a rather difficult time understanding what was happening in this book at times. It wasn't due to the so-called non-linear nature of the story. Instead, it was mainly because there were numerous characters. Several of them had multiple names, and some even kept transforming into other characters.

Also, the overall writing style made it challenging for me to envision the action sequences sometimes. There were long stretches of dialogue where, after the first two lines, it didn't indicate who was speaking. After a page or so of this, it became hard to keep track.

Moreover, I never truly felt an emotional connection with the characters. I liked Sam, Yama, and a few others, but I wasn't overly invested in the events.

However, I did find it interesting. At first, it was the philosophy and such. As I was reading, I kept thinking, "that part's Buddhist... that's Hindu... that's a sort of conglomeration... and that's back to Buddhist."

After a while, the philosophy became less of a focus, and it was more about the people, politics, and intrigue. I generally found this interesting too, but as I said, I had a hard time following certain parts.

Actually, I would say I had some of the same issues with this story as I did with the Amber books. So, I think it's more about Zelazny's writing style than anything else.

But I did like it well enough, and I'm glad I read it. I enjoyed the philosophy stuff, as I mentioned, but I also really liked the commentary/satire on how people use religion as a means to control the masses. However, while I liked it and found it interesting, I have no real urge to rush out and add it to my personal library.

Regarding the non-linear aspect, I don't really think it's that non-linear. Granted, it's one of those stories that starts near the end and then goes back to the beginning to show how you get to the starting point. Then, once we catch up, it moves to the ending. But after the initial "here's how it begins" part, the story progresses linearly. Yes, it does skip days and weeks, but it always moves forward in the timeline, one thing following another.

It doesn't jump around randomly as some of the reviews I've read suggested.

Sam was a rather unique figure. His followers addressed him as Mahasamatman, deeming him a god. However, he chose to simplify it and simply call himself Sam.

He neither explicitly claimed to be a god nor did he deny it. Given the circumstances, such admissions held no real advantage.

“Sam was the greatest charlatan in the memory of god or man.”

Sam was a classic Zelazny character, being clever, resourceful, erudite, and a bit of an antiestablishment smart aleck. What set him apart was the complex, layered, and lyrical book of which he was the hero. Zelazny was an author I had always enjoyed, but often felt a bit shortchanged by. His ideas and characters were captivating, yet it often seemed he half-heartedly wrote the book just to get it to market without taking the time to refine his ideas into the genius they promised. Lord of Light, however, was the exception. It was not only Zelazny's masterpiece but also one of the all-time greats in the science fiction genre.

Zelazny began the book by thrusting readers into the deep end. Chapter One introduced Hindu gods using advanced technology to bring the Buddha back from a strange, physical Nirvana to re-embody him as an ally in a war against heaven. Oh, and there was a talking ape who was once a man. As readers struggled to find their footing, they learned they were not on Earth and that these gods were actually humans with amazing technology transplanted to a distant planet. And it just got stranger from there.

Zelazny achieved many remarkable feats in Lord of Light. He retold and reimagined Hindu and Buddhist mythology within a thrilling SciFi adventure. He populated the story with complex and fascinating characters, allowing readers to gradually uncover their backstories, how they came to be and became what they were, while wisely leaving enough details in the shadows to create an air of age and mystery. Within this captivating tale, he also managed to tell a compelling story of how myth and religion are used in power politics to control the masses. And he did all this with lyrical writing, flashes of satirical humor, great characterization, and non-stop action adventure. If you're a sci-fi fan, Lord of Light is an essential read.


In Memoriam
David, my awkward, clever, brilliant friend — nearly 40 years ago you introduced me to Alan Watts, to H.L. Mencken, to this book and so much more. You were in my thoughts as I reread it. Miss you, buddy.

Nutshell: Douchebags leave earth and acquire technological immortality. Then, completely reasonably and necessarily, they re-enact Hindu mythology.

This concludes my reading of Zelazny and confirms the general pattern of his prior books: chaotic presentation, lack of discipline, immortal protagonists, and silly resolutions. This one attempts to incorporate Hindu mythology and Buddhist theology, similar to how "Creatures of Light and Darkness" dealt with Egypt and "This Immortal" flirted with Greece.

The opening section shows great promise with references to Indian theological concepts like nirvana, samsara, karma, and ahimsa. However, these are soon dropped, and the religion and mythology become mere window dressing. Karma becomes the domain of technicians: "the use of psych-probes on those up for renewal" (66), through which "body merchants" read over your past life, weigh the karma, and determine your future life. It's the perfect way to maintain the caste system (67). Bad karma is defined by the state, of course (68), and each person apparently maintains a "prayer account" and a "sin account" with the body merchants and karma masters (69). So, yes, it's all very interesting.

The main conflict is between Accelerationism and Deicracy. The former wants to push forward with industrial development, while the latter wants to keep human civilization at a dark ages level, using high-tech religious tools for reincarnation and karma for biopolitical management. For example, wine is lost, but one character has preserved some from vanished Urath (55). The Accelerationist Buddha objects that they should be helping others and sharing the technology they have preserved, rather than building an impregnable paradise and treating the world as a combination game preserve and whorehouse (78). The Deicrats' motivation is basically right-wing paternalist: "it is because they are not ready for it […] and will not be for many centuries" (id.). Technology would lead to savage wars: "They are our children" (id.). Brahma's main task is "destroying all signs of progress" (79). Again, it's all well laid out and damned interesting.

There's a great indication that when humans arrived on this planet, they wiped out the indigenous life, calling them rakshasa and confining them in concentration camps (this was the protagonist Buddha's historical role, for which he is long remembered): "‘I did that which had to be done, to preserve my own species. Men were weak and few in number. Your kind fell upon them and would have destroyed them.’ ‘You stole our world, Siddhartha. You chained us here’" (148).

After that, it turns into a friggin' mess: a parade of deities and demons politicking behind each other's backs. It's hard to follow and not very worthwhile overall, as it generally leads to some kind of unrepresentable combats between immortals. Overall, then, the great opening regarding religion, class, economic development, ideology, imperialism, and genocide is wasted in a trivial middle and an inexplicable finale. (The only redeeming feature of the later bits is that Nirrti, the goddess of decay, appears, but is actually Christian and commands legions of flesh-eating zombies. I chuckled for an appropriate duration at an appropriate volume.)

Recommended for those who facilitate the passage of spirits from their fleshy envelopes, readers who play on fascist banjos, and people whose fertility deities are worse than marxists.

Good ride Roger, good ride.

Roger, you have had an amazing journey. The way you have ridden through the challenges and obstacles is truly remarkable.

Your determination and perseverance have been the driving forces behind your success. Every step of the way, you have shown great courage and skill.

The wind has been at your back, and you have soared to new heights. Your ride has been filled with excitement and adventure, and it is a memory that will last a lifetime.

As you continue on your path, may you always have a good ride. May the road be smooth and the sun shine bright. Good luck Roger, and keep on riding.

A classic of the SF genre,

it's told in an interesting point of view. Omniscient, yet sometimes piecing together what might have been from various accounts and legends, and at other times presenting a tight third-person view. It transitions smoothly between these perspectives.

In the far future, in space and on another planet that has been colonized for many generations, a man's mind is rescued from where it was transmitted as self-perpetuating radio-waves. This occurs in a monastery, where Yama is working with the technology, despite his fall from the gods. Alongside him is Tak, a talking ape, who leaves for a while to talk with a woman there - Ratri, the goddess of the night. They are successful, although there is a question of reattaching Sam to the world.

Most of the story is told in flashback. Seeking a new body - they have a way to transmit minds (not brains) from body to body - Sam, who arrived with the colony ship, discovers how his fellows have installed themselves as Hindu gods. They use mind-probe technology to ensure that those who receive new bodies get appropriate ones, while those with the wrong views, such as believing that technology should be diffused from the gods to the rest of humanity, do not. At one point, it is explained that the passengers and children of the crew wandered off and became savage, and only now are they raising themselves to civilization, not yet ready for advanced technology. The gods not only possess advanced technology but also psychic powers. Allegedly, a human can, through good karma and barring accidents, achieve godhood. (I notice that all the gods mentioned seem to either be from the crew or children of gods; no one has been promoted. This may simply be due to a lack of knowledge about their backgrounds, to be sure.)

Sam forcibly appropriates a new, healthy body and sets out to undermine them. He begins by becoming the Great-Souled Sam, the Buddha - at least, the one who parrots Buddhism with complete sincerity. But that is not the end. It involves printing presses, an assassin nursed back to health, questions of enlightenment, a scorned man, an archivist philosophizing on what fatherhood means when both the father and son have gone through more avatars since, the original inhabitants of the world who had transformed themselves into pure energy beings, a god who claims to feel only friendship for a goddess but who has hunted jackbirds with enthusiasm ever since a lover of hers became one, and much more.

How Lord of Light Didn't Get Written

On a rainy, black-and-white movie evening, a 30s style cab pulls up beside a seedy entrance guarded by a hulking doorman. A figure in a trenchcoat and a battered fedora steps out of the cab and hands the driver a bill. "Keep the change, kid. Don't blow it all at once," he growls in a Bogart-style voice. As his trenchcoat falls open, we see that underneath he is dressed like The Lord Buddha. The wide-eyed driver exclaims, "You're the Mahasamat -" but the figure interrupts, "Call me Sam. They always called me Mahasamatman. I preferred the shorter version."

Sam approaches the entrance and demands to talk to the boss, saying it's urgent. Just then, a beautiful woman with Barbara Stanwyck hair, also in a trenchcoat, emerges from the door. The doorman steps back to let her through. Sam's voiceover remarks, "The moment I saw the dame, I knew she was trouble." The woman greets Sam and kisses him, but then two more arms come out of her trenchcoat and wrap around him, followed by two more. Sam suddenly takes off his fedora and pushes her away, causing two of the arms to break off. We then see that he is a very young but already balding Woody Allen. Allen starts whining in his trademark New York Jewish voice, "No, I can't do this! I mean, oh my God, I'm betraying my cultural identity! What will my analyst say!"

The woman angrily takes off her wig, revealing herself to be Diane Keaton. Two more arms break off her coat. She shouts, "Jesus Christ, Woody, make your mind up! That's the eighth time! Are we doing this movie or not?" Just then, a voice offscreen yells, "Cut! Cut, goddammit!" The picture abruptly shifts from black-and-white to color, and Allen is still having an anxiety attack, saying, "... so maybe I should talk this through with Dr. Feinstein, I mean, from the Freudian point of view..."

The producer, a fat man smoking a cigar, enters and says, "Okay Woody, we need to make a call here. Don't get me wrong kid, I love your concept. The Buddha as a wise-cracking private dick. It's great. But this ain't working. Any ideas?" Allen suggests, "Well... we could do it as a science-fiction novel?" The producer asks, "You write science-fiction, kid?" Allen replies, "No... but my friend Roger Zelazny does." The producer and Keaton look at each other and shrug. The producer then says, "Okay, why not? Tell him to come see me Monday."

In "Lord of Light," Zelazny does an excellent job of handling the theme of colonizing another planet with a generation ship. Colonists from a dying Earth have come to another planet, killed most of the local (intelligent) life, and subjugated the rest. They colonize the planet for their descendants and proclaim themselves gods based on the Hindu religion. They control life on the planet, prevent progress, and determine who deserves reincarnation and into what body. Reincarnation actually works here because the colonists have developed a system for transferring "the electrical impulses that make up a person" from one body to another. Those who anger the gods will be reincarnated as dogs, monkeys, or other animals.

"Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?"
"Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming."

Zelazny effectively criticizes organized religions and their influence on people and society through this divine control structure. And that's with great humor - among other things, there are prayer machines, automatons that pray instead of believers for a coin, and they look similar to the One-armed Bandit slot machines.

"I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar."

Zelazny writes beautifully. The novel is full of wonderful descriptions, for example: "The day of battle dawned pink, like a fresh bite on the hip of a maiden." And some passages and dialogues are real little poetic miniatures:

"But I recall the springtime of the world as though it were yesterday—those days when we rode together to battle, and those nights when we shook the stars loose from the fresh-painted skies!
...
"Did you not love me then?"
"I believe those two loved one another, yes."
...
"Think carefully. Lady, over all that you have said, over all that you have recalled for me this day. It is not really the man whom you have been remembering. It is the days of carnage through which the two of you rode together. The world is come into a tamer age now. You long for the fire and the steel of old. You think it is the man, but it is the destiny the two of you shared for a time, the destiny which is past, that stirs your mind, and you call it love."

However, the novel is not without flaws. The plot is quite convoluted and the characters are poorly defined. Due to their frequent name changes (some gods take on the roles of others) and reincarnations, it's quite challenging to keep track of who did what to whom.

"Lord of Light" was also published in the SF Masterworks edition, where the cover is enhanced by a quote from G.R.R. Martin: "One of the five best SF novels ever written." Martin later used "Lord of Light" and "The Alone" as main characters in his series A Song of Ice and Fire as a tribute.

"Lord of Light" is definitely one of the best SF novels I've read, although it can also be read and defined as fantasy. The things written above about colonization and technology are only mentioned in passing and nowhere are the technologies described in detail. Some descriptions are quite poetic, so some things could also be seen as metaphysics, that is, fantasy.

I must also praise the excellent translation by Nenad Patruno. Unfortunately, the proofreader made a few mistakes, there are "some" grammatical and spelling errors, but the sources knew how to print it correctly.

Rarely do I give a novel a rating of 5 without hesitation, and this is one of those occasions. Even though now when I read the review I have the feeling that I didn't praise the novel enough, that I wasn't able to convey how good it is. I've struggled the most with this review so far.

He was introduced as the Mahasamatman and it was claimed that he was a god. However, he preferred to omit the "maha-" and "-atman" and called himself Sam. He never asserted that he was a god. On the other hand, he never claimed that he wasn't a god either. The circumstances were such that, by neither proclaiming himself a god nor denying it, he would have achieved nothing. Silence - what else?

A great deal of time has passed since I first read "Lord of Light". And here comes the Lithuanian translation, which has inspired me to repeat that experience and, at the same time, to remember why I love Zelazny.

"Lord of Light" is almost like nothing else. The author set himself the task of writing a novel in which it would be almost impossible to distinguish science fiction from fantasy. And such an unusual blend stuck to him. Yes, the framework, hidden behind all the decorations - is undoubtedly science fiction, but it is disguised so well that sometimes one forgets. No less astonishing is the style - in places it descends into such stylization that it seems as if one is reading not a fictional work, but a truly ancient epic.

If one had to say very briefly what this book is about, perhaps I would answer very simply - the eternal and well-known Prometheus, the myth of the one who brought knowledge to people. Yes, perfectly integrated into the colorful canvas of mythology. Yes, separated by the intrigues of the gods-non-gods and action scenes. But still Prometheus.

And also - about faith. About faith that materializes, that lives its own independent life and is guided by its own logic and its own principles. About defeats that are truly victories.

A wonderful novel. Worth all the accolades it has received. Once I would have given it five out of five. But now, having matured and become more persistent, I will give it four. But very strong.