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Lord of Light Kindle Edition
A holy war rages across the heavens and mankind’s fate hangs in the balance.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAmber Ltd
- Publication dateDecember 30, 2018
- File size8691 KB
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From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Roger Zelazny burst onto the SF scene in the early 1960s with a series of dazzling and groundbreaking short stories. He won his first of six Hugo Awards for Lord of Light, and soon after produced the first book of his enormously popular Amber series, Nine Princes in Amber. In addition to his Hugos, he went on to win three Nebula Awards over the course of a long and distinguished career. He died on June 14, 1995.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Lord of Light
By Zelazny, RogerEos
ISBN: 0060567236Chapter One
It is said that fifty-three years after his liberation he returned from the Golden Cloud, to take up once again the gauntlet of Heaven, to oppose the Order of Life and the gods who ordained it so. His followers had prayed for his return, though their prayers were sin. Prayer should not trouble one who has gone on to Nirvana, no matter what the circumstances of his going. The wearers of the saffron robe prayed, however, that He of the Sword, Manjusri, should come again among them. The Boddhisatva is said to have heard ...
He whose desires have been throttled,who is independent of root,
whose pasture is emptiness --
signless and free --
his path is as unknowable
as that of birds across the heavens.
-- Dhammapada (93)
His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. Hepreferred to drop the Maha- and the- atman, however, and called himselfSam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed notto be a god.Circumstances being what they were, neither admission couldbe of any benefit. Silence, though, could.
Therefore, there was mystery about him.
It was in the season of the rains ...
It was well into the time of the great wetness ...
It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up, not fromthe fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels,but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess ofthe Night.
The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through theatmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called theBridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronzerainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange atmidday.
Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique, but the machine had been built and was operated by Yama-Dharma, fallen,of the Celestial City; and, it was told, he had ages ago built the mightythunder chariot of Lord Shiva: that engine that fled across the heavensbelching gouts of fire in its wake.
Despite his fall from favor, Yama was still deemed mightiest of theartificers, though it was not doubted that the Gods of the City wouldhave him to die the real death were they to learn of the pray-machine.For that matter, though, it was not doubted that they would have himto die the real death without the excuse of the pray-machine, also, werehe to come into their custody.How he would settle this matter with theLords of Karma was his own affair, though none doubted that when thetime came he would find a way. He was half as old as the Celestial Cityitself, and not more than ten of the gods remembered the founding ofthat abode. He was known to be wiser even than the Lord Kubera inthe ways of the Universal Fire. But these were his lesser Attributes. Hewas best known for another thing, though few men spoke of it. Tall, butnot overly so; big, but not heavy; his movements, slow and fluent. Hewore red and spoke little.
He tended the pray-machine, and the giant metal lotus he had setatop the monastery roof turned and turned in its sockets.
A light rain was falling upon the building, the lotus and the jungleat the foot of the mountains. For six days he had offered many kilowatts of prayer, but the static kept him from being heard On High. Under hisbreath, he called upon the more notable of the current fertility deities,invoking them in terms of their most prominent Attributes.
A rumble of thunder answered his petition, and the small ape whoassisted him chuckled. "Your prayers and your curses come to the same,Lord Yama," commented the ape. "That is to say, nothing."
"It has taken you seventeen incarnations to arrive at this truth?" saidYama. "I can see then why you are still doing time as an ape."
"Not so," said the ape,whose name was Tak. "My fall, while less spectacularthan your own, nevertheless involved elements of personal maliceon the part of -- "
"Enough!" said Yama, turning his back to him.
Tak realized then that he might have touched upon a sore spot. Inan attempt to find another subject for conversation, he crossed to thewindow, leapt onto its wide sill and stared upward.
"There is a break in the cloud cover, to the west," he said.
Yama approached, followed the direction of his gaze, frowned andnodded.
"Aye," he said. "Stay where you are and advise me."
He moved to a bank of controls.
Overhead, the lotus halted in its turning, then faced the patch ofbare sky.
"Very good," he said. "Were getting something."
His hand moved across a separate control panel, throwing a seriesof switches and adjusting two dials.
Below them, in the cavernous cellars of the monastery, the signal wasreceived and other preparations were begun: the host was made ready.
"The clouds are coming together again!" cried Tak.
"No matter, now," said the other. "Weve hooked our fish. Out ofNirvana and into the lotus, he comes."
There was more thunder, and the rain came down with a sound likehail upon the lotus. Snakes of blue lightning coiled, hissing, about themountaintops.
Yama sealed a final circuit.
"How do you think he will take to wearing the flesh again?"asked Tak.
"Go peel bananas with your feet!"
Tak chose to consider this a dismissal and departed the chamber,leaving Yama to close down the machinery.He made his way along a corridorand down a wide flight of stairs.He reached the landing, and as hestood there he heard the sound of voices and the shuffling of sandalscoming in his direction from out a side hall.
Without hesitating, he climbed the wall, using a series of carved panthersand an opposing row of elephants as handholds.Mounting a rafter,he drew back into a well of shadow and waited, unmoving.
Continues...Excerpted from Lord of Lightby Zelazny, Roger Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : B07MSJZDFX
- Publisher : Amber Ltd (December 30, 2018)
- Publication date : December 30, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 8691 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 292 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #654,879 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #7,902 in Science Fiction Adventure
- #9,580 in Epic Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #15,139 in Fantasy Action & Adventure
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Zelazny sometimes liked to make life difficult for critics, bookstores, librarians and others whose jobs force them to assign books to specific shelves by straddling the boundary between Fantasy and Science Fiction. His first novel, This Immortal, does this very successfully. He claims to have done the same with Lord of Light, but it is in my opinion quite clearly science fiction. It takes place on a distant unidentified planet to which people from Earth escaped a long, long time ago, with their advanced technologies.
One of these technologies allows a personality (a "soul") to migrate from one body to another. In this way the original migrants have survived for a very long time (centuries?) and have become Gods to their children. In fact, they have become Hindu Gods: we have a Krishna, a Vishnu, a Kali, a Yama, etc. Hinduism provided a convenient rationale for the transmigration of souls. One of their number, our hero Sam, is a revolutionary who fights the rule of the Gods over their children. Sam is a brilliant con artist. He doesn't believe in fighting fair. You know the type: the scoundrel who, despite his unsavory methods, is always (well, usually) on the side of the angels.
It's a great story. It also contains Zelazny's most famous pun, "The fit hit the shan." It is occasionally claimed that the entire novel was written as an excuse for this pun. Indeed, I believe Zelazny was one of those who made the claim.
Rather, this book is a thought-provoking engagement of that which operates behind social revolutions, both peaceful and otherwise, both secular and religious. This is not to call it a dry read by any means. The story itself is action-packed with enough laser battles and sufficiently-advanced "magicked" science to satisfy any fan of science fiction or space opera. The characters are quite deep, but draw the only major criticism I found for the book.
Factions change with barely-credible ease. Bitter enemies turn into staunch allies in mere moments. This does not only occur with the good characterizations, where individuals are noticeably conflicted towards each other from the get go. Rather in several notable instances, including the climax, the reader is led to emotional support for one side of the conflict which suddenly embraces the other side with very little explanation or satisfaction of outstanding plot threads.
Highly recommended, with the aforementioned warnings.
When I first read this book around 1969 -- an avowed SF fan of hundreds of authors -- I couldn't place why this novel had left me with such a void of expression and literal mouth gaping mezmerized astonishment. It led me to research ancient Hinduism and discover socio-political religious movements -- and even later practice Buddhist meditation itself.
Yet, most of all it gave me a personal sense of caring for the Truth in organizations of men, where freedoms of action and speech are paramount; it gave me an impetus of speaking out, which stands with me today. It gave a young man a vision and articulation of what was right about the world around me and what was wrong -- and the courage to speak up against wrongs -- and the vision of poetic harmony in a work of art no less than that of a Modigliani painting or the greatest of love stories or poems. All from a science fiction novel? Such is Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light!
This novel is a masterpiece of masterpieces; it has survived 43 years of printings simply because of the massive Jungian archetypical truths it evokes in us all -- and engenders in each of us as a herald, a new vision of life and living. Of acceptance. Of dealing with those aspects of life which appear to be dominating, but in fact we can turn into advantage, if we are desirous.
With this novel Roger Zelazny took Science Fiction into a new era with the exploration of myth and history as it would culminate itself into the present. SF was never the same thereafter.
The Novel's love story is the crux of its internal action. It is a three way power play lover story between two powerful men and a most powerful woman, all of whom are pridefully larger than life. Its backdrop is nothing less than the creation of a new planet's civilization and future.
The power of this story, placed into the Past-which-will-become-the-future-of-Earth traces a path tread by the Lion in Winter merged with the full epic story of Dune series. Yet, it could very well be about you and me.
The novel takes us to the epiphany of our inner-selves, our hopes and dreams and, our failures and success but, in the end, the good news is: Love faileth never.
Read this book. You will be enlightened.
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Roger Zelaznys Lord of Light erschien 1967 und gewann den Hugo und den Nebula Award. Bis heute bezeichnen Fans von Zelazny den Roman als sein bestes Buch und ja, es stimmt.
Lord of Light legt eine interessante Mischung aus Science-Fiction und Fantasy vor. Die Menschheit hat einen fernen Planeten unter ihre Kontrolle gebracht und der Großteil der Bevölkerung lebt in vergleichsweise mittelalterlichen Zuständen. Die Elite dagegen residiert in einer hochtechnisierten Wolkenstadt und lässt sich als Mitglieder des hinduistischen Götterpantheons verehren, vor allem da sie die Kunst, den eigenen Geist in einen neuen Körper zu transportieren, perfektioniert haben. Einer von ihnen wehrt sich jedoch dagegen und startet eine Rebellion. Er ist der Buddha, aber ihm gefällt es besser, wenn man ihn Sam nennt.
Lord of Light ist einer der anspruchsvollsten Romane des Fantasy- und des Science-Fiction-Genres. Das liegt nicht nur an Zelaznys doppeldeutigen und poetischen Einsatz von Sprache, sondern auch daran, dass die Geschichte größtenteils nicht linear erzählt wird. Auch Erzähler*innen und Erzählzeit wechselte Zelazny gerne mal. Vor allem gegen Ende passiert es schnell, dass zwischen der abgeklärten Perspektive Sams zu einer sehr blumig überlieferten Legende gesprungen wird, die die Geschichte in einem ganz anderen Kontext verpackt. Diese stilistischen Spielereien bereichern Lord of Light ungemein, da Zelazny so auch zeigt, wie letztendlich alle Geschichte endet: erst kommt das was passiert, dann das was aufgezeichnet wird und am Ende ist alles so legendär, dass größtenteils nicht mehr auseinandergehalten werden kann, wo Fakt oder Fiktion beginnen. Die Menschen interessiert auch nicht, was wirklich geschah. Sie interessiert nur das, von dem sie glauben, dass es geschah.
Aus diesem Grund funktioniert auch Sam als Hauptfigur so gut, da Manipulieren und Betrügen bereits in seiner Natur liegt und er mit wenig Mühe die Leute glauben lässt, dass sie von sich aus gegen die falschen Götter rebellieren wollen. Wie jeder gute Lügner gibt er nur zu gerne zu, einer zu sein. Er widerspricht nicht einmal, dass die Grundlagen seiner Religion aus historischen Archiven der alten Erde gestohlen wurden. Solange die Leute glauben, dass er der Buddha ist und er so sein Ziel erreicht, ist ihm alles recht. Damit wird auch thematisiert, dass er sich hierbei den Glauben und die Ideen einer anderen Kultur aneignet und für seine Zwecke missbraucht, womit Zelazny auf einer Metaebene die Leser*innen darauf anspricht, dass er eigentlich auch nichts anderes gemacht hat. Er hält die Mythologie und Charaktere allerdings so vage, dass die Geschichte nicht darin mündet, andere Kulturen und Religionen nur der Exotik wegen auszunutzen.
Bei einer Szene bin ich jedoch bis heute unsicher. Es handelt sich dabei um den Umgang mit einem der wenigen Charaktere, die man heute als nonbinär oder Trans bezeichnet würde. Diese Figur wird von Sam gehässig provoziert und verspottet, eben weil sie nicht den Normen der 1960er entspricht. Einerseits muss man im Kontext der Handlung sehen, dass die betreffende Figur ein richtiges Ekel ist, dennoch fand ich Sams Bemerkungen bereits 2011, als ich den Roman das erste Mal las, gemein. Davon abgesehen tritt ein weiterer nonbinärer Charakter auf, der als sympathisch und faszinierend dargestellt wird. Zu schade, dass er nur eine geringe Rolle in der Handlung spielt.
Lord of Light hat sich erstaunlich gut gehalten. Das liegt abseits des Stilistischen vor allem am zeitlosen Setting, spannenden Kampfszenen und faszinierenden Charakteren. Die Themen sind ebenfalls zeitlos. Es geht um die Rebellion gegen ein ungerechtes System sowie die Ausnutzung von Symbolen, um Ausbeutung zu rechtfertigen. Es geht aber auch darum, dass am Ende nur Handlungen im Jetzt zählen; alles andere wird Teil von Legenden, von denen die Menschen nur die behalten werden, die sie behalten, während alle anderen schon vor langer Zeit zu Staub verfallen sind.
But what Zelazny does beautifully is to take this concept of super caste of technologically advanced humans; mixes the actual history of Buddha's rise as a protest against the caste-based, god worshipping Hindu religion, and adds fantasy elements of how Buddha waged war on the gods in their Celestial city. The politics, the strategy and wars were on-point as well as being immensely enjoyable.
For those with a bit more philosophical bent will see the section of Ridl and Sam's body takeover by Taraka, are based on Buddha's teachings about what it means to be divine, and the teaching to bridle our base emotions that can make even the best go depraved.
Some will notice the irony of god of death fighting because of a broken heart (death being un-affected by emotions, not really!); and the zombies of Renfrew was a hilarious unsubtle take on Christianity's proselytisation.
And finally, I must mention that the battles - they are done really well. There is energy, rapid changes of perspective and most importantly the action feels visceral. The battle of Keenset being a particular highlight.
There are many themes. Personally, there is the quest for immortality and power. Socially, people need a belief system that binds them together. The godly pantheon use Hinduism as the basis for their legitimacy. Ruthlessly destroying cities that show technological progress.
They are opposed by the protagonist (Sam) who was the captain of the ship that brought the first interstellar colonists. Knowledgeable and capable, Sam is the kind of leader who would build empires if he was so inclined.
Ideologically, the rebel protagonist revives Buddhism as a rival to the hierarchical formal Hinduism. Not surprisingly, the pragmatic protagonist makes a deal with 'demons' to fight the 'gods'.
It's easy to empathize with Sam.
Zelany had managed to cover a wide range of topics in a novel of modest size. Letting the actions and history of the players speak to their character and inner musings. Written in an irreverent manner with a tone of levity.
No long brooding introspection in this narrative.
Periodically, I reread the novel. To enjoy this demonstration of how a serious novel should be written for pleasurable reading.
Amber did it in a very colloquial American style over several volumes; here, he does it in more formal style, in prose as lush as the world he describes. An unnamed world was long ago colonised from old Urath i.e. Earth. The native inhabitants have either been destroyed or imprisoned & are regarded as demons. Mutations, either natural or induced & enhanced, have led many of the First colonists & their descendants to take on Aspects and Attributes, to have become demi-gods & gods. Reincarnation is a reality, along with a psyche probe that will ensure you receive your karmic due, and the First are always first in line for a new body, ensuring their effective immortality (barring accident or violence).
The problem is that the psych-probe also effectively allows the gods to stifle any sort of dissent, and the dominant Deicrat party, who don't (and seemingly never will) feel that the colonists are ready for technological advancement, under the guise of imitating the Hindu pantheon, are keeping the world in medieval subjection. The gods help you if you disagree. Except that they won't, quite the opposite. Great Souled Sam, he who never claimed, one of the First, is dead against all this & thus we have a story...
There are lots of things I could say about the quality of the writing, but I'll confine myself to two. The cover quote on this edition (George Martin again) has it that this is one of the 5 best SF books of all time. He's probably right. The second is that I was astonished to find that, despite the number of awards his work won, Zelazny was never made a Grand Master of SF. An astonishing oversight, especially considering some of those who have received it.
Buy this - you won't regret it.
Spedizione puntuale. Unica nota negativa la copertina. Nemmeno nelle più umili edizioni italiane si “spellicola” la copertina. Pessimo prodotto britannico.