Anyone who knows me will quickly learn that I am a major fan of Roger Zelazny. I got hooked on his works when I was still in high school, partly with “Lord of Light” and “Creatures of Light and Darkness”, the latter being the pattern for the deities of my college roommate’s D&D campaign.
But it was the Amber novels that truly captured my interest. Flawed demi-gods walking between Shadows of realities, with a sympathetic main character overcoming his past, and a host of interesting supporting characters and a sequence of mysteries to resolve? What is not to like about it, at least for me. I soon became a serious Amber fan.
A Serious Amber Fan
As a serious Amber fan, I became a member of an official Amber fan organization, very long ago, meaning back in the early to middle 1980’s. The organizer asked Roger for permission to form the group and he granted it. Over a period of several years we produced several newsletters and four issues of Shadow Shiftin’, an Amber fanzine, all of which were sent to Roger. (What Roger did with them, I never knew.) I contributed something to each issue of the fanzine, including the two poems ‘Merlin’s Song’ and ‘Starfall’.
Which leads me to Merlin. Merlin was the most enigmatic character in the first five Amber novels, which fans term the “Corwin” novels, as opposed to the later series of five novels (and the later short stories) which are the “Merlin” novels, both so named for the central character of the books. We see Merlin only a couple of times in the first novels, once where he confronts Corwin when Corwin is far out in Shadow close to the Courts of Chaos and once near the end of the last book where Merlin appears to be reunited with his father (that being Corwin) and Corwin begins to tell the tale of his recent past (i.e., the events of the five novels) as foreshadowed in the first paragraphs of the first novel.
It was the custom of the group members to select one of the Amber characters they most identified with, and I chose Merlin. I liked Merlin, primarily for his enigmatic quality. He was a mystery that I could overlay anything I desired. He also seemed like a nice guy, unlike most of his aunts and especially his uncles, despite his upbringing in the Courts of Chaos as the presumptive King of Amber under the thumb of his mother Dara. All of this was duly noted in one of the group newsletters. Also, in one of the newsletters, I described myself, a recent graduate of a prestigious engineering university with a degree in Computer Science (from the Math department, which encompassed the CS program at the time) and a job as a systems operator and programmer at an international engineering company.
I even wrote a story of Merlin’s first meeting with Corwin, told from Merlin’s point of view. It then dealt with the consequences of his actions during the meeting within the Courts of Chaos and his ultimate decision to seek out his father. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of that story, either physical or digital. I loaned the physical copies of the fanzines to Erick Wujcik, who created the Amber Diceless RP system and ran the GenCon Amber campaign, in which I was one of the playtesters, playing the character of Damarian, wayward and reluctant (to get involved with her schemes, all of which was duly noted and used to manipulate him further) son of Fiona. Unfortunately, we only ever saw each other except at either Ambercon or GenCon, and even then was problematic when Erick started teaching in China, so the fanzines were given to someone else to return to me and somewhere along the line they disappeared. I have managed to recover three of the four issues through various means, but the one I am missing (issue #2) is the one with the Merlin story. The digital copy fell victim of the vagaries and vulgarities of 5 1⁄4″ floppy disks and the relative impermanence of magnetic media long ago.
The Mysterious Pattern of Merlin
Which (eventually) leads me back to Roger and the second (Merlin) Amber novels.
The Amber fan group was largely organized at MediaWest*Con, a Midwest media and fanzine convention in Lansing, Michigan, over Memorial Day weekend. The first Merlin book was published in May, 1985, shortly before the next convention. I hadn’t purchased the book yet, as I was waiting to get it from the library, so I hadn’t read it yet. Therefore, when I met the head of the fan group, and answered in the negative when she asked whether I read it yet, she said “Merlin’s you! He’s a programmer!”
I was, well, somewhat surprised.
Was I in any way responsible for the definition of Merlin as a programmer? It seems possible, but there was no really way to tell. I had no way of asking Roger about it, and I just sort of let the notion slide for the longest time. It was really only after I was really “into” Amber Diceless RP gaming that I got really curious about it, but even then I had no way of meeting Roger (that I was really aware of and wanted to pursue.) Even though I was an avid attendee of many SF conventions, I only attended one where Roger was a guest, and as I remember it was a pretty large convention where the only chance I had to meet Roger in person was the autograph session.
Then Roger was announced as a Guest of Honor at GenCon in 1995. (Was that 20 years ago? Sheesh.) Erick Wujcik which organized a private party for his friends to meet Roger and I was sure I would be able to finally ask Roger. I was so looking forward to it.
But it was not to be. Roger never told anyone that his health was failing. (Roger was a pretty private person in many ways.) He died that summer before the convention, and my question will forever be unanswered.
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