Isle of the Dead By Roger Zelazny

Francis Sandow is the last surviving human born in the 20th century. An early space colonist, he spent long centuries of space travel in suspended animation, and then suddenly woke in a far future world where everything had changed. Desperate for something to hold to, he sought out a mentor, who happened to be a member of a slowly dying alien race, the Pei'ans. Under this tutelage, Sandow eventually became a telepath and worldscaper. Isle of the Dead

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One of Zelazny's mythic best, but it's frequently forgotten as it's overshadowed by Creatures of Light and Darkness, Lord of Light, and Amber. This one may be one of his sf best, and I believe it may have been influenced by Heinlein. It's a rather short work, and is definitely worth a read. 190 Took me a half the book to get into this, was very hard to follow initally but wrapped up nicely at the end. It is definately half sci fi and fantasy mixed together. Nothing special really. 190 This is a New Wave mix of SF and fantasy from the late 60s. the book was nominated for Nebula in 1969 and therefore is a part of monthly reading for January 2021 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group.

This is a story of the oldest man alive, surviving from the 20th to 32nd Francis Sandow. Now he is one of the richest men in the galaxy and some strange items arrive in his mail (paper one!), namely recent (?) photos of people he knew and loved but who are long dead. As he investigates what happens, his internal monologue infodumps his back story and we become aware that now he is much more than a man, namely, he was trained as a god by a representative of a very old alien race, Pei’an. A god actually means that he learnt to create habitable planets, a kind of terraforming. As he puts it We spoke for a time of the worlds we had made, of the places we had built and seen populated, of all the sciences that are involved in the feat of transforming rubble into a habitation and, ultimately, we spoke of the art. The ecology game is more complicated than any chess game, goes beyond the best formulations of any computer. This is because, finally, the problems are esthetic rather than scientific ones.

This is a strange story: it may look dated but actually the author uses old stuff even for the 60s, starting from the fact that his space-baggy is named Model T, or that his orgies and costumes have a whiff of the 1920s. It is an intentionally not hi-tech story, and while there is a futuristic tech, like memory recording and cloning or faster than light travel it is more like a background. There are grumblings that ought to sound poetic but which don’t work for me.

I was a fan of Roger Zelazny since my teens. Some of his works, like Lord of Light, I appreciate now more than when I’ve first read them. however, this is not the case for this story (yet). It feels poorly written. 190 * Updated. Reread as part of lsle of the Dead/Cat's Eye double edition*
4.4 ⭐

A little more accessible perhaps than Zelazny's more mystical stuff (Lord of the Light) this novel still touches on some of his favorite themes: man as God; immortality (relatively speaking) through technology; religion as a form of power.

The first part of the Francis Sandow saga of two novels and one short story ( that's all that I'm aware of, anyway). Sandow is a worldscaper who uses the powers imparted by to him by his mastery of an ancient, alien religion to terraform planets.
He's pretty successful at it, being stinking rich, with his own private world to live on (Home-free) and his own space yacht (The Model T). He's also the last living person born in the Twentieth century, having survived through a combination of choice, luck and technology. During his long life he's made his share of powerful enemies, some of whom have been collected and revived by an unknown enemy with a long-range and intricate plan of revenge.

Not a long novel but the characters are still well drawn and Zelazny's own efforts at worldscaping are detailed and believable.
An enjoyable, not-too-demanding, story. 190 I feel like I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how much they love Francis Sandow in Zelazny discussions online. As such, I was excited to dive into this book, and had very high expectations.

To put things simply, it was great. But there was something about Isle that I felt kept it from being on the level of stuff like the Amber series, Lord of Light, This Immortal, A Night in the Lonesome October . . . you get the idea. I’m not sure what it was. I think it may have just been that the book felt like it started a little slow to me. Once things really started taking off, it was great, but I wasn’t immediately sucked in like I was with some of the aforementioned titles.

The thing I probably liked most was the mythology Zelazny created here. In a lot of his books he used pre-existing mythology and adapted it to a real-world (or, rather, future-real-world) setting (like with Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness). And I love those books. But in Isle, Zelazny created his own religion (which, as far as I know, wasn’t based on any real mythology) and melded it with the scientific process of “worldscaping.” The idea was that, in order to create a new world, you have to have a sort of God-complex, and that means invoking the power of a deity during the creation process. The question is: are the gods invoked by worldscapers real, or are they just a belief that gives the worldscapers the confidence they need to make their creations?

As I write this, I respect Zelazny’s creativity in this book more and more. A part of me wants to give Isle 5 stars, but I’m going to stick with 4 just because it’s becoming too much of a habit to just immediately give Zelazny books 5. (It sorta cheapens things for the rest of the books!)

Overall, Isle of the Dead was fantastic, and I’ll be happy to read it again some day.
190

При този автор няма как да не съм пристрастен, но книгата е една от неговите, които съм направил парцал от препрочитане. Също така е предистория на може би най-любимата ми книга на Зелазни – Да умреш в Италбар.

Франсис Сандоу е един от най-богатите хора в галактиката. Случайно станал адепт на древна религия, приличаща доста на индуизма, следвана от умираща извънземна раса. Харесан от един от нейните богове, той получава безсмъртие и умението да изгражда цели светове.
Уморен от живота и затънал в безсмислен разкош, героят започва да получава анонимни фотографии на отдавна починали негови приятели. Докато търси подателя се забърква в игра, която е по-голяма и от двамата и осъзнава, че да си съсъд на божественото не е само цветя и рози. Оказва се забъркан в битка много по-стара от човечеството.

От тази книга съм научил за писането, така както го разбирам, много повече отколкото от всички наръчници, които са ми попадали:
- Есето с което започва сигурно ми е най-любимото парченце литература, а плавното му преминаване в историята на романа е висш пилотаж.
- Циментирането на образа на героя със случайни срещи с хора от миналото и неангажиращите разговори с тях е запазена марка на Зелазни. Показва, че героят не е тапет пляснат върху историята, а живее собствен живот.
- Хватката с няколкото малки(по 3-4 изречения) ретроспективни историйки, които показват как са се изградили моралът и мотивацията на Франсис също е гениален.
- Философията вкарана непряко в неангажиращ разговор с духовният му учител също си заслужава да се препрочита.
- Щриховането на света наречен „Острова на мъртвите”, където неизказаното показва много повече от написаното...
- Експериментите с текста като цяло ги надмина��ат само тези в „Окото на котката”.
- Типичното за автора смесване на фантастика и фантазия, омесвайки допуските на двата жанра в хомогенна маса ги бие само „Мост от пепел”.
Горещо препоръчвам!
P.S. Въпросната картина на Арнолд Бьоклин, която според мен трябваше да е на корицата, вместо това зелено извращение.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi... 190 Almost any other author would have made this 300 pages longer and volume one of a five-part series. Zelazny, as always, resists the urge to add inessential content, and the book is the better for it. Embedded in the narrative, along with a fairly snappy plot, are musings on mortality, the legitimacy of use of violence in self-defense, the extent to which people change over time, the influence of societal culture on individual character, and probably a few other things too. I think this may be my favorite of Zelazny's standalone novels from the late 1960s, despite some of the others being much better known. 190 Je ne suis pas objective, Zelazny est mon héros :) 190 I wanted to like this, I really did. But I really didn't. It took half the book to even start to get into it and it was just too bizarre and not enough explainations for things. Maybe it is too dated for me for a sci-fi. I also found it quite sexist. Even for when it was written. I saw potential but a lot of things needed to be done differently, more information given. I could not visualize this. In many ways I felt like it took place in the 1920s-1940s. Not much of a sci-fi feel very often. A few moments but they never last. 190 This book is followed by To Die in Italbar. It's an interesting blend of SF & Fantasy. A human studies to make worlds, honing his psyche & psi powers to host an alien god. Another human tries to do the same & picks up a god who is enemies with the first & lays a trap for him. Humans are the pawns, the galaxy is the chess board. An interesting look in how power is handled. 190