Roger Zelazny infuriates me. I am not speaking as a reader. As a science fiction reader for seventeen years, I am impressed almost to the point of reverence by Zelazny. Nor am I speaking in personal terms. I've met Roger, and he is at the very opposite end of the spectrum from infuriating. But in my capacity as a reviewer, I am infuriated by Roger Zelazny. He does things, magic things, with words, things that cannot be neatly marked, catalogued and described. He employs concepts and symbolism that shimmer like a mirage whenever I stare hard in an effort to make certain that I really comprehend. Whenever I am found perspiring under the heat of my desk lamp, staring at a piece of blank paper in the typewriter, and aimlessly twisting and untwisting a paper clip, chances are that Roger Zelazny is the culprit.
Take Isle of the Dead, for instance. You must read it, get inside of it, to appreciate all its dimensions; description is inadequate. The way in which the author uses words must be experienced. It is no good to cite examples, because pulled out of context the words lose their vitality and change into something else, like pieces of flesh torn out of a living body…. Roger must write like a poet, painstakingly searching always for just the right word with the precise shade of meaning. There is humour in Isle of the Dead—not funny passages that can be quoted in a review and sound amusing, but cumulative humour in the outlook of the central character, Francis Sandow, humour that depends upon the previous five or ten or fifty pages.
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