As I turned, yet again, the final page of The Amber Chronicles, I was still hungry for more of Zelazny’s writing. I found myself reaching for one of his lesser known works, Creatures Of Light And Darkness.
Set far in the future, the Middle Worlds of Life are kept in balance by Anubis and Osiris. These two deities, governing humanity from their poles in the House of Life and the House of Death, are the perpetrators of a coup against The Prince Who Was A Thousand, Thoth Hermes Trismegistus. In this story they seek his complete destruction.
Zelazny has worked such trickery with this novel, he blurs the perceptual line into fantasy while still remaining firmly in science fiction. He drops subtle hints, bits and pieces of technological explanations, as in referencing the genetically engineered canid head of Anubis… just enough to build to a realization everything he is writing about does have a technological explanation. I remember spending some time with pencil and reference sorting the actual gene manipulation it would take to fashion a son who is the father of his father, as in the relationship between Set the Destroyer and Thoth.
One of the stylistic qualities I most appreciate about speculative fiction from the 60s and 70s is the adventurous, experimental nature of many writers from this era. Zelazny interspersed pages of incredibly visual, stream of consciousness hell-rides throughout the Amber Chronicles, and here he cuts between glorious prose and verse, even employing a flash of actor’s script in the finale.
As in all his works, Zelazny moves you to think about far more than the immediate situation:
“How do you feel, Wakim?” asks Anubis.
“I do not know,” he answers, and his voice comes strange and harsh.
Anubis gestures, and the nearest side of the cutting machine becomes a reflecting surface.
“Regard yourself.”
Wakim stares at the shining egg that is his head, at the yellow lenses, his eyes, the gleaming barrel, his chest.
“Men may begin and end in many ways,” says Anubis. “Some may start as machines and gain their humanity slowly. Others may end as machines, losing humanity by pieces as they live. That which is lost may always be regained. That which is gained may always be lost. —What are you, Wakim, a man or a machine?”
“I do not know.”
“Then let me confuse you further.”
Anubis gestures, and Wakim’s arms and legs come loose, fall away. His metal torso clangs against stone, rolls, then lies at the foot of the throne.
