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DOORWAYS

                                             February  5, 2013

Roger Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand" (1976)
Originally serialized in Analog, in 1975/6.                SERIAL_LIVING

This is an extremely (or just apparently?)
lightweight Zelazny novel, albiet not as bad
as his later Amber works, but no where near         EXPOSURE_TO_VACUUM
the high standard of his earlier ones ("Dream
Master", "Lord of Light", the stories in "The
Doors of His Mouth").

It had a tremendous effect on me when I was
a teenager, in a way that you're not supposed        TAKEN_LIGHTLY
to admit that "light" fiction does.

The main character is a man dedicated to
living freely, in his case as an eternal
undergrad (he has an educational trust that
never expires as long as he's in school).

His most obvious eccentricity, however, is
that he climbs buildings for fun, and hence
is regarded as an embarassment by the school        CLIMBING
administration...

   Zelazny, as I remember it, was a
   Columbia student, and that's probably
   the kind of place he has in mind: a
   tightly laid-out urban college, with
   many interesting buildings clustered
   together so one roof may be reached
   from another.


       Zelazny, being a science fiction writer,
       added a bunch of science fiction furniture
       to this story, which otherwise he would've
       been unable to publish. He takes this odd      An aspect that I liked:
       requirement in stride, however, and shovels    the first contact with
       in a bunch of silly stuff about aliens         extraterrestrials is just
       creeping around wearing animal outfits as      something that everyone
       a disguise.                                    has read about in the
                                                      newspapers.  It's
          From one point of view, this story          remarkable, but not
          about a light-hearted climber is only       presented as some
          loosely bolted together to the              transcendent adventure.
          sf-elements, but from another point
          of view there's a certain unity of
          attitude, if not quite of "theme"...




                        
      "Beware the ape with      
       the crooked thumbs!"                  Uncle Wikipedia says that this
                                             novel was written entirely in
                                             one draft, with no rewrites,
                                             and this I can easily believe.
                           
                                             KEROUAC
                                             
                                             
                               
                           


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