★★★☆☆ Zelazny's slump

This Mortal Mountain

Roger Zelazny

This Mortal Mountain is volume three of the masterful Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny. (For an overview of the series, see my review of the first volume, Threshold.) While this volume, covering the years 1967-1977 maintains the high standards of scholarship of the series, the source material is less impressive. (Let me be clear -- I'm grading on a curve here. Substandard Zelazny still knocks the socks off most other writers.) Zelazny's short story output decreased in quantity and quality during these years. Indeed, Zelazny explains the origin of the final story in this volume, "The Engine at Heartspring's Center", published in 1974, as follows:

Tom Monteleone, visiting one afternoon, pointed out to me that I had not written a short story in over two years. So I did this one right after he left to prevent the interval's growing any longer.

There were a few reasons for this slump.

First, it was during this time that Zelazny began to put most of his literary effort into novels. He explains as follows

Word for word, novels work harder for their creators when it comes to providing for the necessities and joys of existence. Which would sound cynical, except that I enjoy writing novels, too.

First, I find it charming that Zelazny feels it is necessary to justify doing work for which he gets paid. Most Americans make that choice without ever feeling any need to apologize. Second, getting paid for his work had suddenly become more important to Zelazny -- he and his wife quit their jobs with the Social Security Administration in 1969. Zelazny's writing abruptly became their sole income. It seems extraordinary to me that a writer such as Zelazny really had to worry about his ability to keep the wolf from the door. However, the Chonicles of Amber, which would become his most popular works and main meal ticket, were just getting started.

The editors point out, however, that the short-story slump can't be blamed entirely on novel-writing -- Zelazny's total output decreased during this period. This was mostly because he undertook an awe-inspiring self-education project during this time. As Christopher S. Kovacs writes,

He started by reading one book in each science, aiming to read 10 books in each area. He read history ... and biography or autobiography. ... In 1972 he added poetry to the program... To keep current in sf, he read current works and the classics.

It is not surprising that this program had an effect on his output.

The stories are also not as good, in my opinion, in this volume as in the previous two. I read them and think to myself, "Clever idea...", but they grab me by the head rather than the heart. Because I have already read almost everything Zelazny published during his lifetime, I know there is better to come.

My favorite two stories in this volume were "Way Up High" and "Here There be Dragons". These were an experiment for Zelazny -- two middle-grade children's stories written in collaboration with artist Vaughn Bodé. They were new to me. Because of an intellectual property dispute with Bodé, they were published only late in Zelazny's life -- in 1992. They appear in this volume without illustrations.

In summary, this period saw a decrease in the quantity and quality of Zelazny's short fiction. It was, I believe, only temporary, and I look forward to the three volumes yet to come.

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