★★★★★ Fred Cassidy is just the right kind of weird

Doorways in the Sand

Roger Zelazny

I'm not sure when I read this for the first time. It would have been not long after I discovered Roger Zelazny and was reading everything of his that I could find. It was published in 1976, so I'm guessing I read it that year.

What I like about Doorways in the Sand is the hero Fred Cassidy. When the story begins, Fred is a student at some unspecified university. (For some reason I believed the first time I read it that it was Harvard, but I can't say why.) His uncle (who, we eventually learn, is not quite dead yet), left Fred an income that would support him for as long as he was in university. Fred has thus made it his mission never to graduate. (Perpetual studenthood appeals to me -- I literally graduated from university in 2020 at the age of 64.) We first meet him in a conversation with his academic advisor, who believes he has trapped Fred into having fulfilled the requirements for a degree and therefore can forcibly graduate him.

The real action begins when Fred starts receiving vague messages via random sensory impressions. The burden of these messages seems to be that Fred should get drunk. He does that. Subsequently, it transpires that a mysterious and valuable alien artifact has vanished and everyone is terrified that the aliens will become angry. Random beings start trying to kill Fred.

It's all a lot of fun. In fact, it may be the most pure FUN novel Zelazny ever wrote (although A Night in the Lonesome October would also be a contender). Not profound and not entirely intellectually coherent, but definitely a lot of fun.

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