The Road to Amber Volume 6: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny

The Road to Amber is the final volume of the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny. This volume covers his final years from 1990 - his death from colorectal cancer in 1995.I'm going to do something a bit different for this review than for the previous five. For those my review and evaluation were based mostly on the stories they contained. But that's not really fair to the Zelazny Editor Dream Team of David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs, and Ann Crimmins (whom I will henceforth call GKC), who put this massive collection together, and NESFA Press, which published it in six beautifully produced hardback volumes, not to mention A Pictorial Bibliography, which I will review presently. (NESFA is New England Science Fiction Association.) I can't help but feel that I've been unfair to GKC by not giving them a five-star rating of their own, so that's what I'm going to do here.Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) is one of the all-time greats of science fiction. His work has been widely praised, won all the awards, and is still popular. The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny is an extraordinary resource for Zelazny scholars. I would not dare call myself a Zelazny scholar, but I am a scholar of other fields, and recognize what GKC have done. It is especially valuable because Zelazny's greatest gift was writing short stories. (The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny is slightly misnamed, however, because it includes almost all Zelazny's short works -- that includes poetry and essays as well as stories. GKC did yeoman's work in collecting even formerly unpublished fragments.) Zelazny wanted to write, and did, almost from the moment he learned to read. His first love was poetry. In college, however, he recognized that if he wanted to earn a living as a writer, poetry was not a real option. (As he wrote, Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg were the only Americans doing it.) Thus he switched to stories. Later he recognized that, word-for-word, novels pay better than stories, and directed most of his effort in that direction. But he still loved stories best and never ceased to write them until his death.Many of the stories are followed by "A Word from Zelazny", containing text that Zelazny himself wrote about the story. And almost all are followed by "Notes" written by GKC that explain things in the story that may need explaining. These range from a sentence or two to nine pages (for "He Who Shapes"). The series includes a six-part biography of Zelazny /...And Call Me Roger/, written by Kovacs. The volumes contain Zelazny's short fiction in chronological order, and the biography in each volume describes what was going on in Zelazny's life while the works in that volume were being produced.The cover art is a beautiful painting by famed F&SF illustrator Michael Whelan called Z-World. (For the story behind this see my review of Nine Black Doves.) I will upload a photo of that painting, as it appears on the spines of the book of the series. Whelan includes an essay called "Z-World" in which he describes how he made this painting and explains some of what's in it.This is a spectacular resource for any hard-core Zelazny fan. My one complaint about The Collected Stories is that it's available only in hardback. This may put it beyond the reach of many fans and even libraries.

I have the entire set, the books are wonderful insights into one of the most prolific and brilliant minds ever to grace ANY genre of literature. I am enjoying them thoroughly, recommend them often and freely to my friends and family and have given two books as gifts. (Bought extras, will not part with mine!) In short, great books, good value and excellent service. Thank you Amazon!!!

Zelazny is one of my all time favourite SF/Fantasy authors and one of teh few who wrote superb short stories as well as novels. This series is just about everything he ever wrote in short fiction and follows the evolution of his writing. Some OK, some good and a lot very good. Some gems I'd never come across previously.

The road to Amber has stories by Zelazny that can be found in Amberzine Vol 12-15 all except two or three of them.

This life collection of stories and true tales gives insight into the life of one of my favorite sf authors of all time.

It was good to catch some of Zelazny's final stories, including a few about Amber. Sad that he wasn't able to write more before he passed away.

I purchased this series/book about 15 years ago based on a receommendation by an uncle. I loved the series and have reread it multiple times. It also made me go look for other books by Roger Zelazny. This is the best book out of the series in my opinion and no serious fantasy reader can go without reading

The last of this superb series is perhaps the weakest volume int terms of the short fiction presented. There were three quite good stories ('Godson', 'Come back to the killing ground Alice, my love', 'The three descents of Jeremy Baker') but even are not among his top works. There is Zelazny's only musical comedy, a version of Godson (although no accompanying music exists). A new Amber series of stories start to show where he was going, introducing a new villain, but only they are broad hints of where he might have been going - one comes from a very unusual perspective. The preludes and postlude to 'Forever after', a shared universe book edited by Zelazny, suggest this book might be an OK read (I haven't read the whole thing) but should probably be read with the contributions by other authors to be fully appreciated. The last of the Wild card stories 'The long sleep' is easily Zelazny's best contribution to that series but I didn't think much of the others.In addition to the articles and conclusion to the Zelazny biography (worth the price of the book on it's own) are four outlines to works that were incomplete when he died at early age. Of these outlines only 'Donnerjack' was completed by Zealazny's partner Jane Lindholm - she did a great job with it and I highly recommend it. (Unfortunately, I can't honestly recommend 'Lord Demon' the other Zelazny posthumously completed by Lindholm).The closing words warn that Zelazny is in danger of being forgotten, particularly his fine short fiction. These six volumes will hopefully keep his legacy alive and enhanced. He died to young to be named a Grandmaster by SFWA but he certainly deserves to be regarded as one of the great novelists (Lord of light, Isle of the dead, The dream master, This immortal etc) and short story writers (He who shapes, The graveyard heart, A rose for Ecclesiastes, 24 views of My Fuji by Hokasai etc etc) of his era.