Chris Todd

A little while back I was feeling in the mood for some good, classic Roger Zelazny, and given that Halloween was approaching, I decided to listen to his reading of A Night In The Lonesome October while driving around town.

I was never priviledged enough to know Roger Zelazny personally, so I say the following without any knowledge of whatever personal or artistic burdens he may have been laboring under towards the end of his life, but it seems apparent that the quality of his work declined somewhat over time. The second Amber series -- while containing a few intriguing ideas -- never really cohered into a work with the same narrative power as his earlier trip to Amber (one of the few fantasy cycles that I believe is on par with the work of Tolkien and LeGuin). And then there was the series of comedy-fantasy collaborations with Robert Sheckley, which is just not my thing. But before he passed on, Zelazny wrote A Night In The Lonesome October, which I consider to be on par with his best work.

A slyly winking pastiche of everything from Sherlock Holmes to Cthulhu and back again, the story concerns the Great Game which is played whenever the stars align. A group of players gathers at a certain magical location, and on the last night of October when the moon is high, work to either open or close the door that separates our reality from that of the Elder Gods. Zelazny has a load of fun, with archetypes such as the witch, the druid, the cleric, and so on playing in the game and bouncing up against "the Great Detective," Dracula, Larry Talbot (the original werewolf), the Doctor (think of the Doctor's most famous creation), Rasputin, and several others in a way that never devolves into the one-note joke that it easily could have been. One of the most amusing tricks Zelazny uses in telling his story is the conceit that each of the players has an animal familiar, and the familiars talk, deal, and squabble amongst themselves in a way that mirrors the larger narrative. The main character is actually not one of the players, but his dog, Snuff, and the entire story is told from his often laconic point of view.

But rather than go for the apocalyptic tenor that a story about the potential end of the world might call for, Zelazny adopts an easy-going, almost genteel style of storytelling. There are murders and monsters, a trip to the Dream Land of Kadath, narrow escapes, surprises, betrayals, and all the rest, certainly, but there's also an ongoing focus on the ideas of fair play, collaboration, and treating everyone -- even your enemies -- with respect. The later idea results in one of the most interesting threads of the book, Snuff's ongoing friendship with a cat familiar whose master may or may not be on the same side as his own.

I won't say anything else about the plot -- its joys are easy to appreciate for anyone who's a fan of Zelazny or any of the other countless fantasy authors metaphorically schooled on his knee, and it's a perfect accompaniment to any rainy, gray, autumn day.

(Of course I should point out that here in Texas it was bright, hot, and humid during most of October, but you get the idea.)

The book is out of print but can easily be obtained from most any online retailer or scooped up at your local used book store, and has the added bonus of featuring illustrations by Gahan Wilson. The audiobook is more difficult to locate but worth the effort if you can find it, as it's read by Zelazny himself. His low-key, unhurried manner of reading is an excellent match for Snuff, and I've often wondered if maybe that character wasn't the closest to his own personality that he'd ever written. In any case, with its themes of friendship and fighting the good fight, even in the face of the end of the world, it seems like a fitting epitaph for one of the best fantasy writers who ever lived.