Second paragraph of third story, “Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love” (as presented in this collection; in earlier publication this text is merged with the previous and following sentences to form a longer first paragraph)

At first I didn’t recognize her. And when I did I knew it still couldn’t be right, her, there, with her blindfolded companion in the sandals and dark kimono. She was dead, the octad broken. There couldn’t be another. Certain misgivings arose concerning this one. But I had no choice. Does one ever? There are things to do. Soon she will move. I will taste their spirits.

I complained last month that I had already read all of the stories in the fifth volume of the collected Roger Zelazny. More of the material in this final volume seemed new to me; it starts with an adaptation of the Grimm tale Godfather Death, which Zelazny also turned into a musical (never staged); the final Amber stories are here, but so also is some background writing about Amber which was not widely available in his lifetime; and there are some non-fiction pieces about his concept of his own craft, as well as emotional reminiscences about Zelazny the man and mentor, from friends and family. It’s a thoroughly satisfactory capstone to the five volumes that went before.

I am very glad to report that NESFA, the publishers, have just released all six volumes in epub and mobi format. I was happy to spend quite a lot for the hard copies, with the gorgeous Michael Whelan wraparound cover, but for a lot of fans $9.95 for the electronic version makes more sense. But if you want to, you can get the six volumes here, here, here, here, here and here.

The majority of the sort fiction here was previously published in the 2003 collection Manna from Heaven, which I read in 2005 and was underwhelmed by. A commenter on my original Livejournal post had this to say:

Manna from Heavan is a piece of trash…

There are very good reasons why you were *underwhelmed* by the book. One of the big collectors Scott Zrubek, (laughingly misspelled in book) bought the rights to print Roger’s short-stories and had a Pre-determined list for inclusions. Then he asked for suggestions on story inclusions, then ignored them all and did exactly what he wanted to, its what I call *hardheaded*. He also had a pre-determined name for the book, his favorite story Mana from Heaven, but the estate said that name cannot be used for legal reasons, so again with a hardhead, he changed the Mana to Manna simply so he could keep his original title. But the crowning mis-achievement is that despite offers of financial backing (ahem… me!) he proceeded to use a friend of his to actually produce the book, and all the hype about a wonderfully bound, high-quality acid-free paper with smythe-sewn binding, etc, etc, became a total piece of well…. the paper couldnt be any cheaper, the binding couldnt be any cheaper, the boards warp over time, etc. etc. etc. as his *friend* gave the printing to the cheapest bid and the book was printed in TAIWAN. His friend went for the bucks of profit and the book went to the dogs.
Just thought you might want to know what happens when *one* man and *his* friend decide to ignore all reason and requests and produce an item on their own as a lasting legacy to someone HA HA HA….

This provoked a response from a Livejournal user using the handle “madmoravian”, who from context must be Scott Zrubek:

Unfortunately, some of what you say is true and some of what you say is completely unknown to me.

My goal with the book was to get stories that had not seen the light of day back before the public’s eye. The stories I could get my hands on (there are some stories of which I have no copies) were not all of the ones I wanted to publish. Also, because of space reasons for a commercially viable book, a number of stories are sitting on the editing floor. Calling me “hardheaded” is, to me, a bit callous, considering the struggle I had deciding which ones went in and which ones were left out and which ones I had access to.

Someone had to make the final call and, since I’d paid for the rights, I figured it should be me. I put 6 years of my life into the book and quite a bit of money. I’m pleased with the way it turned out, but not overjoyed. Could it have been better? Absolutely. There are a number of things that occurred during the process that I would love to be able to change. Alas, ’tis not to be.

My favorite story of the book is not “Mana from Heaven”. Probably “Blue Horse, Dancing Mountain” is. I thought that title to be an appropriate one for the entire book, with either spelling of mana/manna. I don’t know whether I came up with that for the title of the book, or if one of the other two folks involved did.

I’d be interested to know who you are. Granted, this occurred a long time ago, and I could be forgetting facts, but I don’t remember offers of financial backing from anyone. Financial backing was not the only consideration, there had to be a way to get the book out and distributed. The method that actually occurred pretty much fell flat on its face, but it looked good at the beginning.

I personally don’t believe that I ignored all reason and requests. I ignored some reason and was not able to fulfill some requests, but that is life as a human being, is it not?

I know nothing more.

The Road to Amber was the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is Giants at the End of the World, edited by Johanna Sinisalo, the 2017 WorldCon anthology.

Second paragraph of third story (“Mana from Heaven”):

There was a wide window at the rear of my office, affording an oblique view of the ocean. The usual clutter lay about—opened cartons oozing packing material, a variety of tools, heaps of rags, bottles of cleaning compounds and restoratives for various surfaces. And of course the acquisitions: Some of them still stood in crates and cartons; others held ragged rank upon my workbench, which ran the length of an entire wall—a row of ungainly chessmen awaiting my hand. The window was open and the fan purring so that the fumes from my chemicals could escape rapidly. Bird songs entered, and a sound of distant traffic, sometimes the wind.

The penultimate in the complete collection of Zelazny’s short fiction, bringing together stories published between 1979 and 1990. Huge Zelazny fan that I am, I must record that I had read all of the stories before – more than half of them are in the 1989 collection Frost and Fire, though I have mislaid my copy of Author’s Choice #27 which had two of the more obscure ones. The books also includes Zelazny’s poetry, which to be honest is not all that special, and several treatments and sketches for unmade films and unwritten books.

But there are a couple of points that made me glad to have bought this. The first is that the text of the Hugo-winning “24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai” is in fact illustrated by the relevant 24 woodcuts from Hokusai’s famous series. It’s only monochrome but it makes a big difference to your appreciation of the story. Also, Christopher Kovacs’ detailed chronology of what was going on in Zelazny’s life in the years from 1982 to 1990 is illuminating. Amusingly, Michael Whelan agreed to do the stunning cover art for the collection after discovering that one of his other pieces had been ripped off without credit or payment for an earlier Zelazny book.

I am also really glad to have found this video of Zelazny reading his own work in 1986 – the short story “LOKI-7281” and an extract from “Blood of Amber”. The image and sound quality are not great, but it’s great to see him dominating the room while leaning nonchalantly on his elbow; he was having fun, and so were his audience. He was 49, and had less than a decade left to live.

This was the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next up is the sixth and last in this series, The Road to Amber. But you can get Nine Black Doves here.