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Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937 - June 14, 1995) was a United States writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels. He won the Nebula award three times and the Hugo award six times, including twice for novels: Lord of Light
(1968) and ...And Call Me Conrad
(1966) (which was later published as This Immortal).Zelazny was born in Euclid, Ohio, an only child of Josephine Sweet and Joseph Frank Zelazny (
Żelazny). His father had emigrated from Poland when he was a young man and met Josephine Sweet in Chicago. In high school, Roger Zelazny was the editor of the school newspaper and joined the Creative Writing Club. In the fall of 1955, he began attending Western Reserve University and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1959. He was accepted to Columbia University in New York and specialized in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, graduating with a M.A. in 1962.
Zelazny had a rare gift for conceiving and portraying worlds with plausible magic systems, powers, and supernatural beings. His captivating descriptions of the nuts and bolts of magical workings in his imagined worlds set his fantasy writing apart from otherwise similar authors. His science fiction was highly influenced by mythology, poetry, including the French, British, and American classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and by wisecracking detective fiction. A frequent theme is gods or people who become gods. His novels and short stories often involved characters from classical myth, depicted in the modern world.
He was a prolific writer and, with the exception of the
Amber novels (and the related pairs Changeling
/Madwand
, Isle of the Dead
/To Die in Italbar
, and Dilvish the Damned
/The Changing Land), created a completely new setting for each book.
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Amber novels >>
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