Typically, the whole story emerges slowly & somewhat confusingly on the first read, but we soon realize that a starship from Earth colonizes an alien planet. Fantasy meets SF as Psi powers, often enhanced by technology, allow the crew to impersonate a mutated version of the Hindu gods, lording it over the passengers. Mind-swapping & cloning allow the old crew to become almost immortal, while the passengers are fruitful & multiply, spreading across the planet & forgetting their roots & technology. The story centers on Sam, one of the crew, retired god & hero. He doesn't like the new gods & fights heaven through fair & foul means. Even in defeat & death, he wins & returns, as a thorn in the heavenly side. He recreates Buddhism, with himself as the Buddha. He makes pacts with demons, the original inhabitants of the planet who found a different path to immortality than body swapping. He even allies himself with the blackest demon of all, a Christian!Zelazny's mix of science, religion, mysticism & politics is fantastic & unique, as always. His hero, Sam, is insightful, mocking & manipulating. He subtly guides people & events to his advantage, while starting from a huge disadvantage to topple the gods from their heaven. The story isn't told in a straightforward manner (big shock) but as flashbacks for over half of it. It's almost disappointing when the story flows linearly, but the action is too intense & the politics too murky to confuse it through further time jumping.I've read some criticisms of his take on the Eastern religions but, I don't think he made any mistakes. He wasn't trying to recreate the religions of today, but show them in a far-flung future where they were setup by a bunch power hungry people for their own base purposes. He was using them as a vehicle to make his point & felt justified changing them to fit.I've worn out two copies of this book. It's fantastic. He's one of my favorite authors & this is possibly my favorite book. ( )

ZB9

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1286404...

It's often a bit worrying to return to the scene of one's youthful enthusiasm to see if the magic is still there - particularly in the case of this novel, bearing in mind the recent discussions of cultural appropriation.

It still worked for me. Zelazny's writing in the first place is vigorous and powerful, and funny also on occasion; it is rather easy to get swept along by the characters with superhuman, semi-divine abilities trying to outwit each other without concentrating too much on the plot. His trademark was always the juxtaposition of the mythic and the demotic, and Lord of Light probably is the peak of his powers at novel length.

The plot also stands the test of time. The rulers of the world of Lord of Light have chosen to construct a religion in order to stay in power, and rather than make up their own (as later Zelazny books do) have taken Hinduism off the shelf, as it were, suited as it is to their reincarnation technology. 'Accelerationism' (ie modernisation) among the general populace is ruthlessly repressed. Our hero, Sam, is one of the privileged who rebels, and uses methods of terrorism, war and assassination to undermine the power structures, is captured, executed twice, and eventually returned to life (at the start of the book, most of the story being told in flashback) and victory.

It's not terribly clear that Sam is doing this out of an egalitarian or libertarian commitment to oppose tyranny; it seems more that he (along with Zelazny) favours two different types of enlightenment - personal enlightenment in the (explicitly) Buddhist sense, and cultural enlightenment in the sense of eighteenth-century Europe, in both cases implying freedom from religious dogma and control, and so is committed to bringing them about.

To achieve this, he has to do a deal with the indigenous entities of the planet as well, now known as the Rakashas; he exploits them but also possibly liberates them, and their support is crucial to his ultimate success - a subplot with interesting undertones both historically and psychologically. Note also that the explicitly Christian characters are dubious outsiders who are minor but somewhat unreliable allies (leading an army of soulless zombies). Plenty of cultural irony, directed mainly westwards. ( )

A surprisingly good book, given its inherently problematic nature: a group of white people pretend to be Hindu gods on another planet. Yet Zelazny appears to have done his research, creating a rich world and using the character of Siddhartha to skillfully question the ways of the "gods". The world rang true, to my admittedly limited experience of Asia, but that's more than some books about Asia manage. /Lord of Light/ is a book that wears its problematic nature on its sleeve, and opens itself for the attendant discussion. Also, it tells a good story. ( )

A stunning and wonderful book; one I'll not soon forget. Zelazny weaves an amazing amount of history into this short novel, but does so in such a way that it drives the plot forward. There are scores of detailed characters, each with his own motive, in a conflict that seems centuries old.

The premise may be difficult to explain. In this futuristic world, the technology has been created to transfer a person's being into another body, rendering them practically immortal, as long as they can find bodies before they actually die. Some of the original settlers have set themselves up as gods, forbidding most technology. Sam, another of the first, opposes them on the grounds that the people should be allowed to have that technology.

This fight between them is not often all out war, but rather subtle plots that take lifetimes to see fulfilled. But they have lifetimes to fight, and so they do.

A must for science fiction fans. ( )

This is a pretty amazing book that showed rather than told, and wove a tale half backwards that made perfect sense. I was very impressed, though the first chapters before the first set of flashbacks lag due to you not knowing or caring about the characters. I always remember Zelazny for Chronicles of Amber which is nowhere near the quality of this book. What a treat! ( )

This is a very unique book, the story of a man who became a god, or is it the story of a god who was a god all along? Either way, its quite unique, and features the gods of the Hindu mythos. ( )

(Amy) And herewith, my Catching Up On Things I Should Have Read A Long Time Ago entry for the month.

I don't actually have much to say about this book, and I'm not sure if that's my fault or its. I finished it and then looked up with a profound sense of "Huh". The story was moderately interesting - a bunch of very old colonists with consciousness-transfer technology playing god (with Hindu-themed deities) and lording it over a planet inhabited by their fallen-to-low-technology descendents, and generally engaging in gratuitous assholery. I was not particularly impressed by it, however. But then, I often have trouble putting books in their proper contexts. I suspect that, in 1969, it really was a groundbreaking work, and that I am just jaded.

Of course, the hideous pun didn't really help much in the raising of my opinion of the book as a whole.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ze... )

(Alistair) I think I like this more than I have any of the other Zelazny I have previously read, including the Amber series, so that would be a first good sign, now wouldn't it? (The infamous epilepsy pun notwithstanding.)

Lord of Light is - well, a science fantasy/planetary romance-ish book set in the far future, after "the death of Urath". On the colony planet on which it is set, the colonists have won out over the aboriginal inhabitants (referred to as demons, later on), and have established a functioning society. Except that the colony leadership, or more accurately one faction among it, have set themselves up as the gods of the Hindu pantheon, maintaining control through superior technology, suppressing the technological development of the colonists, and their control of the means of technologically mediated reincarnation.

But that's just the background. The plot follows our protagonist, one of the remaining first colonists, along with renegade gods, in his long slow struggle against this faction of deities - in the process, founding this world's version of Buddhism, traveling into the underworld to find allies among the "demons", and taking arms against heaven itself. And it is, if anything, even better than the background; and notably, it manages to place such a well-crafted and fascinating background appropriately subordinate to the plot.

The prose is, as ever, clever in that inimitable Zelaznian way.

Highly recommended for everyone who enjoys this sort of thing. (And who can tolerate so-called "cultural appropriation"; if you can't, your head will explode within the first couple of chapters.")

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ce... ) ( )

This has to be Zelazny's best work. As usual, there's a superhuman male protagonist waging a lone crusade against others like him who hold a colony world in their grip, setting themselves up as gods of the Hindu pantheon and controlling body-transfer technology by means of masters of karma and suppressing technological advancement beyond a medieval level. Sam, otherwise known as Mahasamatman, or the Binder of Demons, or Buddha, introduces Buddhism as a cultural counter to embolden the people of the world against the gods, and even fights an epic battle against the gods with those among the gods who grew sympathetic to his desire to liberate the suppressed people of the world. The characters are deep and complex, the world cleverly and clearly wrought and vividly described, and the story inventive and brilliantly told. And, as par Zelazny's usual milieu, the battles and betrayals are described better than a World Series radio broadcast. ( )

This is essential science fiction reading. ( )

Zelazny drops you right into the middle of this story, but don't be intimidated by the unknown names and tech/magic confusion. The book is intelligent, wildly imaginative, and daring. Its nested layers of reality, paradigm and belief are baroque and intriguing. I already loved Zelazny, but now I love him even more. ( )

This is the book. I can't recommend this one highly enough. This book fundamentally changed my views of religion and meaning in life. I know it's pretty lame to say all these things for a science fiction book, but I am forever indebted to Roger Zelazny for this book alone, without even touching on his other works, all of which have been astounding.

Also, this book has a theological technocracy. ( )

It was...a bit confusing and rather odd, but I liked it. ( )

So, notwithstanding certain caveats about old-school gender politics (detailed on my blog, for the curious), I thought this was a really excellent book. I liked it because it seemed to play around with the fantasy genre in a way completely different from the modern batch of New Weird writers, but with an equal amount of self-awareness and intelligence. I suppose you might chalk up some of my admiration to my general ignorance of the New Wave SF from the sixties, and I’m certainly going to find some more of it. In some ways, I think this is one of the most subtly subversive SF novels I’ve read, because of the way it plays around with the structure of its narrative. I’ve read critiques online that argue even though Zelazny took his mythos and pantheon from the East (Hinduism and Buddhism), his characters and story are essentially Western. I take the point. It’s disconcerting for characters who have decided to reincarnate themselves as Hindu gods make references to “It’s a long way to Tipperary.”. It was never really explained why these obviously white Westerners picked the Hindu pantheon for their planetary subjugation–just because they happened to be on a ship called “The Star of India” and it seemd like a good idea at the time? And incidentally, this lack of explanation makes the Christian-Hindu battle of the frame story seem like an utter non-sequitur.

BUT, all of this attention to the characters misses the fact that the structure of the story itself is extremely Eastern and subverts all sorts of subtle conventions of heroic fiction. For one, the frame story is strangely incidental to the plot, and yet reveals its resolution in the first thirty pages. The whole business with the reluctant, trickster hero is very Western, but he’s not much of a hero. His callousness in the face of mass death belies his protestations of ordinary humanity. He tramples on humans like a god, even when he professes that his entire object is to “accelerate” (read: uplift) them to his own status. And if I take a further step back, the Eastern influences are more obvious: there are hints of stories within stories never told (his mother weeping over his death is mentioned in a parenthetical). His first dramatic demise is told not as a heroic battle, but as an afterthought to a wedding party never explicitly described. The battle the reader is led to believe from the beginning will be the final, major confrontation is a deliberate anti-climax that barely matters in the juggernaut of history. Sam’s ultimate fate is cloudy– there are other, perhaps self-contradictory, epics waiting to be told, but don’t we already know them? Haven’t we heard the story of Mahatsamatman, Tagaratha, Siddartha, Kalkin, Sam a thousand times by our fires? And that of the cat that hunted him, and his mother who wept and the witches with whom she or he might or might not have shared another adventure? Lord of Light is vaguely science fictional in its technology, but its literary aims are mythological.

Which is to say: really great. Worth reading, without equivocation. ( )

Hard to follow at first, but worth persevering with. The story itself is nothing special, and could do with the confusingly named characters and objects being explained better, but the sheer quality of the writing more than makes up for it. In places, it's more like poetry than anything else. ( )

This novel involves mythology, yet again. Zelazny really liked writing about that stuff, it is not very hard to spot that.

A group of highly evolved and powerful posthumans on a planet, are viewed as gods by the other, standard human type denizens.

Being gods, of course there are conflicts, petty squabbles, one-upsmanship and trickery.

The mythology in question is Hindu, this time.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/11/lord-of-light-roger-zelazny.html ( )

This novel involves mythology, yet again. Zelazny really liked writing about that stuff, it is not very hard to spot that.

A group of highly evolved and powerful posthumans on a planet, are viewed as gods by the other, standard human type denizens.

Being gods, of course there are conflicts, petty squabbles, one-upsmanship and trickery.

The mythology in question is Hindu, this time.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/11/lord-of-light-roger-zelazny.html ( )

One of the most magnificent science fiction novels ever written. It explores colonialism, decolonisation, development and freedom. This is essential reading for the lover of science fiction. ( )

I guess I'd have to say that I was a little disappointed in this book, which many consider to be one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time. It certainly starts with a superb concept: a group of technologically advanced refugees from a long dead Earth have colonized a plant, vanquished its native species, and developed a form of immortality through controlled reincarnation. These original colonists rule over their descendents as gods, each having taken the aspect of one of the traditional deities of Indian mythology, until one of their own decides that their rule is corrupt and fights to end it.

I guess that I had several problems with the book. Most importantly, I never developed much empathy for the protagonist Sam or any of the other leading characters. For most of the book his history and motivations remained hidden, and by the time it all came out I just found that I didn't really care much about what happened to him. The character I liked the most was probably Tak, who has been reincarneted as an ape as punishment for an early transgression against the gods. But, after playing an important role in a couple of early chapters, he then disappears for most of the book. Also, one of the characters who plays a key role in the final resolution seemed like an afterthought.

I found that this is one of those science fiction books where the science is really just technologically justified "magic." And finally the narrative style was overly choppy, at times it was hard to know what was a flashback and what was the current storyline. Still the plot was reasonably engaging and I am glad to have read it, but it doesn't join my list of all time science fiction greats. ( )

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1A56F8P... ( )

Link to a review on my personal website (might be in Swedish). ( )

An atmospheric triumph in which Zelazny recreates the Hindu pantheon as a tight-knit ruling technocracy and reincarnation is just another push of the button. Can would-be Buddha Sam give the power back to the people?

Despite its interesting concept, Lord of Light has a few problems for me. The text seems highly disassociative flitting around as if a nirvana cloud seeking out a consciousness to attach. This detachment may or may not be deliberate on behalf of Zelazny--some cosmic stoicism? But there are stretches that become damned hard to slog through.

It's worth it in the end, however--a much more interesting sci-fi martyrdom tale than Stranger in a Strange Land.

It took me nearly a chapter and a half to figure out that the setting was a non-Earth planet, and that (most of) the characters were the crew of a colonization expedition. As part of the colonization process (or growing out of it?), the crew took on the names of Hindu gods, to go along with powers produced by a cultivated combination of biological mutation and technology. The story starts late in a great fight over the self-proclaimed gods' dominion over technology, and their hording of knowledge from the people of the planet (their own descendants? or a new mix? since the planet had home-grown sentient inhabitants when the Earthlings arrived). The gods hold sway over all applications of technology, including the high-tech version of reincarnation which allows consciousness to be transferred from one body to another ... if you pass a mental probe and the gods don't disapprove of anything that you've done.

The protagonist is the focal point of the opposition, choosing his methods, and strategy of optimum effect. He is identified as Buddha early on in the narrative, having taken up the gods' own tricks to thwart them.

In a setting rendered with only broad strokes - we don't know the history of the planet, or how the crew from Earth came to be there, and only a vague guess as to who all the members of that original crew were. The histories of the people are likewise vague, with details showing up in conversation, and their reactions to one another rather than from the third-person narrator. The style is very much that of an oral storyteller, with speaking rhythms and a feeling of telling only what is important to the story, rather than what is important to the storyteller. The great mystery was to parse out what exactly all these people were fighting about, and how their knowledge from Earth was influencing their performances without providing answers as to "why".

I suspect that the "why" of it all is that, even in this new place, using the names of gods from a dead planet, these powerful humans are still essentially human: great, awesome, petty, small, and loving. ( )

I generally am a Zelazny fan, but this one is my very favourite. It captured my attention with the opening sentences and withheld it for the whole time I've been reading it and the many many rereadings.
I had a rare fortune of reading a book on Indian (ugh, Like in India) mythology and this book was the one I read immediately after.
And I highly recommend to follow in my footsteps. ( )

A powerful idea, well executed. One of those books that sticks in your mind afterwards. ( )