Book Review: The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories | Roger Zelazny

From one of the best science fiction writers to ever live, and a personal favorite of mine, fifteen fascinating, vivid stories.

For once, these are my scans, as I own a copy of this.

In my slow delve into the realm of science fiction, Zelazny is one of the first authors I've encountered, sighting him first with an omnibus of the Chronicles of Amber (still unread) and finally really shaking hands through Lord of Light, and now here I am getting to know him better in this collection of fifteen short stories.

Zelazny is, as the groovy youths of today might say, "legit". To put it another way, he's a genuine original. To those unfamiliar with him he may remind you of Neil Gaiman, who cited Zelazny as one of his main influences. Maybe even it will ring a little bit of George R.R. Martin, not in the stories he tells but in the similar poetic, somewhat sparse, evocative prose - though I'm told you might have to go back to Martin's earlier work. The similarities might not be easy to pick up upon if you're looking for them in Song of Ice and Fire.

He was part of the 60s and 70s "New Wave" of writers, those writers which, according to the Wikipedia page, was "characterized by a high degree of experimentation, both in form and in content, a 'literary' or artistic sensibility, and a focus on 'soft' as opposed to hard science." To put it less kindly, they were a group of writers who cared about writing something more intelligent than the standard "pulp" sci-fi story. They wanted to tell a story and didn't care much for petty things like "accuracy".

There's no agreement on the precise date the "New Wave" began or who started it, but enough about that. Back to Zelazny.

I have loved what I have read of Zelazny's work so far. Its evocative, sparse prose, almost like poetry, speaks to me of a writer who cares for the craft of language. His enjoyment of using mythology, and playing with it and spinning it around appeals to me as someone who enjoys watching myths smashed together with glee. So too does he blend science fiction and fantasy, walking an indefinable line between them thus that sometimes you can't tell which is which. (Which is something I enjoy, too.)

Note: the below quotes are extracted from paragraphs and as such may not be complete.

Stories	Quotes
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth	I'd incorporate my soul and trade forty percent of the stock for the answer. I'd give a couple years off my life for the answer. But there doesn't seem to be a lineup of supernatural takers, because no one knows.
The Keys to December	"All right. I can see when I'm beaten. We will be our own serpents when we come into our Eden."
Devil Car	...For his Jenny was a specially designed death car, built for him by the Archengineer of the Geeyem Dynasty far to the East, and all the cunning of that great artificer had gone into her construction.
A Rose for Ecclesiastes	Oh it was late! I had spoken till day came, and still I spoke. I finished Ecclesiastes and continued Gallinger.
The Monster and the Maiden	"We grow fewer every year," he said. "One day we shall no longer have any sacrifices to offer."
Collector's Fever	*"That's what I say. I'll never understand Uncle Sidney, but I appreciate his outrageous tastes, his magpie instinct and his gross meddling in other people's affairs. I appreciate them till I'm sick to the stomach."
This Mortal Mountain	"Maybe it is that mortality is closest to immortality when it accepts a challenge to itself, when it survives a threat. The moment of triumph is the moment of salvation."
This Moment of the Storm	"Whenever you travel between the stars you automatically bury the past. The world you leave will be filled with strangers if you ever return - or caricatures of your friends, your relatives, even yourself."
The Great Slow Kings	Drax had been musing for the past four centuries (theirs was a sluggish sort) over the possibility of life on other planets in the galaxy.
A Museum Piece	"But museums mirror the past, which is dead, the present, which never notices, and transmit the race's cultural heritage to the future, which is not yet born."
Divine Madness	".dust to dust, ashes to Ashes," the man said, which is pretty much the same whichever way you say it.
Corrida	When he stood once more, he bellowed, "You can't do this to me! I'm a man! Not a bull!"
Love Is an Imaginary Number	I shifted, not gears.
The Man Who Loved the Faioli	*"I am one who knows," he said. "I am one who knows that the days of a man are numbered and one who covets their dispositions as he feels them draw to a close."
Lucifer	Across an eternity of darkness the generators began humming. He heard a crackle of static from the Broadcast Panel and he closed his eyes. The sound died.

While the back cover describes the fifteen stories as "strange, beautiful stories", I don't think that's quite accurate. Strange yes, but I don't think "beautiful" is an accurate adjective for all of them.

You could - fairly, reasonably, I think - divide the book into two halves. The first half features most of Zelazny's long-form stories, interrupted only occasionally by a shorter story - "The Monster and the Maiden" is two pages long, "Collector's Fever" is a short comedy. Starting with "The Great Slow Kings" onwards the stories are shorter in nature.

All of the stories here I enjoyed, but some I enjoyed more than others.

My favorites of the longer stories are undoubtedly "The Keys to December", "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", "This Mortal Mountain", and "This Moment of the Storm". They're beautiful, fascinating tales, powerful storylines rooted in the interplay of mythology within a fictional world often quite different from our own, of the tension between the old and the new, the ancient and the modern.

"A Rose for Ecclesiastes" is set on a dying Mars - something, I am lead to understand, which is a trope of the sci-fi genre - but the way it resolves itself is beautiful and unique, the central character of Gallinger unusual in his flawed nature, and while the story ends well for the Martians, he is not quite so lucky.

"This Mortal Mountain" contains perhaps my favorite quote out of all of them. It's the story of a mountain ranging forty miles high and one man's attempts to climb it, and in doing so, touches on philosophical themes. "The Keys to December" beautifully brushes by 'good' and 'evil' and so too by survival, be it ours or another's.

Though not one I loved, "The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth" - which lends its name to the collection - is another excellent story. I'm sure that to a certain section of readers the most important thing will be that Venus is not scientifically accurate, but their opinions can safely be disregarded as the sort of opinion which is uninterested in the merit of story, which is the important thing.

Among the long-form stories the only one I didn't particularly like was "Devil Car", which lacked both the tension of the ancient and the modern, the mythological borrowing, so common to Zelazny's work. It's not really that, though - it's just a dull story, in my opinion, entirely readable, but uninteresting.

What of the shorter stories? "Collector's Fever" is a piece of comedic brilliance, somewhat experimental in form as it is almost exclusively dialogue between the unnamed collector and a member - named Stone - of the universe's only intelligent species of mineral - also called Stone. It's a singularly hilarious tale.

So too is "A Museum Piece" another comical tale, despite the rather serious quote listed above. And so too is "The Great Slow Kings", the amusing tale of two lizard kings who communicate with exceptional lack of speed.

Coming in as a medium-length short story is "Divine Madness", a variation on the regression-in-age trope which, most notably, was the central idea of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". Naturally, Zelazny puts his own unique spin on things, and even by the end, the reader is left with a few questions.

Among the roughly medium-length stories, part of the second half of the book was "Love is an Imaginary Number", which I can't say I loved either. By no means is it a bad story, but here I think Zelazny was rather lazier, and the main character seems to me rather bitter.

But for "Devil Car", every story here has something to recommend it. Many are beautiful, some are funny, all are thought-provoking. I love his enchanting visions of other worlds and realities, and I hope to acquire more of his books. He's one of the best I've ever read - perhaps it's time soon to read Chronicles of Amber.

For this collection - mostly strong, rather in long-form or short-form or so short it spans only a handful of pages, with few stories you could call 'weak' (your mileage may, naturally, vary), I think I can give this story 8.3 out of 10.

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Coming sometime next: a review of Daniel Abraham's The Long Price Quartet, a review of Yasunori Shiono's Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals soundtrack, and other soundtrack and fiction reviews.

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