Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
Jun. 1st, 2015 10:06 amLord of Light used to be one of my most favourite books. Set on a world populated by a one-way colony ship from Earth, people acquire various scientific-flavoured magic powers and set up as Hindu gods, bolstered by body-transferring equipment which makes gods immortal and humans reincarnate according to the gods interpretation of the karma and caste system. Many other things parallel Hindu traditions, such as energy beings on the planet playing the role of demons.
The story is the story of one who overthrows them. It's fairly short but dense, feeling like classic epic fantasy of a main character who is Really Special. But the whole thing of gods striding about, being overthrown, and discussing theology really appealed to me.
Now I can see a lot more of the problematic aspects as always happens with books I used to love :(
I'm also interested in what I saw and missed in the worldbuilding. It's suggested that the crew were originally Christian, and mostly seem to not care much about any underlying truth to the religion other than the one they've made themselves, but the main character (and the author?) hints that although he appropriates Buddhist teachings for his own purposes, he thinks there's more to them, and one of the characters remains Christian, and opposes the gods hierarchy to bad effect.
However, it seemed the culture was originally Indian (the name of the ship was "Star of India"), and people seem to have typically-Indian body types. And I wonder, is it only a few of the crew who came from a Christian culture? Or the crew were, but the passengers weren't? Or the Indian culture was completely artificially induced by the gods?
ETA: The first paragraph of the wikipedia entry is awesome: "Zelazny's close friend and fellow science fiction/fantasy author, George R. R. Martin (who later reused the names "Lord of Light" and "Sam" for major characters in A Song of Ice and Fire), describes in his afterword to Lord of Light how Zelazny once told him that the entire novel sprang from a single pun (or spoonerism): Then the fit hit the Shan."
The story is the story of one who overthrows them. It's fairly short but dense, feeling like classic epic fantasy of a main character who is Really Special. But the whole thing of gods striding about, being overthrown, and discussing theology really appealed to me.
Now I can see a lot more of the problematic aspects as always happens with books I used to love :(
I'm also interested in what I saw and missed in the worldbuilding. It's suggested that the crew were originally Christian, and mostly seem to not care much about any underlying truth to the religion other than the one they've made themselves, but the main character (and the author?) hints that although he appropriates Buddhist teachings for his own purposes, he thinks there's more to them, and one of the characters remains Christian, and opposes the gods hierarchy to bad effect.
However, it seemed the culture was originally Indian (the name of the ship was "Star of India"), and people seem to have typically-Indian body types. And I wonder, is it only a few of the crew who came from a Christian culture? Or the crew were, but the passengers weren't? Or the Indian culture was completely artificially induced by the gods?
ETA: The first paragraph of the wikipedia entry is awesome: "Zelazny's close friend and fellow science fiction/fantasy author, George R. R. Martin (who later reused the names "Lord of Light" and "Sam" for major characters in A Song of Ice and Fire), describes in his afterword to Lord of Light how Zelazny once told him that the entire novel sprang from a single pun (or spoonerism): Then the fit hit the Shan."