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Lord of Light
Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods, ruling over their descendants within a framework set up in imitation of Hinduism and ancient India. But even as the "Deicrat" consensus firms, there is dissent: Sam, one of the First, the crew of the original spaceship, remains an "Accelerationist," wanting to spread scientific knowledge to everyone. He starts a one-man crusade to bring down Heaven, a crusade that will lead him to the depths of Hellwell and to Nirvana and back.
Lord of Light is a lively novel with plenty of action -- duels, battles, confrontations, defiances, and repartee. Following the structure of Indian epics, elaborated sub-stories adorn a simple overall plot, with each chapter an episode in Sam's war against Heaven: his taking up arms against Heaven, his revival of Buddhism and the attempts to kill him, his loosing of the demons and possession by one of them, his capture and imprisonment in the Celestial City, his escape and defeat in a climactic battle, his return from Nirvana, and his final victory. (The first chapter is chronologically the second-last, which is a little confusing at first.) While few of the characters have much depth, they manage to be both human and (when they take on their Aspects and wield their Attributes) embodiments of fundamental forces. Sam himself is a crotchety old-timer and a con-man and a trickster - but also an embodiment of military prowess and defiance against odds.
The scientific scaffolding always remains visible -- Shiva's trident is a device, "reincarnation" is done through body farms and mind transfer machinery, the Christian heretic Nirriti uses guided missiles -- and Lord of Light is clearly science fiction rather than fantasy. This is affirmed explicitly within the story by Yama, engineer and god of Death, explaining that demons are "malefic, possessed of great powers, life span, and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape" - but not "supernatural".
"It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy - it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either."Which is a sentiment to warm the hearts of hard science fiction devotees, even without the "technology good, theocracy bad" plot elements.
Despite the underlying epistemology, however, the dominant "mode" of Lord of Light is mythic rather than scientific. Zelazny does more than raid Hinduism and Buddhism for props - he ends up touching on the genuinely numinous, evoking through language and mood something of the power of real religion and myth. Buddhism, for example, is introduced by Sam as a counter to Hinduism, but his own beliefs are ambiguous and when one of his disciples (originally an assassin sent to kill him) attains enlightenment, it is obvious that Buddhism has taken on a life of its own. Lord of Light sports quotations from Indian scriptures at the beginning of each chapter and uses themes and language and ideas taken from them throughout. At one point Sam delivers a three page sermon, for example, and the penultimate paragraph of the novel is
"Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty."This could easily have been tedious or trite but in Zelazny's hands it actually works. Myth and religion never actually break free from the scientific scaffolding, but they manage to make it irrelevant -- one could almost consider Lord of Light a demonstration that their symbolic power does not rest on their metaphysical claims.
Despite its serious approach to religion and its success as epic, Lord of Light is at the same time rather light-hearted, sometimes verging on the flippant.
"It was early morning. Near the pool of the purple lotus, in the Garden of Joys, at the foot of the statue of the blue goddess with the veena, Brahma was located.Zelazny also includes a few truly terrible puns.The girl who found him first thought him to be resting, for his eyes were still open. After a moment, though, she realized that he was not breathing; and his face, so contorted, underwent no changes of expression.
She trembled as she awaited the end of the universe. God being dead, she understood that this normally followed. But after a time she decided that the internal cohesiveness of things might serve to hold the universe together for another hour or so; and such being the case, she thought it advisable to bring the matter of the imminent Yuga to the attention of someone better suited to cope with it."
Somehow all the disparate components of Lord of Light -- humour and epic, science and religion, action and philosophy -- come together in an successful novel. The result is my favourite Zelazny work and indeed one of my favourite science fiction novels of all time. Though it won the Hugo award in 1968, it has I think been relatively neglected; it can bear comparison with the much better known Dune (and I suspect Zelazny was inspired by Frank Herbert's use of Sufism in that work).
Purchase this book from FatBrain. Check out Danny Yee's other book reviews, especially the science fiction and India sections.
Religion nit. Buddhism predates Christianity by centuries, although some of the earliest stuff in the Bible is about the same age. Many of the sects Westerners are familiar with like Zen[1] are quite recent, but the religion itself is very old.
The Qu'ran has a better chance of "outinfluencing" the Bible over the long haul: Islam is growing much faster than Buddhism.
[1] Although Zen, Nichiren, Tibetan and other well known sects are so far removed from Theravada tradition that calling them "Buddhism" is stretching it.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I started reading the Amber novels when the first one appeared, and the complete set of ten (two sets of five is more accurate), accumulated over the years, still sits on my shelves. For a long time, I worried that Zelazny would die mid-way through one of the two sets of five. I know it's childish and petty of me, but I still resent him dying before he could write a third set with Corwin, Merlin, the GhostWheel and Corwin's pattern unraveling some intrigue...
I used to collect Zelanzy and Vance, back in my SMOF days.
While Lord of Light was a refreshing retelling of many Indian themes, and a masterwork of its time, it probably affected far fewer people than Jack of Shadows did.
Jack of Shadows gave a lot of young people a path that they could really follow, one connected more closely with the change in Western society from mythic fantasy and our belief in supernatural beings to the scientific, rules-based approach. Due to its influence, many of the gaming engines of both RPG and Computer games were created, and I've noticed most authors who came to prominence in the decade following invariably listed it amongst their favorite works.
It may have been juvenile in its characterization, never one of Zelazny's strong parts, but it was earth shattering in its impact on a number of writers, similar to the influence of the new breed that Moorcock belonged to.
However, in recent years we've seen a number of Western authors get in tune with Veddic writings and their own personal search for meaning has led them to rediscover Lord of Light. It's more of a reflection of their changing religious beliefs than the strength of the actual work, and thus a modern redefinition says that Lord of Light was the masterwork, when in actual impact any serious author of the time would have claimed Jack of Shadows as the true masterwork.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
If you're also into roleplaying, the game Nobilis might also interest you. It's hard to describe it in one sentence (which is why I linked to a review, instead), but it cites Zelazny, and particularly Lord of Light, as one of its influences. It's out of print and hard to find just at the moment, but an expanded second edition is coming out soon. It's a very sweet-looking game.
And as always, Alexlit's collaborative filtering recommendation system can look at the books you like and love, and suggest more you might enjoy.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Part of the impact of reading the book for the first time is the slow realization that this is NOT a work of fantasy, but SF.
RZ does a masterful job of messing with the readers head through much of the book, leaving one with a sense of satisfaction realization.
This is the key, powerful subtlety of the work, and the mark of the true master story teller. You see, during much of the book the reader is ignorant and RZ gradualy opens their eyes and brings them to " Enlightenment." The readers own thought processes mirror the theme of the book. It's simply marvalous.
I'm afraid that those who read your review before reading the book will be denied that experience, and it is that experience that makes this work not just one of the great works of SF, but one of the great works of literature.
KFG
If you enjoy reading these types of works which weave religion and mythology into their stories, you might want to read some of Joseph Campbell's works, such as Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell was one of the world's foremost scholars on mythology before he died a few years ago and his books are definitely worth a read, even if they are a bit dry at times. In them he often talks about the re-use of old stories and myths in newer works, and I think this would certainly apply to LOL, along with other works, like Star Wars.
If it's supposed to move and doesn't, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.
yup, one of my favorites too - I reread it every few years - it's one of those books that's a joy to read and can be reread again and again. Personally I found the Amber series started off OK but got repetive and confusing over time ("who are all these characters again?"). Just before he Zelazny was working on a book "Donnerjack" with Jane Lindskold - she finished it after he died - if you liked Lord of Light you'll probably like this one - it's basicly VR/sumerian-celtic mythology done in a similar sort fo style to LOL
When I first read it, in high school, I didn't like it! But it has improved with each re-reading, so I think the problem was with me and not with the book.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Aren't the Nine Princes in Amber also akin to Greek Gods? In some ways. They were also much like (but not entirely parallel to)the Plantagenets -- the Norman-English ruling family that repeatedly made war upon each other over several centuries, from Henry II's war with some of his sons to the Wars of the Roses in which the two main branches exterminated each other.
Actaully, Zelazny did write some continuation to the Amber saga in 5 Ambert Short Stories.
In that he wrote:
1. the spikard rings are as ancient as pattern and lorgus
2. the spikard rings are sentient
3. Corwin's blade (grayswild) and Brand's blade (forgot the sword's name, was a while ago), is forged from a spikard ring
4. there is a mirror world (mirros are all interconnected)
5. there is a new powerfull magician who is using mirror world and tries to offset the balance (seems to go after Merlin the most)
6. Dworkin and Suhoy (pattern and lorgus) are preparing for some another grand battle, and real Corwin will be tied into this
There was not much mention of either Ghostwheel nor new Corwin's pattern in those 5 short stories.
You can find the shorts floating online actually 3 or 4 of the short stories actually follow directly after the last Amber book (one or two are positioned between books of the second saga).
too bad we will never know where all this leads to... When I found out about the short stories I said to myself ' great, mysteries will be resolved', but after reading them I was just angry that I ended up with more puzzles waiting to be solved.
ps: sorry for previous post, I hate html default formatting... and I hate having account..
Genre counts. Science fiction, among other things, deals with futurism. And futurism is probably the worst-aging element imaginable. (That, not just in fiction but anywhere.) So for a science fiction work to hold up even 1/3 century is pretty amazing.
That said, Lord of Light can be taken as an exemplar of the sort of scifi that can hold up for a long time. The key is to avoid futurism; rather, take the Asimovian truism to heart, and turn all your tech into magic, and simply remove any tech that may prove troublesome to predict. LoL's contemporary Dune is a great example. There are no serious machines to speak of because of a jihad (how handy!).
Most of the scifi of the sixties and seventies, though, today strikes a reader as rather strange due to the lack of computers. The real future has a terrible way of being unpredictable.
I was originally pointed to this book by a friend of mine who is interested in eastern religions. Although I am more of a sci-fi guy I took it up. And it turned out to be one of the most amazing science fiction books i ever read.
Not only is this a great science book it manages to be religious deep without sounding pretentious or overblown. Mahasamatman (sam) is a pacifist and bhuddist in a culture that is primarily fire and brimstone hinduist. He attempts to change the way the word works, spiritually as well as politically by assuming the role of the budda. Along the way he attracts many people who seem to him to be a lot more suited to the role of the budda, and eventually lives up to his own creation.
This story is truly epic, it spans thousands of years and is a fast and lively read. I would recommend it to everyoneone.
But on to the original reason for my post. If you have not read Zelazny before you should also read some of his other works. Most notibly the Amber series. If you can find 'The Great book of Amber' (a compilation of 10 of his books) you will be very lucky. I beleive that this is the best dimension-hopping sci-fi book ever created. Zelazny is a master of creating new and realistic worlds. And unlike some authors, like niven who I love but can recognize faults in, he can write excellent emotional characterizations as well.
Amber is a series about a family of immortals who have the ability to move from dimension to dimension and modify reality around themselves. But mostly its about the tyranical machinations of the heroes immortal brothers who attempt to take over their homeland after their father disappears and eventually the entire universe. Just read it.
Regards,
R. George Davison
----- 70% of all statistics are completely made up.
Novel I've ever read. I keep having to buy new copies as I keep giving them away to friends :-).
:-).
:-). I discovered these wonderful suprises myself whilst reading the book.
My favourite quote : "So that's what they're playing on their fascist banjo's these days..."
after Yama lectures Sam on the "true" meaning of being a god to the populace
I wish the reviewer hadn't given away the fact that none of the "gods" are real, and that" Niriti the black" was the ships chaplain
I spent the first third of the book wondering what the hell was going on, then immediately had to re-read it once I'd finished it (after going "oh... that's what it all meant").
A *perfect* book !
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
The thing I always liked about OSC is that his novels and stories have very strong morality (or sometimes a strong lack of morality) without forcing religion down your throat. Actually his novels have been critical of organized religion before.
And Buddhism, as in the book in question, was a "reformation" of Hinduism, whose *written* scriptures are about twice as old as the bible.
I agree with the parent posters premise. Being released in '68 hardly makes LOL an ancient tome whose "modern" relevance is surprising, because the *bible* itself is only somewhat middle aged in the pantheon of the written word.
KFG
In Jack of Shadows the opposite is the case. On the surface the fictional world is purely fantasy, but the plot itself is scientific: the main character is concerned (among other things) with finding out the rules that his world obeys, to use them to gain power. In this sense it is truer to science fiction than Lord of Light is.
It is also a very good read.
Personally, I call it "science fantasy". There is a lot of magical stuff going on, but a handwaving explanation of machines and psi powers doesn't really convince me to consider it hard science fiction. This isn't a problem, of course, and in fact is a large part of why the book aged gracefully. Describing in detail how the tech works is usually a recipe for looking quaint later. (Remember the Heinlein novel that described the "computer" that used elaborate 3-dimensional cams inside its mechanical guts? One of the characters was wishing he could put in some 4-dimensional cams to make it more powerful... overclocking, kinda sorta.)
The book would have been awesome if it had just been a straightforward telling of that incredibly brilliant plot. But Zelazny had his own style of writing, and his use of language puts the frosting on top. Where other writers use words as bricks and mortar, to build the story, Zelazny also plays around artistically with the words themselves. At times this leads to pages that are poetically beautiful, at other times this means bad puns and outrageous dialog. In this book, the playing with words is not done too little or too much; it works.
A must-read.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Speciesist. The Rakshasa, demons, "the Glow", and other energy beings were the native inhabitants of the planet. Physical body or no, they had feelings too, you know! The human colonists either destroyed them, imprisoned them, or drove them into hiding. That sounds pretty subjugated to me.
The ordinary human inhabitants of the planet are referred to more than once as the descendents of the original colonists, whether or not they were the crew. We actually meet only two characters positively identified as crew members: the captain Jan Olvegg, and the chaplain Nirriti. The rest of the gods and "First" are simply those who arrived on the ship Star of India, whether crew or not, or their near descendents. Their descendents at greater remove were relegated to a more primitive existence outside the Celestial City, to which they can aspire by building up enough "karma." Cold storage is never mentioned.
Not that I've reread it recently or anything....
And the brethren went away edified.
That said, I have one quibble with the review:
Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods, ruling over their descendants within a framework set up in imitation of Hinduism and ancient India.
I interpreted things a little differently. WARNING: YET ANOTHER PLOT SPOILER COMING
The colony ship carried a very technically competent crew of mostly American or NW European extraction (the chaplain was Christian with an anglo-saxon name, Captain Jan Olvegg was maybe Dutch, and Sam Kalkin certainly seems American), and a large cargo of Hindu Indians with apparently no technical knowledge at all. (This is the one way in which the book has aged -- while India still has plenty of ignorant farmers, they've got very good engineers and coders too and I can't imagine any Indian government loading up the most ignorant of their people on a ship crewed by foreigners.) The destination world turned out not to be completely uninhabited, although a survey from space wouldn't have spotted the inhabitants (beings of pure energy and sea-dwellers), and the crew had to lead in many wars to make the world safe for humans. In the process, they forgot to educate the farmers, or even many of their own children, and the new world settled into the old pattern of peasants, princes, warriors, and Brahmans. There was one big piece of technology made available early and to all who could afford the fees: "re-incarnation" through copying your mind into a tank-grown body. (If you want to populate a world fast, immortality helps. And this particular technology fits right into the Hindu religion -- although having your next life depend on cash rather than how well you've acted doesn't fit, Christians accept much bigger discrepancies.)
The original crew meanwhile had not only kept their grip on technology, but been reincarnated so many times that their particular talents grew into god-like powers. They lived off by themselves in particularly favored real estate ("heaven" -- maybe like Boulder Colorado?), and argued about how to re-introduce the rest of the world to technology without gross disruptions. Of course, the longer they sat and argued, the larger the gap became -- but it did maintain their privileged condition. Sam Kalkin eventually became disgusted with that and set himself up as Prince Siddhartha in some remote area. The story actually begins (chapter 2?) with Sam coming into a town for a new body after a long absence and discovering that things have changed very much -- the First (and some favored descendants) are now officially gods, the body merchants are "the Lords of Karma", and you get karma by feeding coins into "prayer machines" which are slot machines with no payout. Obviously Accelerationism lost, and Accelerationists have the choice of persuading the "gods" to let them into the club, or being reincarnated as dogs, epileptics, or whatever. So Sam insults "Brahma", has his troops overrun the Temple of Karma, gets his new body (and one for Captain Jan Olvegg also), and hauls away some critical machinery. Only after thus using violence to provide for his own present and future reincarnation does he then become the apostle of a non-violent religion. 8-)
Hey, my wife hit on me after I first gave her this book. ;)
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
Slashdot! First you run a story on Jack Vance, now Zelazny! If you do a review on Phil Dick's work you'll be batting a thousand.
I read Lord of Light when I was 16, and I went out and bought everything else I could of his, especially the Courts of Chaos series. By coincidence I rered Dilvish The Damned the other week, it is still as good as I remembered it.
Zelazny had (he died a couple of years ago as I recall) a unique tone to his work; he wasn't afraid to stitch in some poetic stuff amongst the swords and wizardry. Again like Vance he had an eye for sketching credible women in his stories.
Pleasant to see him mentioned here where he might posthumously gain new readers!
I remember being awestruck by this book when I read it many years ago (though not 1968, I was a bit young then :-). I'm not sure if this was the first of the set, but Zelazny actually did a few of books based on various religious themes/styles. Eye of Cat covers American Indian themes (don't recall being able to get into it though), and Creatures of Light and Darkness uses egyptian mythology in a similar way and really rocked.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Hi.
I began my notorious career in trolling because I thought it would be fun to get reactions out of the regular Slashdot readers. To doing so I've posted trick links to corpses, written paranoid, homoerotic articles on members of the Open Source community, and in general made a pest out of myself by violating others' good taste and personal value.
Probably the most immediately disturbing of my habits, as I noted above, is posting articles that detail a false gay homosexual past for members of the software community, such as ESR, Rob Malda, Alan Cox, RMS, and others. Usually in these stories I create, the main character is a desperate homosexual who commits acts of sodomy left and right, without remorse for his actions. I make people who truly care seem like vice-ridden, unconsciousable monsters!
This stuff just is not funny; in fact, my own son stumbled across my comments one day and has been leary of me ever since and won't call or visit. I'll never forgive myself for the chasm between us.
I now realize how disgusting and even damaging unintentionally looking at a gutted human corpse or reading graphic descriptions about anal sex with men can be.
It is my sincere hope that CmdrTaco, the other Slashdot staff, and you, the reader, can find it in your conscience to forgive me for the awful things I have done to the Slashdot community.
Thank you.
I fondly recall reading the Amber chronicles, perhaps some of my most treasured books.
...
If you've never read the amber series, and you need something to do this summer, there is a "Complete collection" that can be had fairly cheaply. It will keep you engrossed and interested for a very long time
I recently re-read Lord of Light for what must have been the fourth or fifth time. I also re-read his books Creatures of Light and Darkness, which features characters who take on the roles of Egyptian deities, and Isle of the Dead, wherein a human become a sort of avatar of an alien god. If you enjoyed any of these, check out the others too.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
Maybe par for the course, but you probably should warn folks -- the book starts out with the reader very much in the dark.
Machine enabled Telepathy..clikidty clack ticker tock, an excellent book. But like several have pointed out The Nine Princes in Amber is in my opinion his best work and well worth reading. RZ has MANY books worth reading.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.
This is one of my favorite science fiction books. Zelazny always married the mythic to the scientific. Aren't the Nine Princes in Amber also akin to Greek Gods? Pantheistic religions have always believed that earth is a reflection of heaven.
Lord of the Light is his most extended fugue on that theme. The book isn't very politically correct, though. The bad guys are Hindu gods and a follower of Christianity. The hero follows the path of Buddha on purely pragmatic grounds.
During the BBS years my handle was Dworkin. Very few grasped the reference. :( My current nick is still an extension of Dworkin, the mad hunchback.
I had named my machines ghostwheel, logrus and pattern, and for a year used Dilvish in muds and d&d sessions. For a great read, check out _Unicorn Variations_ if you haven't already.
HIs characterization was supreme. If any characters could be alive, his would. But what I most enjoyed were the incredible worlds he would create. I've never had a problem separating fiction from reality, but his worlds were so real that I often imagined myself cursing Stryggaldwir. In some passages he'd seem an Impressionist, in others Cubist...
I've re-read lol every few years since I first encountered it in the early eighties, and the themes wriggle around on me each time. The bit that struck me when I read it last year, perhaps because I read Age of Spiritual Machines about the same time, was the denial of reincarnation for political/religious beliefs.
Sure, there is the religious/secular, technologist/antitechnology, Buddhist/Hindu, stuff going on, (and check out Creatures of Light and Darkness, for his treatment of the Egyptian pantheon), but the aspect that I find chilling and relevant these days, and why I still buy copies of this book for friends, is the exploration of what it means to have a winner-take-all society (like ours), when winning means god-like powers and eternal life while losing means a life of hardship followed by ashes to ashes.
Incidentally, iBooks (http://www.ibooksinc.com/) is in the process of reprinting all (they say) of Zelazny's books, in nice-looking trade editions. Lord of Light is out yet, though.
That's cool... This book is #24 on the
Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List.
The point? That I believe that this is really his view on religion; that it is an allegorical history more than anything else; an integral part of society. And I think he would agree with the statement that all religion has some truth in it.
All that said, he is a devout mormon! I have a lot of respect for someone who can reconcile a fundamentalist religion with these kinds of beliefs; not that I think they're contradictory, just that it takes an amazing amount of will and conviction to continue to hold beliefs like this in that kind of an environment.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
This is his best work in this vein, although Creatures of Light And Darkness is also excellent.
It is certainly entertaining with the thousand and one details that come to mind to make a coherent world.
I recall with amusement the prayo-mats (think arcade like devices with flashing lights, etc. that send your prayers to heaven for a few coins), and someone filling a bunch of them with slugs.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Once, I was reading this book in the bar (only place you could smoke) at an airport. As I was leaving, the waitress gave me a napkin with something written on it. I was a bit groggy, so I was out the door and down the hall before I read it and understood what it said.
:)
"I too am an enlightened individual. Nice brand of smokes!"
I had no idea what she was talking about for the longest time. Then I searched around on Amazon and found that there is a book called "Lords of Light" by Deepak Chopra (who is a "new age" writer). Apparently, she had misread the title.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
This same structure is found in Homer's Odysee. IIRC from freshman literature in high school (a disturbing number of years ago), the term for this was in media res or "in the middle" (someting like that anyway).
Rather effective for a heroic work as you see the penultimate part of the plot and the character's struggles to reach that point, with the final segment providing the climactic resolution / bad-guy-smiting. This yields a sense of inevitability to the character's actions, as they are drawn to their fate in the future. This "charmed life" atmosphere is of course fitting for a heroic character/story arc. So the use here could be a deliberate nod to Homer.
OTOH, this device is used everywhere in literature (and things derived from literature such as TV shows and movies, eg. how many times has a Star Trek episode gone like this: two minutes of stuff from the 'end' of that show's plot, intro/credits, back to the beginning...). Consider that this meme has had a few millenia to propogate through the writing culture and it's no wonder that this device is so frequently employed. So maybe RZ wasn't thinking in particular about Homer at the time.
--
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"Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants --"
From what I can remember, ALL the human inhabitants were descended from the spaceship crew
The planets original inhabitants were the demons (in the form of "fire elementals")
Correct me if I'm wrong, it's 30 years since I read the book
What about the Bible? It's remained the same for century upon century and still is a 'best seller'. Even more copies of it exist in more languages than all the books you name above, put together! Now that's longevity no matter how you look at it, even if you don't believe it to be valid as the source for an entire religion. I wonder if the Khoran or Buddhist writings are approaching that same worldwide kind of influence, being that they haven't been around as long?
I've never read anything other than the Chronicles of Amber - well worth purchasing in the omnibus form since it comprised of 10 books originally. Lots of great ideas, nasty characters with plenty of backstabbing. Zelanzy is the master of the retrofitted plot - things are rarely as they seem. The Amber series is fantasy fiction as it should be, not the tired swords and sorcery dribble that has come from every post tolkien wannabe with a fetish for elves, dwarves and orcs.
Slightly off topic, Zelazny/RPG fans should definitely check out the Amber Diceless Roleplaying game published by Phase Press (dunno if it is still in print though) - revolutionised our RPG group's perspective of gaming. Why be a 1st level fighter on a dungeon crawl or a poe-faced vampire pretending to be human when you can instead be a demi-god who can reshape the fundamental nature of reality.