I'd sign my name if I was me. Naaah... I don't have karma issues.
I'm guessing the commenter above is roman_mir, who is well known for taking his extreme libertarian views way too far and in the wrong direction, ending way past the doorstep and the living room of fascism and heading straight for the toilet area. So when that karma wheel turns, he gets burned.
But since he is riding high on his delusion steed, he translates down-modding as "attention".
It's not cognitive dissonance because there is no contradiction. Ask yourself this. What sort of "industry" is going to be created to dodge taxes? The answer obviously won't be "building airplanes".
Except that there is contradiction. On the logical level, we are supposed to believe that a government which would implement higher taxes in order to raise funds would then allow loopholes which would let those taxes slip through their fingers. Because, they are all... you know, stupid and lazy and incompetent I guess.
On a historical level, he is talking about Truman-Eisenhower years. You know... the "golden age" of the 1950s. When the interstates were built, when owning a home, a car and a TV became the norm, when unemployment was at record lows... when USA was "building airplanes".
Nobody paid 94 or whatever % taxes. Entire industries were created to avoid taxes...
Second: what kind of logic is that, marginal tax rates were high and so this is why the economy was better or whatever the point is? That's a huge logical fail, none of that follows.
He claims that higher taxes caused "entire industries" to be created, and in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE he denounces that as illogical. If that ain't cognitive dissonance...
Nobody paid 94 or whatever % taxes. Entire industries were created to avoid taxes
Second: what kind of logic is that, marginal tax rates were high and so this is why the economy was better or whatever the point is? That's a huge logical fail, none of that follows.
How's that cognitive dissonance working out for ya?
I think Sam's character in Lord of Light definitely evolves over the course of the novel, starting right at the beginning, where the attempt to stick him with a damaged corpus stirs him out of his self-satisfied self-absorption into open rebellion against a system he has tacitly supported since the end of the conquest phase of the colonization process.
Naah... Sam had it all planned long ago. It's not by coincidence that he chose an identity of Prince Siddhartha - i.e. the Buddha. Or that he came to the city with his troops. And his personal physician. Or that he went on an information gathering mission before he made contact with Brahma. He was plotting a battle with heaven long before that. One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding. And all that.
And I definitely was not projecting. Zelazny spent a good twenty continuous minutes behaving like a man being tortured - and the more that ur-Comic Book Guy piled on the praise, the more tormented he looked. I'll stipulate that suffering the praise of an obvious fool is an ordeal in itself, but there was clearly more to his reaction than that.
Well... maybe not the precisely right choice of words. What I'm saying is, perhaps your own dislike of the material that fanboy was praising (Amber), makes it all appear to you much more... serious, than it actually was. E.g. Had the fanboy been discussing Lord of Light instead, perhaps you would have seen less "torture and torment" and more simple boredom and discomfort from having to politely stand there and take it - praises and same old comments he probably heard thousand times already, pouring over him without end when he was probably already tired.
Again, I see nothing in the Amber Chronicles that would indicate that he was not having fun while he was writing them. Or that he "sold out".
But that wouldn't exactly qualify as a "trilogy", would it?
Potato, potahto... Two more books (at least) were right there, between the pages and chapters of the Lord of Light. And I would love to be able to read them. Alas...
Anywho, clearly you and I disagree about the Amber Decology. Otherwise, mebbe not so much.
There's no need for disagreement as such. We could just be having a discussion, voicing opinions, exchanging ideas, talking about the subject of Zelazny's work... Just because we are on the internet, doesn't mean we have to take sides and argue about them.
Psychology, there is no way to explain why something did not work. Theories exist as to why it did work, when it is successful, but we can't investigate, measure, and fix the problem. We also cannot state as fact that a condition is resistant to all known treatments, as we can with other medical fields.
If it doesn't work on its own, and we can't explain what it does, and all it is supposed to be doing is restoring the balance of chemicals in the brain... shouldn't someone have figured this out by now?
Not trying to be a smartass here but, shouldn't a hardware+software paradigm of the human brain and psyche be intuitively clear to someone on slashdot?
Psychotherapy is debugging of a software problem which may or may not be caused by a hardware problem. Chemicals only fix or turn on or off faulty hardware. And both are at best empirical because we know almost nothing about the hardware, and all of the software is custom made.
Not seeing a difference here. Either an antibiotic works, or it doesn't, because it's ineffective against that class of bacteria, or it's a mutant bacteria, or increased stomach acid, or you took it with something that the label says not to take it with.
The dose makes the poison.
A weakened antibiotic may not work sufficiently well to stop the infection entirely, though regularly it would, allowing it to resurge or spread. Or, it may provide an environment for the disease to achieve immunity to that particular antibiotic.
Said antibiotic still works against that disease - just not in that particular case anymore.
And in turn, they would have indeed committed suicide by placebo.
That would be death by placebo TREATMENT, not by placebo EFFECT. A neutral, non-sugary, placebo pill would create the same placebo effect, but it would not trigger a high blood sugar reaction in diabetics.
And I do believe that we are talking about the effect, not the treatment here. Cause, one could just as well choke on a placebo pill and die from a placebo treatment. Or slip on placebo pills spilled on top of the stairs and break one's neck. Or get run over by a truck transporting placebo pills. Or shot by a placebo merchant who paid for the gun and bullets with money earned by providing placebo pills to various studies.
In none of those cases would the patient/victim experience the placebo effect.
For the patient to get better, they have to want to change;
"Patient has to want to change" is a shorthand/metaphor for "a patient has to accept the existence of a problem, and in order to find the cause of it so it can be treated, he or she must openly discuss the problem and the underlying issues with a trained professional".
But when I take a antibiotic, it either works or it doesn't.
Weeeell... Elevated stress can cause an increase in production of stomach acid, which can inhibit certain antibiotics, when taken orally. More like "thinking positive" than "believing", and weakening the effect than "not working" but you get the picture.
Just like meta-studies which give their results in percentages of incidence in treatment and control groups, without listing the actual number of incidences in either group. Or meta-studies that refer to other meta-studies whose results are suspiciously close to, or even below, the stated confidence interval - i.e. results which are quite close to coincidence.
"As much as 5 percent" means jack shit when your study has a 1 in 20 chance of producing false positives.
He was not unappreciated - all those Hugos and Nebulas testify to that. He is under-appreciated - as in among those who read Science Fiction few have read his books, and fewer even had read anything but the Amber chronicles.
On a side note, I can't help to think that it has to do with his name. Most people probably can't even pronounce his last name, and on top of that all lists sorted by the author's name place his books at the very end. Now... had he used a nom de plume like Aaron Aardvark...
Hmm... Not trying to be "all up in your face" here, but I am having a feeling that you are disappointed for not finding in his other works something you think you've found in some of his works. Which, I can imagine, is not that hard to do when Zelazny is in question. There are layers upon layers of "stuff" in all his works, making it very easy for everyone to dig up something they like. Whether that something is the thing that was supposed to be dug up in that particular story is something else entirely.
As for character development, on one hand I am not sure that your claim regarding Corwin holds water. Sure, he is continuously pragmatic, detached and a bit of a Mary Sue, but he does change with the story. Or at least his goals and (re)actions do.
On the other hand, Zelazny's heroes don't really achieve life changing epiphanies or much change at all. At best, they change alliances, leaving character changes to supporting characters. And even those are more of reveals than changes. Whodathunk that Random would make a good king, amiright? Or that Kubera is a slim tech wizard under all that fat? Or that The Count would be on the side of the Closers (not a spoiler I hope)? Oh right... he forgot to tell us that in the beginning. Because those are all mostly final act reveals, not really changes in character.
Besides... All his heroes tend to be kind of Mary Sues and/or immortal. Both of which kinda kills character development. They are either perfectly suited for the role they are about to play OR, they are hundreds and thousands of years old immortals/gods with their characters already burned in beyond change.
The man was a word wizard, not a character conjurer. As such, he could squeeze art into and out of even the most prosaic stories, but his heroes all look alike. And my only problem with his work is the same problem I have with his collaborations - not enough Zelazny. And of those, Deus Irae makes me most... irate. Damn, are those bits by P.K. Dick clashing with those by Zelazny. With Dick winning, as it's the only Zelazny book that left me depressed in the end.
Regarding your encounter with Zelazny and a fan, I am again having a feeling that you are projecting a bit there. I never did have a chance to meet him in person, years, oceans an wars got in the way, but I can't help to notice that the man reading from "Blood of Amber" here is having fun. And if art is a human attempt to express and encapsulate a human experience into a medium, and then transfer that experience to another human through that medium - he was clearly creating art.
As for Lord of Light... I know, I know... I should be smarter than that. But there is a 12-year-old me somewhere in the back of my mind simply wanting "More!". That's what I meant with that "trilogy". Though... A prequel is basically already sketched out right there in the book, and a collection of stories about "Further adventures of Light and Death" would have been awesome and you know it.:)
And one of the things I most respect about him is that every book is different. Unlike, for instance, Zelazny, who started out so brilliantly, but who turned into the Amber Corporation after his divorce (yes, I know they're very popular books - and I don't care - try reading his fabulous Hugo/Nebula winner Lord of Light, or his little remembered Isle of the Dead, or his novelette The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and see if you don't agree that the Amber series is really pretty dismal stuff by comparison)
Umm... His only divorce came in 1966, same year he married again, and it predates almost everything he ever published. He never divorced his second wife, though they were separated during his later years which he spent with Jane Lindskold.
As for his opus... if you're looking for different, you've clearly not read enough of Zelazny. The man put out three books of poetry while he wrote those Amber books you mention, did a dozen collaborations with other SF writers, won 4 Hugos (and other awards) from '76 to '87 alone, developed a video game, did ~20 other books, edited over half a dozen others... leaving 2 unfinished books at the time of his death. He clearly had decades of books left in him when he died. Sure, his opus revolves around mythologies, gods and immortals a lot but he didn't dwell on a single myth in his explorations, always going to the next one.
And I don't see what is your problem with series. A long story is long. Particularly if it is loaded with characters. Personally, I would have loved if he had done a trilogy around the Lord of Light.
As for why I find him to be underrated despite all those awards - the man wrote in so many references and subtext into his stories, years later you can find in them something you didn't know was there first couple of times you've read them. Plus, being a poet, he knew how to set up those little ambushes mid-paragraph where you least expected them. And you can tell that he had so much fun writing. His stories are full of tongue-in-cheek wordplay and jokes. Without trying to be funny, like sat, Harry Harrison.
Well... While happy endings ARE optional, science fiction is the only literary genre built on its built in hope. Stories mostly dealing with the future, where humans still live - i.e. we haven't killed ourselves off.
Almost anything by James Tiptree, Jr. AKA Raccoona Sheldon AKA Alice Bradley Sheldon.
Later learning that she shot herself (after shooting hear "84-year-old, nearly-blind husband" in his sleep), leaving a "suicide note... written years earlier, and saved until needed" came as no surprise.
A personal close second is a funny one. Literally. "Bill, the Galactic Hero" by Harry Harrison. Not realizing at the time that it was satire it just came out depressing as hell, even a bit scary. I was nine or ten when I read it, lying sick in bed, running a high fever. A brain which is not fully functional has "issues" with grasping satire.
People care for other beings they find to be sentient. I.e. Things that are like "us". Because, when we recognize (consciously or not) that something or someone is in some way "like us" - our brain tells us that IT IS US. Brains are crazy like that.
So, you may not care for whales, or pandas, or people in far off lands, or mentally deranged beggars in the streets or your next door neighbor - until it kicks in that they are like you. And it makes no difference if they are 7, 7 billion or 70 billion of them. Once your brain realizes the similarity of "them" to "you" and they stop being the "others" - you can't help it anymore. They are you and you are them, and on some deep buried level you know it.
That does not mean you will instantly like "them". You may actually end up hating those people or animals you were ambivalent about. You'll actually hate the aspects of yourself which you don't like and all - but you'll be caring. Hating is caring too, just not the good kind.
Just attach a "certificate" to those pieces of metal saying something like:
"This piece of metal is unique representation of ___________ nation's glory and superiority over other nations. Priceless though it may be, we have spent ________________$ to acquire it. It is very valuable. Really."
There. Now it's worth as much as the highest bidder would like to pay for it.
...it is a logically invalid claim presented as if it is a valid argument, with the aim of inflicting psychological pain. It is also a form of character assassination as it is used to present the other side as evil and morally and otherwise corrupt.
Haven't you heard that only bad people go to hell, where they are then buggered with hot pokers by devils for eternity?
Also, sticks, stones, sentences... Same shit to pSyche. Stress.
We can have a lot of freedom in life, but the freedom to not be offended is not an option.
Freedom to BE offended IS a part of and based on the freedom of speech. Only way everyone may be guaranteed a freedom from being offended would be through government's or some other organization's BAN on being offended and/or doing things anyone anywhere may find offensive.
The two theories diverge when it comes to the ultimate source of life which Natural Selection says evolved spontaneously as a single cell life form from which all other life evolved, and ID suggesting that our DNA may have come from elsewhere.
Sorry, but you are reading-in things that you like into an ideology which doesn't support it. BTW, how did you like Prometheus?
First off, let me correct your Natural Selection definition. Not "a single cell life form" but life formS. Also, underneath that is a layer (or more accurately LAYERS) of inorganic matter reacting for thousands of millennia until some of it started clicking together, creating amino acids.
It strikes me that Intelligent Design is compatible with Natural Selection.
What you seem (to me) to be thinking is that when you get right down to it, life and intelligent life is a pretty straightforward path - from sub-atomic particles, to simple hydrogen, to more complex elements and molecules (I mean, WTF would atoms HAVE to link into molecules? Says who?), to inorganic, to organic, to cells, colonies, multicellular organisms, plants, animals, intelligence. I mean... it's as if someone actually planned it that way? Or at least as if the laws of the universe have strangely conspired to make it so.
So, isn't that exactly what ID claims to be the case?
Well... for one, that "pretty straightforward path" is anything but. It is more like a game of statistics. Throwing shit at the wall and seeing what will stick after a couple of billion years. Also, just because that whole carbon-hydrogen thing worked for us, doesn't mean that somewhere else it didn't go in some other direction.
Plus there is all that blackish-darkish... umm... stuff... out there that the most of the universe is made of. We are actually here by accident - IF the whole thing is "designed". Designer was actually making all that other stuff. We are the waste product of the universe.
And the I-D-ers will have none of that. Cause their version always ends with Jesus/Jehovah deliberately, purposefully making the ENTIRE universe just so he could make US. None of that "throw the basic elements in the bowl and see what comes out of it" crap. And not only that, but because their thinking is led by fairy tales - they are vehemently refusing every single step in the chain above. "God made us in HIS image, not in the image of monkeys!"
That what you are seeing as compatibility is them making compromises in the face of indisputable facts. "OK, both we AND the monkeys came from the same ancestors, but God still made US into not-monkeys. We are still created in his image."
Sadly, USA culture has been indoctrinated with the idea that socialism is evil, and the same label has been attached to communism as well. Which is really silly as communism is still very much a theoretical concept, and socialism is simply "taking care of your own" economy expanded on the entire community. But since it is spread over the entire community it is no longer nepotism but humanism.
On the other hand, capitalism has always been fundamentally flawed. It's great at pushing the making of more widgets faster and cheaper - but that's about it. It completely fails to grasp any immaterial human-benefiting concept such as "happiness" or even rather material concepts such as "well being". All it deals with is more, faster, cheaper.
The thing is, the world has moved away from the "widget based" economy some time ago. We've been running an "information based" economic system since Nixon "shocked" the world economy into using a fiat dollar for all their trading. Fiat currency is just a law, and law is just information encapsulated in such a way that the practical implementation of it protects the interests of a certain group of people.
And when your economy is just numbers in a computer somewhere - more, faster, cheaper no longer matters. After all, you can now get more by trading faster, and the process is ridiculously cheap compared to the amount of money it is able to produce literally out of thin air.
And capitalism sucks at trying to deal with immaterial. Just look at patent system, music industry and anything else dealing with "intellectual property". All the nonsense happening there is a product of a system used to dealing with physical, material, scarce things - now having to deal with immaterial things which spread and multiply on their own with each contact with a human. You know... Ideas. Information.
The sooner that is accepted the better off we're all going to be. Cause right now, some are desperately trying to hammer a negative liberty system like capitalism, onto a positive liberty society we are trying to be. Socialism is a little better at it, cause in it everyone essentially trades in some negative liberty so that everyone could have a chance to achieve positive liberty.
Only problem is, most people have very low motivation towards positive liberty, or none at all. Many are perfectly happy being a couch potato. So, you must either trick them OR limit their negative liberty further and MAKE them seek positive liberty for themselves. Somewhere on that scale, there is a point where most people in a society have all their material needs satisfied and are dedicated to achieving their full potential. Just around a corner from that point starts the slippery slope towards a totalitarian society where everyone MUST achieve their full potential for the glory of the society.
You are talking from an ignorant position, looking at past with rose-colored glasses and seeing some "gilded age" that never actually was.
I don't have the time or inclination to point out all the uprisings to you, or to pick the ones directly related to poverty but feel free to go through them by yourself. It will take you a while though.
And for those that refuse to work and make their own livings...well, lets also turn the clock back, and stop locking people up for ingesting whatever chemical they want for recreation. That would free up TONS of jail space for those few that refuse to learn a lesson and attempt to use crime as a means to earn a living.
Sooo... Let me get this straight.
Humanitarian taxpayer dollar for feeding, clothing, educating and keeping the poor healthy is BAD, but it is A-OK to spend that same dollar feeding, clothing, educating and keeping the poor healthy - IN A PRISON.
And since you are suggesting that the drugs convictions are taken off the table - that would be a dollar spent on thieves and murdering thieves. Instead of on poor single parents and their children. Who could then grow up to be thieves and murdering thieves.
I.e. Money would be spent on the poor who were dumb enough to get caught stealing your TV/stereo/laptop/car, selling it for a pittance and causing you property damage along the way. Possibly killing and raping you and your wife/sister/children/mother/father/dog/hamster while they're at it. Hey... you can't judge people for raping hamsters when they're on all sorts of drugs and the only treatment they can get is a concrete cell.
But wouldn't it be simpler and more effective if you'd simply rape and kill your wife/sister/children/mother/father/dog/hamster, burn your house down and then shoot yourself - leaving all your remaining assets to the local prison population? You know... cut out the middle man.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd sign my name if I was me. Naaah... I don't have karma issues.
I'm guessing the commenter above is roman_mir, who is well known for taking his extreme libertarian views way too far and in the wrong direction, ending way past the doorstep and the living room of fascism and heading straight for the toilet area.
So when that karma wheel turns, he gets burned.
But since he is riding high on his delusion steed, he translates down-modding as "attention".
It's not cognitive dissonance because there is no contradiction. Ask yourself this. What sort of "industry" is going to be created to dodge taxes? The answer obviously won't be "building airplanes".
Except that there is contradiction.
On the logical level, we are supposed to believe that a government which would implement higher taxes in order to raise funds would then allow loopholes which would let those taxes slip through their fingers.
Because, they are all... you know, stupid and lazy and incompetent I guess.
On a historical level, he is talking about Truman-Eisenhower years. You know... the "golden age" of the 1950s.
When the interstates were built, when owning a home, a car and a TV became the norm, when unemployment was at record lows... when USA was "building airplanes".
Nobody paid 94 or whatever % taxes. Entire industries were created to avoid taxes...
Second: what kind of logic is that, marginal tax rates were high and so this is why the economy was better or whatever the point is? That's a huge logical fail, none of that follows.
He claims that higher taxes caused "entire industries" to be created, and in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE he denounces that as illogical.
If that ain't cognitive dissonance...
Nobody paid 94 or whatever % taxes. Entire industries were created to avoid taxes
Second: what kind of logic is that, marginal tax rates were high and so this is why the economy was better or whatever the point is? That's a huge logical fail, none of that follows.
How's that cognitive dissonance working out for ya?
I think Sam's character in Lord of Light definitely evolves over the course of the novel, starting right at the beginning, where the attempt to stick him with a damaged corpus stirs him out of his self-satisfied self-absorption into open rebellion against a system he has tacitly supported since the end of the conquest phase of the colonization process.
Naah... Sam had it all planned long ago. It's not by coincidence that he chose an identity of Prince Siddhartha - i.e. the Buddha.
Or that he came to the city with his troops. And his personal physician.
Or that he went on an information gathering mission before he made contact with Brahma.
He was plotting a battle with heaven long before that.
One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding.
And all that.
And I definitely was not projecting. Zelazny spent a good twenty continuous minutes behaving like a man being tortured - and the more that ur-Comic Book Guy piled on the praise, the more tormented he looked. I'll stipulate that suffering the praise of an obvious fool is an ordeal in itself, but there was clearly more to his reaction than that.
Well... maybe not the precisely right choice of words.
What I'm saying is, perhaps your own dislike of the material that fanboy was praising (Amber), makes it all appear to you much more... serious, than it actually was.
E.g. Had the fanboy been discussing Lord of Light instead, perhaps you would have seen less "torture and torment" and more simple boredom and discomfort from having to politely stand there and take it - praises and same old comments he probably heard thousand times already, pouring over him without end when he was probably already tired.
Again, I see nothing in the Amber Chronicles that would indicate that he was not having fun while he was writing them. Or that he "sold out".
But that wouldn't exactly qualify as a "trilogy", would it?
Potato, potahto... Two more books (at least) were right there, between the pages and chapters of the Lord of Light.
And I would love to be able to read them. Alas...
Anywho, clearly you and I disagree about the Amber Decology. Otherwise, mebbe not so much.
There's no need for disagreement as such.
We could just be having a discussion, voicing opinions, exchanging ideas, talking about the subject of Zelazny's work...
Just because we are on the internet, doesn't mean we have to take sides and argue about them.
Psychology, there is no way to explain why something did not work. Theories exist as to why it did work, when it is successful, but we can't investigate, measure, and fix the problem. We also cannot state as fact that a condition is resistant to all known treatments, as we can with other medical fields.
If it doesn't work on its own, and we can't explain what it does, and all it is supposed to be doing is restoring the balance of chemicals in the brain... shouldn't someone have figured this out by now?
Not trying to be a smartass here but, shouldn't a hardware+software paradigm of the human brain and psyche be intuitively clear to someone on slashdot?
Psychotherapy is debugging of a software problem which may or may not be caused by a hardware problem.
Chemicals only fix or turn on or off faulty hardware.
And both are at best empirical because we know almost nothing about the hardware, and all of the software is custom made.
Not seeing a difference here. Either an antibiotic works, or it doesn't, because it's ineffective against that class of bacteria, or it's a mutant bacteria, or increased stomach acid, or you took it with something that the label says not to take it with.
The dose makes the poison.
A weakened antibiotic may not work sufficiently well to stop the infection entirely, though regularly it would, allowing it to resurge or spread.
Or, it may provide an environment for the disease to achieve immunity to that particular antibiotic.
Said antibiotic still works against that disease - just not in that particular case anymore.
All I'm saying is that the study reeks of confirmation bias.
And since when is a single sample case anything but anecdotal?
And in turn, they would have indeed committed suicide by placebo.
That would be death by placebo TREATMENT, not by placebo EFFECT.
A neutral, non-sugary, placebo pill would create the same placebo effect, but it would not trigger a high blood sugar reaction in diabetics.
And I do believe that we are talking about the effect, not the treatment here.
Cause, one could just as well choke on a placebo pill and die from a placebo treatment.
Or slip on placebo pills spilled on top of the stairs and break one's neck.
Or get run over by a truck transporting placebo pills.
Or shot by a placebo merchant who paid for the gun and bullets with money earned by providing placebo pills to various studies.
In none of those cases would the patient/victim experience the placebo effect.
For the patient to get better, they have to want to change;
"Patient has to want to change" is a shorthand/metaphor for "a patient has to accept the existence of a problem, and in order to find the cause of it so it can be treated, he or she must openly discuss the problem and the underlying issues with a trained professional".
But when I take a antibiotic, it either works or it doesn't.
Weeeell...
Elevated stress can cause an increase in production of stomach acid, which can inhibit certain antibiotics, when taken orally.
More like "thinking positive" than "believing", and weakening the effect than "not working" but you get the picture.
Just like meta-studies which give their results in percentages of incidence in treatment and control groups, without listing the actual number of incidences in either group.
Or meta-studies that refer to other meta-studies whose results are suspiciously close to, or even below, the stated confidence interval - i.e. results which are quite close to coincidence.
"As much as 5 percent" means jack shit when your study has a 1 in 20 chance of producing false positives.
The US is the only nation that allows pharma ads
You should travel more.
He was not unappreciated - all those Hugos and Nebulas testify to that.
He is under-appreciated - as in among those who read Science Fiction few have read his books, and fewer even had read anything but the Amber chronicles.
On a side note, I can't help to think that it has to do with his name.
Most people probably can't even pronounce his last name, and on top of that all lists sorted by the author's name place his books at the very end.
Now... had he used a nom de plume like Aaron Aardvark...
Hmm... Not trying to be "all up in your face" here, but I am having a feeling that you are disappointed for not finding in his other works something you think you've found in some of his works.
Which, I can imagine, is not that hard to do when Zelazny is in question.
There are layers upon layers of "stuff" in all his works, making it very easy for everyone to dig up something they like.
Whether that something is the thing that was supposed to be dug up in that particular story is something else entirely.
As for character development, on one hand I am not sure that your claim regarding Corwin holds water.
Sure, he is continuously pragmatic, detached and a bit of a Mary Sue, but he does change with the story. Or at least his goals and (re)actions do.
On the other hand, Zelazny's heroes don't really achieve life changing epiphanies or much change at all. At best, they change alliances, leaving character changes to supporting characters.
And even those are more of reveals than changes.
Whodathunk that Random would make a good king, amiright? Or that Kubera is a slim tech wizard under all that fat? Or that The Count would be on the side of the Closers (not a spoiler I hope)?
Oh right... he forgot to tell us that in the beginning. Because those are all mostly final act reveals, not really changes in character.
Besides... All his heroes tend to be kind of Mary Sues and/or immortal. Both of which kinda kills character development.
They are either perfectly suited for the role they are about to play OR, they are hundreds and thousands of years old immortals/gods with their characters already burned in beyond change.
The man was a word wizard, not a character conjurer.
As such, he could squeeze art into and out of even the most prosaic stories, but his heroes all look alike.
And my only problem with his work is the same problem I have with his collaborations - not enough Zelazny.
And of those, Deus Irae makes me most... irate. Damn, are those bits by P.K. Dick clashing with those by Zelazny.
With Dick winning, as it's the only Zelazny book that left me depressed in the end.
Regarding your encounter with Zelazny and a fan, I am again having a feeling that you are projecting a bit there.
I never did have a chance to meet him in person, years, oceans an wars got in the way, but I can't help to notice that the man reading from "Blood of Amber" here is having fun.
And if art is a human attempt to express and encapsulate a human experience into a medium, and then transfer that experience to another human through that medium - he was clearly creating art.
As for Lord of Light... :)
I know, I know... I should be smarter than that.
But there is a 12-year-old me somewhere in the back of my mind simply wanting "More!". That's what I meant with that "trilogy".
Though...
A prequel is basically already sketched out right there in the book, and a collection of stories about "Further adventures of Light and Death" would have been awesome and you know it.
And one of the things I most respect about him is that every book is different. Unlike, for instance, Zelazny, who started out so brilliantly, but who turned into the Amber Corporation after his divorce (yes, I know they're very popular books - and I don't care - try reading his fabulous Hugo/Nebula winner Lord of Light, or his little remembered Isle of the Dead, or his novelette The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and see if you don't agree that the Amber series is really pretty dismal stuff by comparison)
Umm... His only divorce came in 1966, same year he married again, and it predates almost everything he ever published.
He never divorced his second wife, though they were separated during his later years which he spent with Jane Lindskold.
As for his opus... if you're looking for different, you've clearly not read enough of Zelazny.
The man put out three books of poetry while he wrote those Amber books you mention, did a dozen collaborations with other SF writers, won 4 Hugos (and other awards) from '76 to '87 alone, developed a video game, did ~20 other books, edited over half a dozen others... leaving 2 unfinished books at the time of his death. He clearly had decades of books left in him when he died.
Sure, his opus revolves around mythologies, gods and immortals a lot but he didn't dwell on a single myth in his explorations, always going to the next one.
And I don't see what is your problem with series. A long story is long. Particularly if it is loaded with characters.
Personally, I would have loved if he had done a trilogy around the Lord of Light.
As for why I find him to be underrated despite all those awards - the man wrote in so many references and subtext into his stories, years later you can find in them something you didn't know was there first couple of times you've read them.
Plus, being a poet, he knew how to set up those little ambushes mid-paragraph where you least expected them.
And you can tell that he had so much fun writing. His stories are full of tongue-in-cheek wordplay and jokes.
Without trying to be funny, like sat, Harry Harrison.
Well... While happy endings ARE optional, science fiction is the only literary genre built on its built in hope.
Stories mostly dealing with the future, where humans still live - i.e. we haven't killed ourselves off.
Almost anything by James Tiptree, Jr. AKA Raccoona Sheldon AKA Alice Bradley Sheldon.
Later learning that she shot herself (after shooting hear "84-year-old, nearly-blind husband" in his sleep), leaving a "suicide note... written years earlier, and saved until needed" came as no surprise.
A personal close second is a funny one. Literally. "Bill, the Galactic Hero" by Harry Harrison.
Not realizing at the time that it was satire it just came out depressing as hell, even a bit scary.
I was nine or ten when I read it, lying sick in bed, running a high fever.
A brain which is not fully functional has "issues" with grasping satire.
People can care for somewhere under 200 others
People can TRACK IN THEIR MIND, without external aid such as paper or computers, ~150 to ~230 other people and their mutual relationships.
It has nothing to do with caring (as in liking) - you keep a mental record of your bullies just as you keep a record of your buddies.
People care for other beings they find to be sentient. I.e. Things that are like "us".
Because, when we recognize (consciously or not) that something or someone is in some way "like us" - our brain tells us that IT IS US.
Brains are crazy like that.
So, you may not care for whales, or pandas, or people in far off lands, or mentally deranged beggars in the streets or your next door neighbor - until it kicks in that they are like you.
And it makes no difference if they are 7, 7 billion or 70 billion of them.
Once your brain realizes the similarity of "them" to "you" and they stop being the "others" - you can't help it anymore.
They are you and you are them, and on some deep buried level you know it.
That does not mean you will instantly like "them".
You may actually end up hating those people or animals you were ambivalent about.
You'll actually hate the aspects of yourself which you don't like and all - but you'll be caring.
Hating is caring too, just not the good kind.
Just attach a "certificate" to those pieces of metal saying something like:
"This piece of metal is unique representation of ___________ nation's glory and superiority over other nations.
Priceless though it may be, we have spent ________________$ to acquire it. It is very valuable. Really."
There. Now it's worth as much as the highest bidder would like to pay for it.
...it is a logically invalid claim presented as if it is a valid argument, with the aim of inflicting psychological pain.
It is also a form of character assassination as it is used to present the other side as evil and morally and otherwise corrupt.
Haven't you heard that only bad people go to hell, where they are then buggered with hot pokers by devils for eternity?
Also, sticks, stones, sentences... Same shit to pSyche. Stress.
We can have a lot of freedom in life, but the freedom to not be offended is not an option.
Freedom to BE offended IS a part of and based on the freedom of speech.
Only way everyone may be guaranteed a freedom from being offended would be through government's or some other organization's BAN on being offended and/or doing things anyone anywhere may find offensive.
Most Republicans tried to save it as a matter of national prestige.
Because that is what the science is all about - which country has a longer collective dick.
Also, post you replied to was a joke, replying to another joke. How about lightening the fuck up?
should have said "God Particle" in the proposal.
Eleventy billion dollar grant.
Make that a God Particle Gun instead of "Superconducting Super Collider" and you're golden.
The two theories diverge when it comes to the ultimate source of life which Natural Selection says evolved spontaneously as a single cell life form from which all other life evolved, and ID suggesting that our DNA may have come from elsewhere.
Sorry, but you are reading-in things that you like into an ideology which doesn't support it. BTW, how did you like Prometheus?
First off, let me correct your Natural Selection definition. Not "a single cell life form" but life formS.
Also, underneath that is a layer (or more accurately LAYERS) of inorganic matter reacting for thousands of millennia until some of it started clicking together, creating amino acids.
It strikes me that Intelligent Design is compatible with Natural Selection.
What you seem (to me) to be thinking is that when you get right down to it, life and intelligent life is a pretty straightforward path - from sub-atomic particles, to simple hydrogen, to more complex elements and molecules (I mean, WTF would atoms HAVE to link into molecules? Says who?), to inorganic, to organic, to cells, colonies, multicellular organisms, plants, animals, intelligence.
I mean... it's as if someone actually planned it that way? Or at least as if the laws of the universe have strangely conspired to make it so.
So, isn't that exactly what ID claims to be the case?
Well... for one, that "pretty straightforward path" is anything but.
It is more like a game of statistics. Throwing shit at the wall and seeing what will stick after a couple of billion years.
Also, just because that whole carbon-hydrogen thing worked for us, doesn't mean that somewhere else it didn't go in some other direction.
Plus there is all that blackish-darkish... umm... stuff... out there that the most of the universe is made of.
We are actually here by accident - IF the whole thing is "designed".
Designer was actually making all that other stuff. We are the waste product of the universe.
And the I-D-ers will have none of that.
Cause their version always ends with Jesus/Jehovah deliberately, purposefully making the ENTIRE universe just so he could make US.
None of that "throw the basic elements in the bowl and see what comes out of it" crap.
And not only that, but because their thinking is led by fairy tales - they are vehemently refusing every single step in the chain above.
"God made us in HIS image, not in the image of monkeys!"
That what you are seeing as compatibility is them making compromises in the face of indisputable facts.
"OK, both we AND the monkeys came from the same ancestors, but God still made US into not-monkeys. We are still created in his image."
Sadly, USA culture has been indoctrinated with the idea that socialism is evil, and the same label has been attached to communism as well.
Which is really silly as communism is still very much a theoretical concept, and socialism is simply "taking care of your own" economy expanded on the entire community.
But since it is spread over the entire community it is no longer nepotism but humanism.
On the other hand, capitalism has always been fundamentally flawed.
It's great at pushing the making of more widgets faster and cheaper - but that's about it.
It completely fails to grasp any immaterial human-benefiting concept such as "happiness" or even rather material concepts such as "well being".
All it deals with is more, faster, cheaper.
The thing is, the world has moved away from the "widget based" economy some time ago.
We've been running an "information based" economic system since Nixon "shocked" the world economy into using a fiat dollar for all their trading.
Fiat currency is just a law, and law is just information encapsulated in such a way that the practical implementation of it protects the interests of a certain group of people.
And when your economy is just numbers in a computer somewhere - more, faster, cheaper no longer matters.
After all, you can now get more by trading faster, and the process is ridiculously cheap compared to the amount of money it is able to produce literally out of thin air.
And capitalism sucks at trying to deal with immaterial.
Just look at patent system, music industry and anything else dealing with "intellectual property".
All the nonsense happening there is a product of a system used to dealing with physical, material, scarce things - now having to deal with immaterial things which spread and multiply on their own with each contact with a human.
You know... Ideas. Information.
The sooner that is accepted the better off we're all going to be.
Cause right now, some are desperately trying to hammer a negative liberty system like capitalism, onto a positive liberty society we are trying to be.
Socialism is a little better at it, cause in it everyone essentially trades in some negative liberty so that everyone could have a chance to achieve positive liberty.
Only problem is, most people have very low motivation towards positive liberty, or none at all. Many are perfectly happy being a couch potato.
So, you must either trick them OR limit their negative liberty further and MAKE them seek positive liberty for themselves.
Somewhere on that scale, there is a point where most people in a society have all their material needs satisfied and are dedicated to achieving their full potential.
Just around a corner from that point starts the slippery slope towards a totalitarian society where everyone MUST achieve their full potential for the glory of the society.
You are talking from an ignorant position, looking at past with rose-colored glasses and seeing some "gilded age" that never actually was.
I don't have the time or inclination to point out all the uprisings to you, or to pick the ones directly related to poverty but feel free to go through them by yourself.
It will take you a while though.
And for those that refuse to work and make their own livings...well, lets also turn the clock back, and stop locking people up for ingesting whatever chemical they want for recreation.
That would free up TONS of jail space for those few that refuse to learn a lesson and attempt to use crime as a means to earn a living.
Sooo... Let me get this straight.
Humanitarian taxpayer dollar for feeding, clothing, educating and keeping the poor healthy is BAD, but it is A-OK to spend that same dollar feeding, clothing, educating and keeping the poor healthy - IN A PRISON.
And since you are suggesting that the drugs convictions are taken off the table - that would be a dollar spent on thieves and murdering thieves.
Instead of on poor single parents and their children.
Who could then grow up to be thieves and murdering thieves.
I.e. Money would be spent on the poor who were dumb enough to get caught stealing your TV/stereo/laptop/car, selling it for a pittance and causing you property damage along the way.
Possibly killing and raping you and your wife/sister/children/mother/father/dog/hamster while they're at it.
Hey... you can't judge people for raping hamsters when they're on all sorts of drugs and the only treatment they can get is a concrete cell.
But wouldn't it be simpler and more effective if you'd simply rape and kill your wife/sister/children/mother/father/dog/hamster, burn your house down and then shoot yourself - leaving all your remaining assets to the local prison population?
You know... cut out the middle man.