Who Goes There?

His star power isn’t what it used to be, although a TV adaptation of the Amber series might rectify this (because greedy executives are still looking for the next Games of Thrones), but back in the ’60s and ’70s Roger Zelazny was one of the big names in SFF. Like Ursula K. Le Guin and Fritz Leiber he was a big deal in both science fiction and fantasy, with his debut novel This Immortal (also titled …And Call Me Conrad) tying with Dune for the Hugo that year. This Immortal is ostensibly science fiction, but borrows heavily from Greek mythology so as to give it the impression of fantasy. This is a tactic Zelazny would use elsewhere, including Lord of Light (another Hugo win) and Creatures of Light and Darkness. Zelazny did not think himself part of the New Wave, but did run with those people often enough that he not only appeared in Dangerous Visions but Creatures of Light and Darkness only saw publication when it did at Samuel R. Delany’s recommendation. (In a kind of hat-tipping gesture Delany would later name one of the sections in his massive novel Dhalgren after Zelazny’s novel.) Zelazny’s career can be basically broken into three stages: the ’60s, the ’70s, and the ’80s. He died in 1995, at the relatively young age of 58. In the ’70s Zelazny focused on his Amber series, but he still had enough time to write several standalone novels, with Doorways in the Sand being one of them. I didn’t even know this novel had gotten a Hugo nomination, probably because The Forever War won that year and nothing else stood a chance.

Placing Coordinates

Serialized in Analog Science Fiction, June to August 1975. It was published in book form the following year by Harper & Row. Until a few years ago it wasn’t in print for a while, but it got new paperback and hardcover editions from a small press that seems to be dedicated to bringing Zelazny’s works back into print. This is a noble gesture, considering that until recently the only way you could get in-print copies of the Amber novels was as one huge unwieldy omnibus volume.

Enhancing Image

Fred Cassidy is charming, intelligent, and also quite lazy: in other words he’s the typical Zelazny protagonist. Fred has done very well as an undergrad, on paper—the problem being that he’s been an undergrad for 13 years. It has something to do with the will his uncle left, which stipulates that Fred’s to be given an allowance until he finishes his undergrad studies, a fact which Fred was all too happy to exploit. Of course, his uncle hasn’t died yet—merely gone into a cold-sleep chamber, which he might not even awake from. The legal situation with the will is rather shaky. Dennis Wexroth, Fred’s academic adviser, is very displeased about the fact that Fred’s been coasting on his semi-dead uncle’s inheritance, not to mention that Fred’s been using programs that should be left open for “real” undergrads—people about a decade younger than him. To make matters even worse, Fred’s looking for a new roommate, on account of Hal Sidmore, his latest one, leaving to get married, like a responsible adult. (Well, it was considered responsible at the time; nowadays it’s almost unthinkable to get married right out of college.) But wait, there’s more! In their dorm Fred and Hal had a replica of the star-stone, an alien artifact that had been given to mankind as part of a trade deal several years ago. The star-stone will be the McGuffin of this novel, and the reason for that is that the real star-stone seems to have gone missing, posing a big problem for mankind.

When I started reading Zelazny I was an undergrad myself, and I was mostly clueless as to what his influences could’ve been. Nowadays I’m a lot more “cultured” than I was back then, so it now strikes me as obvious that Zelazny must’ve read his fair share of detective fiction—not that of the Arthur Conan Doyle sort, but rather Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. We’re talking literary noir. Someone (I think it was John W. Campbell) said that SF and detective fiction simply don’t mix, which of course didn’t stop him from serializing The Naked Sun, Isaac Asimov’s classic SF-detective novel. The typical Zelazny protagonist is very much like a hardboiled detective, complete with grimy first-person narration, and Fred is no exception. He even gets the classic detective protagonist treatment: getting the shit beaten out of him. First it’s Paul Byler, who used to be Fred’s geology professor and who comes off as a bit of a mad scientist. Paul beats Fred almost to a pulp and threatens him, thinking he had taken a replica of the star-stone that Paul had kept in his lab. It turns out, however, that Paul’s replica and the one Fred and Hal kept in their dorm are different. Later a couple of goons also beat up Fred, this time over the real star-stone. Via a convoluted fashion it seems that the real star-stone, which the UN was supposed to keep safely locked away, has gone missing. (The UN, as per usual, is unable to accomplish basic tasks.) Had Fred graduated from college years ago like he was supposed to, none of this would be his problem.

Apparently Zelazny had written Doorways in the Sand in a quick burst of energy with little if any revising, which would explain the breakneck pacing, but also the lack of descriptions for places and how people look. If you pointed a gun at my head and asked me what Fred or Hal or Paul looked like, you would have blood on your hands. Anything (barring the snarky aside, which is a Zelazny special anyway) that doesn’t tie into the central mystery did not make it paper, which results in a taut and easy-to-read novel. The book version’s only about 180 pages, which was considered a novel back then but which nowadays is reserved for overpriced Tor Dot Com chapbooks. For better or worse I also get the impression that Zelazny wrote this by the seat of his pants, since he basically strings Fred along for one punishment or strange event after another; one minute we’re in his dorm and the next we’re in the Australian outback. How did we get here? I forget. Speaking of Chandler, Zelazny must’ve taken cues from his method of writing a novel for Doorways in the Sand, which is to say: “When in doubt, have a man with a gun come through the door.” (I’m actually paraphrasing Chandler, not quoting.) Fred, who’s kind of a deadbeat and also irresponsible, would come off as more insufferable elsewhere, but in this novel almost everyone around him is worse. Even Hal is only marginally more functional, given that he has a bad habit of drinking and gambling, and also his newfangled marriage has already hit a rough spot. These people are either dysfunctional or villainous, but that’s the fun of it.

There Be Spoilers Here

The most memorable part of the first installment is the back end, when Fred is on the brink of death and also somehow in the Aussie desert, with a talking wombat and kangaroo for friends. Of course the wombat and kangaroo are aliens in disguise, named Ragma and Charv respectively, although that doesn’t make their first meeting any less strange. Ragma and Charv are alien cops who take Fred off-world for a time in the hopes that he can lead them to the star-stone, but of course he doesn’t know where it is. Zelazny is a fan of talking animals, or at least aliens who take on the form of talking animals. It’s funny, so you can understand why he does it. Once Fred’s back on Earth he chills at Hal’s place (Hal is drunk, naturally), and from there we get a classic detective-fiction cliffhanger. This novel is unusual in how it depicts aliens in that first contact had already been made years ago, but mankind and the coalition of aliens (it’s like the Covenant from Halo, minus the violent religious zealotry) are not exactly on friendly terms with each other. There’s a complicated agreement between the governments that could go south at pretty much any moment. It’s like the Cold War, which was still going in the ’70s but thankfully was not at a tipping point. We’ll see if this turns into a full-on Cold War allegory or if I’m just overthinking things, considering Zelazny doesn’t tend to “get political.”

A Step Farther Out

Doorways in the Sand placed second on the Hugo ballot, but there must’ve been a disparity in votes between it and The Forever War given that the latter is still famous whilst the only people I’ve seen talk about Zelazny’s novel are boomers who will soon shuffle off this mortal coil. It’s a shame, because assuming the quality doesn’t dip this will be the best serial I’ve read in a hot minute. Zelazny himself considered this novel one of his favorites, and I’m starting to understand why. There’s a joyful and kind of zany energy to it, being probably the least serious Zelazny novel I’ve read. You’d have to be a stick in the mud to not have fun here.

See you next time.