Roger Zelazny (1937 – 1995)
American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels.
"I sank Atlantis," he said, "personally. It was about three years ago. And God! it was lovely! It was all ivory towers and golden minarets and silver balconies. There were bridges of opal, and crimson pennants and a milk-white river flowing between lemon-colored banks. There were jade steeples, and trees as old as the world tickling the bellies of clouds, and ships in the great sea-harbor of Xanadu, as delicately constructed as musical instruments, all swaying with the tides. The twelve princes of the realm held court in the dozen-pillared Coliseum of the Zodiac, to listen to a Greek tenor sax play at sunset."
I wasn’t disappointed, inasmuch as I expected nothing.
The fact remains that you would be dealing, and dealing constantly, with the abnormal. The power of a neurosis is unimaginable to ninety-nine point et cetera percent of the population, because we can never adequately judge the intensity of our own — let alone those of others, when we only see them from the outside. That is why no neuroparticipant will ever undertake to treat a fullblown psychotic. The few pioneers in that area are all themselves in therapy today. It would be like driving into a maelstrom. If the therapist loses the upper hand in an intense session he becomes the Shaped rather than the Shaper. The synapses respond like a fission reaction when nervous impulses are artificially augmented. The transference effect is almost instantaneous.
Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future.
“Nothing we did in those days has caused a change.”
“Because of what we did, things remained as they were, rather than getting worse,” I told him.
For absent friends — Kathy Acker and Roger Zelazny, and all points between.
He was a poet, first, last, always. His words sang.
He was a storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen.