Monday, January 21, 2008

Roger Zelazny and Hard Case Crime

Hard Case Crime announced in their latest newsletter that they will be publishing "the long-lost, never-before-published thriller by award-winning fantasy and science fiction author Roger Zelazny"; the book will be out "at the start of 2009".

I didn't know that Zelazny, the author of the Amber series and Damnation Alley, amongst others, had written non-SF, so I asked around (mainly in the Fictionmags e-mail list) and found out that "this is the mystery/thriller novel, originally entitled APOSTATE'S GOLD, and then retitled THE DEAD MAN'S BROTHER, which was completed in May 1971 by Zelazny and scheduled for a 1972 publication by [paperback house] Berkley...and then cancelled." It appears that Zelazny mentioned having written this novel in a fanzine called Phantasmicom in the early seventies.

His own description of the book in the fanzine is short: the manuscript is "about a priest who is dissatisfied with current Vatican policies - and a little bit of hijacking".

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