Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937 – June 14, 1995) was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series. He won the Nebula award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965; subsequently published under the title This Immortal, 1966) and then the novel Lord of Light (1967).The ostracod Sclerocypris zelaznyi was named after him.
Science Fiction writers treat with people, things and events in terms of possible consequences. In the Middle Ages we might have been theologians, and we probably would have been burned as heretics.
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Fact
1
Roger Joseph Zelazny was the only child of Joseph Frank Zelazny (a pattern-maker) and Josephine Sweet. His father emigrated from Poland when he was a young man and met Josephine Sweet in Chicago. Roger's childhood was spent in Euclid, Ohio, in a rural area on an acre of property. He avidly read books from the school library. At the age of eleven, he began reading science fiction.
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Zelazny earned an M.A. from Columbia in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama. His master's thesis was titled "Two Traditions and Cyril Tourneur: an Examination of Morality and Humor Comedy Conventions in The Revenger's Tragedy.".
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With his wife Judy, Roger had 3 children: sons Devin (b. 1971) and Jonathan Trent (b. 1976, also an author), and daughter Shannon.
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Roger worked for seven years as a federal civil servant before quitting to write full-time.
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Zelazny appeared as a Guest at the 20th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (held in Dania, in south Florida, during March, 1994). Because Zelazny was known to be completing an unfinished Alfred Bester novel, "Psychoshop," and had brought the manuscript with him, Bester scholar Fiona Kelleghan tried to meet and chat with him. As this was his first (and last) attendance at the Conference, he was very busy meeting with old friends - a much beloved man. He was already ill with cancer and died in 1995.
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Was friends since sixth grade with Carl Bernard Yoke (b. 1937, the same year as Roger). Yoke is famous among science fiction critics as an essayist and reviewer; he wrote the biography "Roger Zelazny" (1979).
7
Although famous as a science fiction novelist, he posthumously published a mystery thriller titled The Dead Man's Brother. The novel was a lost manuscript, written circa 1970 or 1971, and was discovered by Zelazny's agent after his death.
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Guest of honor at OctoCon IV science-fiction convention (Santa Rosa, CA, October 9-10, 1982).
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Of Polish/Irish descent
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Received Hugo Awards for his novels "...And Call Me Conrad" and "Lord of Light", for his novellas "Home Is the Hangman" and "Twenty-four Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai" and for his novelettes "Unicorn Variation" and "Permafrost".
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Won Nebula Awards for his novellas "He Who Shapes" and "Home is the Hangman" as well as for his novelette "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth".
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