Roger Zelazny wrote dazzlingly inventive sf and fantasy. His best-known work nowadays is the ten-book sequence The Chronicles of Amber. In the Amber books, the universe is an infinite collection of parallel worlds, each different from the one before. The books follow the feuds and schemes of the utterly dysfunctional royal family of the primal plane’s capital city, Amber. These Amberites are able to move between worlds, as are their opposite numbers out where possibility breaks down, the lords of Chaos. It’s great stuff, but a lot of Zelazny’s work is even better.
“A Night in the Lonesome October” was one of Zelazny’s last and finest works. It is a crazy blend of bits and pieces from the Cthulhu mythos, Victorian horror/fantasy/melodrama, demonology, and even quantum mechanics, all lightened with a dash of satire and some rather dark humour.
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
When the full moon falls on Halloween – which happens 3 or 4 times a century – then the stars are right for the Great Old Ones to return. Cultists and occultists, each accompanied by their very own demonic familiar, are drawn to a certain spot. Their goals are diametrically opposed — to either help open the way for ancient ones to return and scour the Earth of human life, or to help keep it closed, saving the world for another turn. The losing side gets killed in the backlash either way. Matters are complicated by the fact that none of the assembled maniacs knows exactly where the ceremony is to take place, nor which of them is on which side, so things kick off with a tense stand-off period whilst everyone makes preparation and tries to work out who is a friend and who is an enemy.
Snuff is Jack the Ripper’s familiar, bound into the form of a mongrel dog. He is also the book’s viewpoint and narrator, giving us a familiar’s-eye view of the bizarre events as they unfold. He’s an engaging companion for the events, which rattle along at a grippingly fast pace. The end result is a gripping, slyly humorous, highly imaginative novel, with a delightful dark streak and a surprising amount of charm, and it deserves to be much better known than it is.
Also highly recommended novels by Zelazny: “Isle of the Dead”, “Lord of Light”, “Doorways in the Sand”, “To Die in Italbar”, and, hell, just about anything else he wrote. Zelazny died in 1995 of colon cancer, at the age of 58. We were robbed.
I loved A Night in The Lonesome October. Zelazny did a wonderful job of blending humor, mythology, and Victoria era England. It even inspired me to write a song about it.
I loved A Night in The Lonesome October too. I love Zelazny’s novels in general but this one in particular is his finest in my opinion. I’ve read it so many times that I even know bits of it by heart.