At the time this was first published it was a ground breaking novel. It became the prime example of an apparently supernatural society solidly built on a "rational" technological base. And yet, the characters who understand these technological underpinnings maintain a spiritual existential awareness that is atypical of the hard science novels that attempt to undermine directly, or through metaphor those with supernatural or theistic beliefs.

Most importantly, this is a thoroughly entertaining book, great Summer read, with well done characters.

"They called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He himself preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be."

Lord of Light was Roger Zelazny's third novel and it won him the Hugo award for Best Novel in 1968.

The story on the surface seems like diefied fantasy, based around the Hindu pantheon. Deeper in however clues are revealed as to what is truly going on. The book starts out with the introduction of Sam, or Buddha, or Siddhartha, or any of the half dozen other names he is known by. Each of the subsequent 5 chapters are flashbacks telling the story of Sam's fight against "Heaven", with the seventh and final chapter occurring chronologically after the first.

Many consider this to be Zelazny's finest work. I still prefer the first Chronicles of Amber, but I can certainly see why other choose this. Once I got a grasp on how the story was being told, and began to pick up clues as to what the gods truly were the story made a lot more sense. This is a book that really makes you work.

8.5 out of 10

While Lord of Light is a powerhouse achievement in literature and creativity, it is not an easy book. It is one of the hardest Fantasy books you could read. So then why is it classed as Science Fiction? More about that all important point in a moment, but first let's just talk about Lord of Light. Lord of Light is a collection of stories, connected with a man/deity called Sam, the Buddha who is the Lord of Light. There are two or three brilliant stories that would have rounded the book off at about 150 pages, but some of the stories let the book down as a whole. These filler chapters maybe for very well hardened fantasy readers, or they could just as well be ultimately nothing more than stuffing pages to gel into novel size. It makes it quite a chore to get through its 300 page total without significant breaks and a needed mental push to read on until the next better story, or the end, unless fantasy, and very hard fantasy at that, is your genre of specialization. This is very much an entire world created right out of Zelazny's imagination. It is also very much bound to his own will to create lots of things, even outside of the scope of fantasy reason, because his concept is so fantastic. However sometimes he half-finishes a great narrative and wanders off into the very mediocre parts of his fantasy work which are interesting only for those who really want to know his innermost thoughts on complex subjects. Given that the timeline of events is also out of sequence makes it all the more irritating to quite find a dull, sometimes meaningless yarn, coming in out of nowhere, sometimes even bordering on the incomprehensible. One other significant problem for new Zelanzy readers is less about the stories and more behind the book's marketing strategy, and this is the important point we need to talk about. The publishers have pushed for a quite erroneous science-fiction genre classification. I accept it is their choice to do so and well within their rights. Seasoned SF readers can live with the subgenre being a quasi science-fiction/fantasy but obviously the Lord of Light seems to be have been inserted by stealth into the science-fiction section only to help bring attention to Zelanzy, who primarily writes fantasy. At the same time the Lord of Light was awarded the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel. It was even nominated for a Nebula Award and parts have been published in SF Magazines. Even so I can only expect that its very slim hybrid experimental nature may have been a first for its time, but it is still very thin on SF topics all the same. Explaining away a supernatural gift is done sometimes by eluding to science, but that doesn't explain the bird-like creature the size of a house with the rider on its back that suddenly turns into a cloud of smoke and vaporizes off to some Lilly pad. There is lots of magic on display. Lord of Light can be described as a collection of chapters, although the book is broken into parts, is not linear, not always focused on any one plot, but are united by the hero Sam who is involved in various campaigns against a God, or Gods or heaven. Sam's stories seem to contain some tactical moves that are akin to Buddhist theology, with Zelanzy often citing Tibetan and Hindu literature, the underlying foundation to his fantasy world based on these works where the character of a deity is often developed by using these spiritual and psychological works. Zelanzy interjects some modern phenomena such as circuits, control panels, Marxism, mind probes, and even cigarette smoking to give an extremely feathery SF relationship at times, but nothing that justifies or warrants its SF grouping. The SF in the story often appears like an after-touch required by the marketing department to at least give the book an excuse to sit on the SF shelf space. I feel more than a little duped when I would have probably looked into this book as a highly recommended fantasy novel instead. In that case I can understand why it would receive top marks. I just don't like the way it sneaked into something like #7 in the SF Masterworks series from Orion publishing, when they have a Fantasy series. There is also repetition of the same action sequences about some God who jumps in the air and calls the wind to his side and a mystery black cloud that envelopes some good guy who wakes up next to some God who begins to talk about reincarnating in some new body and how the local karma wheel operators are not working hard enough. However it is worth reading for the "Hellwell" story alone, which is an absolutely riveting tale and is the only reason why this book saved face with me. You can tell that Zelanzy has poured his heart into descriptions and creating a functioning vision of Nirvana, but it is too often at the very extreme end of Fantasy works. Also you may have seen this book described as "Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods". This is just advertising that does not appear as content in the book. If you go into this with the understanding that it is Fantasy, and difficult fantasy at that, then maybe you would be better prepared. I don't want to undercut how grand this work is and how much effort went into it, but marketing ploys have simply tricked me into reading something I really didn't want to read and the book's description is not what the book is about. There is no dead Earth. There is nothing about a colony getting hold of technology. This is about Gods who fight on Earth for fame or prizes or control of the Heavens.