Zelazny, Roger - The Last Defender of Camelot (ss)

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INTRODUCTION

Though it is contrary to my general practice to intro-

duce my own works, I decided to say a few words to go

before this collection and some before each story itself

because I have put this one together out of materials

drawn from the beginning, middle and recent sections of

the eighteen-year period I have been writing. I have

changed during that time, a condition I share with the

world around me, and I redden now or blanche (as the

case my be) to read over much that I once considered

adequate. For this reason, there are dozens of stories that

I prefer keeping interred beneath bright covers in yel-

lowing sheets, stories that 1 will never willingly see re-

printed. I feel some affection for the ones I have gathered

here, however, and I will say some things about them in

the proper places.

The nature of my work and my working habits shifted

radically in the late 60's, when I went in more heavily

for the writing of novels. I had started out as a short

story writer, and I still enjoy writing short stories

though I no longer do nearly as many as I used to in a

year's time. The reason is mainly economic. I went full-

time in the late 60's, and it is a fact of writing life that,

word for word, novels work harder for their creators

when it comes to providing for the necessities and joys of

existence. Which would sound cold and cynical, except

that I enjoy writing novels, too.

I have no desire to explain, attempt to justify or apol-

ogize for anything that I have written. I have always felt

that a story should be able to deal with such matters

itself. My individual forepieces are intended only to place

them within the context of my own evolving experience

—which makes this an autobiographical work for me, if

not for anyone else.

So, to even things up and answer a number of re-

quests, I'll tell you a little about myself (purely subjec-

tive, not dust jacket material)—

If I couldn't write worth a damn, I think I'd like to

2 THE LAST -DEFENDER OF CAMELOT

own a hardware store. I've long been fascinated by the

enormous varieties of tools used to maintain our society,

as well as the clips, hinges, pins, brads, screws, pulleys,

wires, chains, clamps and pipes that hold it together. Not

to mention the putty, piaster, cement and paint that keep

it looking well io places. Even more than a book store,

where I probably wouldn't get to read much anyway, I

believe that I could have been fairly happy m a good

general hardware shop,

But then, I would probably open late and stay open

late because I'm a night person- I prefer sunsets to sun-

rises. I pick up steam in the late hours. I've probably

done most of my best writing after midnight.

There is a group of writers living within about a 100-

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mile diameter circle around here who get together once a

month for lunch. On one such occasion, Stephen Donald-

son asked me what book by someone else I wished I had

written. I gave him a quick answer which seemed ap-

propriate at the moment. I thought about it later, though,

and changed my mind. Something like War and Peace or

Ulysses, while impressive or dazzling, massively tragic or

comic and invested with tons of scholarly and lay mana

would only be egotistical choices, not things that I could

have enjoyed writing as well as enjoyed having written—

if I were able. I got it down to two books—one tragic,

one comic—and I couldn't decide between them: Mal-

raux's Man's Fate and Norman Douglas' South Wind. I

have nothing deeply philosophical to say about either of

them here, just a wistful bit of self-revelation and an

attempt to answer Steve's question honestly in a place

where I am talking about myself, anyway.

The most encouraging thing I have seen in recent years

was nothing at all. That is to say, nothing where I had

expected to see something. Back m 1975, I visited Trinity

Site, which is open to the public one day a year. It had

been some thirty years since the first atomic bomb was

detonated over that hot, dusty, windy plain. A long line

of cars was met by a military escort at a shopping center

north of Alamogordo and taken some seventy miles out

into the White Sands Missile Range. We finally parked,

disembarked and walked to Ground Zero. There was

realty nothing to see. I had read how that first blast had

left a crater of fused aluminum silicates twenty-five feet

deep and a quarter-mile across. It was gone. The desert

THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT 3

winds had filled it in, the desert plants (unmutated) had

taken root above it. The radiation level was only slightly

above normal background. The place looked pretty much

like parts of my backyard. After a moment's disappoint-

ment at the absence of a spectacle following the long

drive, I suddenly felt elated as I realized how completely

the earth had recovered in the span of a single genera-

tion, Life's resilience.

Some years ago, a scientist who was planning on

beaming some television pictures outward, in an attempt

to communicate something concerning us and our ways to

whatever might be watching the late show, asked me

to suggest some of the content for the program. Along

with a lot of predictable technical and social stuff, I re-

call suggesting a symphony orchestra with closeups of the

individual instruments being played, sailboats and—I be-

lieve—a flight of hot air balloons—as these seemed three

sorts of objects where form has been so perfectly and

uniquely married to function that our tools have become

works of art—which I suppose puts even my esthetic

thinking into a kind of Platonic hardware store.

I enjoy being a writer and I even like the paperwork.

That's enough about the author. Here are the stories.

PASSION PLAY

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This was my first published story, as it states below. A

while back, Jonathan Ostrowsky-Lantz, the editor of

Unearth: The Magazine of Science Fiction Discoveries—

a noble publication dedicated to the encouragement of

new science fiction writers—began a policy of reprinting

first stories by professionals in the area, along with

introductory essays by the authors telling how the stories

came to be written and including some advice to begin-

ning writers.

For whatever such a preface may be worth in this

place, 1*11 cause it to occur between here and the story

itself—

INTRODUCTION

I had wanted to write for many years, but did not

have an opportunity until I had completed my master's

thesis and taken a job with the government. I was

assigned to an office in Dayton, Ohio for training, and I

reported there on February 26, 1962. As I had decided

to try writing science fiction, I spent a week reading all

the current science fiction magazines and some random

paperbacks. I then sat down and began writing, every

evening, turning out several stories a week and sending

them off to the magazines. I drew a number of rejection

slips, and then in March I received a note from Cele

Goldsmith at Ziff-Davis, saying that she was buying this

story, "Passion Play." It appeared in the August, 1962

issue of Amazing Stories.

Whether it actually was or was not, it seemed to me

an almost classic case of applied insight, because I had

done something right before I wrote it which I had not

done before. I had gathered together all of my rejected

stories and spent an evening reading through them to see

whether I could determine what I was doing wrong. One

thing struck me about all of them: I was overexplaining.

I was describing settings, events and character motiva-

THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT 5

tions in too much detail. I decided, in viewing these

stories now that they had grown cold, that I would find it

insulting to have anyone explain anything to me at that

length. I resolved thereafter to treat the reader as I would

be treated myself, to avoid the unnecessarily explicit, to

use more indirection with respect to character and moti-

vation, to draw myself up short whenever I felt the

tendency to go on talking once a thing had been shown.

Fine. That was my resolution. I still had to find a story

idea to do it with, as I was between stories just then.

Now, I do not know how other people do it, but there is

a certain receptive state of mind that I switch on when

I am looking for a short story notion. This faculty is

dulled when I am working on a novel, as I Usually am

these days, so that if I want it now it generally takes me

a full day to set up the proper mental climate. It comes

faster if I am between books. Whatever, in those days I

kept it turned on almost all the time.

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The government wanted everyone in my class to have

a physical examination. They gave me the forms and I

drove up to Euclid over a weekend to see the closest

thing we had to a family doctor, to have him complete

them. When I sat down in his waiting room, I picked

up a copy of Life and began looking through it. Partway

along, I came upon a photospread dealing with the death

of the racing driver Wolfgang von Tripps. Something

clicked as soon as I saw it, and just then the doctor called

me in for the checkup. While I was breathing for him

and coughing and faking knee jerks and so forth, I saw

the entire incident that was to be this short short. I could

have written it right then. My typewriter was in Dayton,

though, and I'd the long drive ahead of me. The story

just boiled somewhere at the back of my mind on the

way down, and when I reached my apartment I headed

straight for the typewriter and wrote it through. I even

walked three blocks to a mailbox in the middle of the

night, to get it sent right away.

Cele's letter of acceptance was dated March 28, almost

a month after I'd begun writing. Strangely, the day that

it arrived I had gotten the idea for what was to be my

next sale ("Horseman!", Fantastic Stories, August, 1962).

I returned the contracts on "Passion Play" and followed

them with "Horseman!" 1 sold fifteen other stories that

year. I was on my way.

6 THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT

I cannot really say whether I owe it to that resolution

I made on reviewing my rejects, but it felt as if I did and

I have always tried to keep the promise I made that day

about not insulting the reader's intelligence.

Another factor did come into operation after I sold

this story. It is a subtle phenomenon which can only be

experienced. I suddenly felt like a writer. "Confidence"

is a cheap word for it, but I can't think of a better one.

That seems the next phase in toughening one's writing—

a kind of cockiness, an "I've done it before" attitude. This

feeling seems to feed something back into the act of compo-

sition itself, providing more than simple assurance. Actual

changes in approach, structure, style, tone, began to occur

for me almost of their own accord. Noting this, I began

to do it intentionally. I made a list of all the things I

wanted to know how to handle and began writing them

into my stories. This is because I felt that when you

reach a certain point as a writer, there are two ways you

can go. Having achieved an acceptable level of compe-

tence you can keep producing at that level for the rest

of your life, quite possibly doing some very good work.

Or you can keep trying to identify your weaknesses, and

then do something about them. Either way, you should

grow as a writer—but Ihe second way is a bit more

difficult, because it is always easier to write around a

weakness than to work with it, work from it, work through

it. It takes longer, if nothing else. And you may fall on

your face. But you might learn something you would not

have known otherwise and be better as a result.

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These are the things I learned, or fancy I learned, from

"Passion Play" and its aftereffects. I do have one other

thing to say, though, which came to me slowly, much

later, though its roots are tangled somewhere here:

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you

see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild

gamble of a way for handling something, which may

leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant—you just

don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and

proceed along .the route you'd mapped out for yourself.

Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that

crazy idea in the first place.

Trust your demon.

THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT 7

At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of

rejoicing. Spring, like a well-oiled clock, noiselessly indi-

cates this time. The average days of dimness and moisture

decrease steadily in number, and those of brilliance and

cool air begin to enter the calendar again. And it is good

that the wet times are behind us, for they rust and corrode

our machinery; they require the most intense standards of

hygiene.

With all the bright baggage of spring, the days of the

Festival arrive. After the season of Lamentations come

the sacred stations of the Passion, then the bright Festival

of Resurrection, with its tinkle and clatter, its exhaust

fumes, sorched rubber, clouds of dust, and its great prom-

ise of happiness.

We come here each year, to the place, to replicate a

classic. We see with our own lenses the functioning prom-

ise of our creation. The time is today, and I have been

chosen.

Here on the sacred grounds of Le Mans I will perform

every action of the classic which has been selected. Be-

fore the finale I will have duplicated every movement

and every position which we know occurred. How fortu-

nate! How high the honor!

Last year many were chosen, .but it was not the same.

Their level of participation was lower. Still, I had wanted

so badly to be chosen! I had wished so strongly that I,

too, might stand beside the track and await the flaming

Mercedes.

But I was saved for this greater thing, and all lenses

are upon me as we await the start. This year there is

only one Car to watch—number 4, the Ferrari-analog.

The sign has been given, and the rubber screams; the

smoke balloons like a giant cluster of white grapes, and

we are moving. Another car gives way, so that I can drop

into the proper position. There are many cars, but only

one Car.

We scream about the turn, in this great Italian classic

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Zelazny, Roger - The Last Defender of Camelot (ss)

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