To
my knowledge, there are two gamebooks which take place in Roger
Zelazny's Amber universe - 'Seven No-Trump', and 'The Black Road
War,' both by Neil Randall, and both out of print for a couple of
decades now.
Roger
Zelazny is really one of the finest science fiction authors that the
human race has managed to produce. True, his ten-book Amber series is
more fantasy than sci-fi; it is, nonetheless, an utter masterpiece.
If you haven't read it yet... I mean, seriously, go and find it now,
and do so. Back in the pre-Amazon days I laboriously tracked down all
ten volumes in bookshops on two continents. Rather irritatingly, all
ten books were republished soon afterwards in one mighty 1000-page
volume. Gah. So I bought that too. If I were for some reason
condemned to read just one book for the rest of my life, it'd likely
be that one. I'm not joking.
The
setting is fairly mind-bending: every imaginable universe exists. Our
Earth exists, and crops up fairly frequently. But so do all the
universes that are wholly different to our own. Imagine a universe
where Lewis Carroll's characters from Alice in Wonderland are real.
That's an actual place, in these books. Or a world that worships a
god that is identical to you, where you can inspire a legion of
followers to live and die at your command. That's a real place too.
Well,
these universes are real, but not really real. The only truly
real, truly solid place in all of creation is the realm of Amber, of
which all other universes are Shadows - pale, imperfect reflections.
The royal family of Amber have the unique ability to traverse these
Shadows. And, as luck would have it, they're a jealous, power-hungry
lot.
As
I say, it's all quite mind-bleepery - made even more so that when you consider that Roger Zelazny was pantsing (that's literary
shorthand for 'not planning') as he set out on the saga. The books
inspired an RPG, Amber Diceless Role-Playing, as well as a fanzine,
comic books, and a prequel quadrilogy by John Gregory Betancourt.
And, as I mentioned, a couple of gamebooks.
So,
gamebook writeups to come, in the near(ish) future. As a longtime fan
of Roger Zelazny, and Amber, I'm really excited about getting to do
this.
Also,
while we're talking about sci-fi - which I sort of did, a few
paragraphs back - the raison d'être of science fiction is the subject of discussion right now over on Roz Morris's Nail Your Novel blog. Some good points here.
That
said, keep in mind that Roz isn't a big fan of Doctor Who. And in my
book, that's tantamount to heresy.
(Post by Paul Gresty)
