Lord of light by roger zelazny

Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art. Internet Arcade Console Living Room. Open Library American Libraries. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Sign up for free Log in. Lord of Light Bookreader Item Preview. It was planned that the sets for the movie would be made permanent and become the core of a science fiction theme park to be built in Aurora, Colorado.

Comic book artist Jack Kirby was contracted to produce artwork for set design. Due to legal problems the project was never completed.

Lord of light by roger zelazny: This book tells the story

Parts of the unmade film project—the script and Kirby's set designs—were subsequently acquired by the CIA as cover for the " Canadian Caper ": the exfiltration of six US diplomatic staff trapped by the Iranian hostage crisis in Tehran but outside the embassy compound. The rescue team pretended to be scouting a location in Iran for shooting a Hollywood film from the script, which they had renamed Argo.

Init was announced by Universal Cable Productions that Lord of Light would be made into a television series. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. For other uses, see Lord of Light disambiguation.

Plot summary [ edit ]. This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. July Learn how and when to remove this message. So, yeah, all very interesting. Main conflict is between Accelerationism and Deicracy; former want to push forward with industrial development, whereas latter want to affix human civilization at a dark ages level, while high tech religious tools for reincarnation and karma are used for biopolitical management.

Again, all very well laid out and damned interesting.

Lord of light by roger zelazny: Lord of Light is a

Men were weak and few in number. Your kind fell upon them and would have destroyed them. Overall, then, great opening regarding religion, class, economic development, ideology, imperialism, genocide--all wasted in trivial middle and by inexplicable finale. Only redeeming feature of later bits is that Nirrti, goddess of decay, appears, but is actually Christian, and commands legions of flesh-eating zombies.

I chuckled for an appropriate duration at an appropriate volume. Recommended for those who facilitate the passage of spirits from their fleshy envelopes, readers who play on fascist banjos, and people whose fertility deities are worse than marxists. In my opinion, Lord of Light LOL called as science fiction because the author set the setting as far future, and using technology as the magic system.

But the story itself mainly influenced by Indian mythology. But it was not a retelling of Indian myths. The author had done the researched well, based on my very-limited knowledge of Indian myth. The author mixed the myths with his own story. OK, in much harsher words: the author was using Indian mythology for the story. So please don't use LOL as a reference for Indian mythology.

But the main story itself is just ok. The setting based on Indian myth was definitely boost the selling point and it was first published ata good timing too: flower people was flourishing in USA. Oleksandr Zholud. June A re-read for me, so the following review is a slightly updated version of the one. This book is a masterpiece. A definite reading choice for SF and maybe fantasy fans.

However, it asks for a mature reader. Not in terms of sex and gore there is not much of either compared to many current novels but in terms of personal development. At least in my case. The only thing I recalled from it was a description of Irish stand-down In the strange world, woven from Hindu mythos a hero returns. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam.

He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. An alien world colonized by humans. The leaders used technology so advanced that they appeared as Hindu gods while their alien enemies became as demons. One man wishes to give technology to all the common people who worship him as the Buddha.

Not fantasy but hard Science Fiction. The Wheel of Life It is said that fifty-three years after his liberation he returned from the Golden Cloud, to take up once again the gauntlet of Heaven, to oppose the Order of Life and the gods who ordained it so. His followers had prayed for his return, though their prayers were sin. Prayer should not trouble one who has gone on to Nirvana, no matter what the circumstances of his going.

The wearers of the saffron robe prayed, however, that He of the Sword, Manjusri, should come again among them, The Boddhisatva is said to have heard His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. Silence, though, could. Therefore, there was mystery about him. Sam is recalled from Nirvana - the Bridge of the Gods It was in the days of the lords of light by roger zelazny that their prayers went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.

Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique, but the machine had been built and was operated by Yama-Dharma, fallen, of the Celestial City; and, it was told, he had ages ago built the mighty thunder chariot of Lord Shiva: that engine that fled across the heavens belching gouts of fire in its wake. Do you remember? Humblest of the proud, proudest of the humble.

I fought. I taught the Way for a time. I fought again, taught again, tried politics, magic, poison I fought one great battle so terrible the sun itself hid its face from the slaughter, with men and gods, with animals and demons, with spirits of the earth and air, of fire and water, with slizzards and horses, swords and chariots But it was quite a showing we gave them, wasn't it?

You, deathgod, were my charioteer. It all comes back to me now. We were taken prisoner and the Lords of Karma were to be our judges. You escaped them by the will-death and the Way of the Black Wheel. I could not. Your past was laid out before them. You were judged. To have permitted you to walk the world, in any form, would have left the door open for your return.

So, as you stole your teachings from the Gottama of another place and time, did they steal the tale of the end of that one's days among men. You were judged worthy of Nirvana. Your atman was projected, not into another body, but into the great magnetic cloud that encircles this planet. That was over half a century ago. You are now officially an avatar of Vishnu, whose teachings were misinterpreted by some of his more zealous followers.

You, personally, continued to exist only in the form of self-perpetuating wavelengths, which I succeeded in capturing. Their own traditions have it that once they wore bodies, lived in cities. Their quest for personal immortality, however, led them along a different path from that which Man followed. They found a way to perpetuate themselves as stable fields of energy.

They abandoned their bodies to live forever as vortices of force. But pure intellect they are not. They carried with them their complete egos, and born of matter they do ever lust after the flesh. Though they can assume its appearance for a time, they cannot return to it unassisted. For ages they did drift aimlessly about this world. Then the arrival of Man stirred them from their quiescence.

They took on the shapes of his nightmares to devil him. This is why they had to be defeated and bound, far beneath the Ratnagaris. We could not destroy them all. We could not permit them to continue their attempts to possess the machines of incarnation and the bodies of men. So they were trapped and contained in great magnetic bottles.

Lord of light by roger zelazny: Lord of Light ()

He dealt in good faith, but the Rakasha are the Rakasha. That is to say, they are malefic creatures, possessed of great powers, life-span and the ability to assume nearly any shape. The Rakasha are almost indestructible. Their chiefest lack is a true body; their chiefest virtue, their honor toward their gambling debts. That the Lord of Light went to Hellwell at all serves to show that perhaps he was somewhat distraught concerning the state of the world This way to the bound Demons Hellwell lies at the top of the world and it leads down to its roots.

It is probably as old as the world itself; and if it is not, it should be, because it looks as if it were. It begins with a doorway. There is a huge, burnished metal door, erected by the First, that is heavy as sin, three times the height of a man and half that distance in width. It is a full cubit thick and bears a head-sized ring of brass, a complicated pressure-plate lock and an inscription that reads, roughly, "Go away.

This is not a place to be. If you do try to enter here, you will fail and also be cursed. If somehow you succeed, then do not complain that you entered unwarned, nor bother us with your deathbed prayers. In that place there is always snow upon the ground, and rainbows ride like fur on the backs of icicles, which sprout about the frozen caps of cliffs.

The air is sharp as a sword. The sky is bright as the eye of a cat. Very few feet have ever trod the trail that leads to Hellwell. Of those who visited, most came only to look, to see whether the great door really existed; and when they returned home and told of having seen it, they were generally mocked. Telltale scratches about the lock plate testify that some have actually sought entrance.

Equipment sufficient to force the great door could not be transported or properly positioned, however. The trail that leads to Hellwell is less than ten inches in width for the final three hundred feet of its ascent; and perhaps six men could stand, with crowding, upon what remains of the once wide ledge that faces that door. It is told that Pannalal the Sage, having sharpened his mind with meditation and divers asceticisms, had divined the operation of the lock and entered Hellwell, spending a day and a night beneath the mountain.

He was thereafter known as Pannalal the Mad. A pact with demons "It is something of a dilemma. So I will free you now, you alone, to visit the Pole and scout out the defenses of Heaven. In your absence, I will consider the problem further. Do you likewise, and perhaps upon your return an equitable arrangement can be made. Release me from this doom!

It rolled into a ball of fire and spun about the well like a comet; it burned like a small sun, lighting up the darkness; it changed colors as it fled about, so that the rocks shone both ghastly and pleasing. Then it hovered above the head of the one called Siddhartha, sending down its throbbing words upon him: "You cannot know my pleasure to feel again my strength set free.

I've a mind to try your power once more. The ball of flame coalesced. Shrinking, it grew brighter, and it slowly settled to the floor. It lay there quivering, like a petal fallen from some titanic bloom; then it drifted slowly across the floor of Hellwell and re-entered the niche.

Lord of light by roger zelazny: The story centres on a war

Free me once more. Perhaps I'd best leave you as you are and seek assistance elsewhere. I gave you my promise! What more would you have? Either you will serve me now in this matter, or you will not. That is all. Choose, and abide by your choice, and your word. Free me, and I will visit Heaven upon its mountain of ice, and report back to you of its weaknesses.

Out of the sky, riding on the polar winds, across the seas and the land, over the burning snow, and under it and through it, they came. The shape-shifters drifted across the fields of white, and the sky-walkers fell down like leaves; trumpets sounded over the wastes, and the chariots of the snows thundered forward, light leaping like spears from their burnished sides; cloaks of fur afire, white plumes of massively breathed air trailing above and behind them, golden-gauntleted and sun-eyed, clanking and skidding, rushing and whirling, they came, in bright baldric, wer-mask, fire-scarf, devil-shoe, frost-greaves and power-helm, they came; and across the world that lay at their back, there was rejoicing in the Temples, with much singing and the making of offerings, and processions and prayers, sacrifices and dispensations, pageantry and color.

For the much-feared goddess was to be wed with Death, and it was hoped that this would serve to soften both their dispositions. A festive spirit had also infected Heaven, and with the gathering of the gods and the demigods, the heroes and the nobles, the high priests and the favored rajahs and high-ranking Brahmins, this spirit obtained force and momentum and spun like an all-colored whirlwind, thundering in the heads of the First and latest alike.

They came. The beginning of the end The day of the battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden. A small mist drifted in from the river. The Bridge of the Gods glistened all of gold in the east, reached back, darkening, into retreating night, divided the heavens like a burning equator. The warriors of Keenset waited outside the city, upon the plain by the Vedra.

Five thousand men, with blades and bows, pikes and slings, waited for the battle. A thousand zombies stood in the front ranks, led by the living sergeants of the Black One, who guided all their movements by the drum, scarves of black silk curling in the breeze like snakes of smoke upon their helms. Five hundred lancers were held to the rear.

The silver cyclones that were the Rakasha hung in the middle air. Across the half-lit world the occasional growl of a jungle beast could be heard. Fire elementals glowed upon tree limb, lance and pennon pole. There were no clouds in the heavens. The grasses of the plain were still moist and sparkling. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.

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