I was all of twelve when I first read the original five books in Roger Zelazny's Chronicles Of Amber. I'd just joined the Science Fiction Book Club and the Boris Vallejo covers on their dual volume omnibus edition had me spellbound. Cloaked warrior in blue jeans, wielding a blade against giant feline demons set in one of Vallejo's impossibly lush fantasy backdrops: sword and sorcery here I come!

This fateful decision, based purely on a child's interpretation of a stereotypical pulp aesthetic, was one of the best I've made. I started reading and couldn't put the story down. Even at twelve I quickly realized I'd received much more than I'd bargained for.

There is the one true realm, Amber, and endless images cast by this realm, called Shadow. Beyond Shadow itself is Chaos, from which all came and, if Chaos wins its hand, all will return. Everything imagined by one of the royal blood of Amber can be found in Shadow. Theirs is the power to traverse these endless worlds until enwrapping existence conforms to their every desire, conscious change by conscious change.

Zelazny spins a tale of intrigue, physical and mental mastery, dysfunctional family dynamics, inherent power and reality-warping par excellence. He's a delicious, prismatic writer, always employing a few devious tricks in the telling to surprise farther in.

As a child I felt the world I saw around me, the world I was embedded in each and every day, was but one aspect of a vast, endless range of possible space and place. Now, in re-reading the books which shaped me, as the greater and smaller arcs of my life fly in trajectories much like the writings of Zelazny, Heinlein and Sturgeon, I find this feeling stronger every day.

Roger Zelazny himself puts in a cameo as prison guard. He's encountered by the central character, Corwin, in the dungeons deep beneath the palace. Corwin was once imprisoned here long-term, by a brother who had claimed the throne. Roger explains his enjoyment of dungeon duty to Corwin:

"Good evening, Lord Corwin," said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it.
"Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?"
"A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful."
"You enjoy this duty?"
He nodded.
"I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here."
"Fitting, fitting," I said. "I'll be needing a lantern."
He took one from the rack, brought it to flame from his candle.
"Will it have a happy ending?" I inquired.
He shrugged.
"I'll be happy."
"I mean, does good triumph and hero bed heroine? Or do you kill everybody off?"
"That's hardly fair," he said.
"Never mind. Maybe I'll read it one day."
"Maybe," he said.