Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer who won six Hugo and three Nebula Awards, best known for Lord of Light (1967) and the Chronicles of Amber, begun with Nine Princes in Amber in 1970.

Born on 13 May 1937 in Euclid, Ohio, he took a BA in English at Western Reserve University in 1959 and an MA at Columbia University in 1962. He then worked for the US Social Security Administration in Cleveland and later Baltimore, leaving on 1 May 1969 to write full time. He was counted among the leaders of the American New Wave, a label he rejected, and he often placed figures from world mythologies in modern or future settings.

His first novel, This Immortal (Ace Books, 1966), grew from the magazine serial "...And Call Me Conrad" and shared the 1966 Hugo for best novel with Dune. Lord of Light, published by Doubleday in 1967, won the 1968 Hugo. The first Amber sequence, narrated by Corwin, ran at Doubleday from Nine Princes in Amber (1970) to The Courts of Chaos (1978); the second, centred on Merlin, ran from Trumps of Doom (Arbor House, 1985) to Prince of Chaos (William Morrow, 1991). His Nebula winners include the novella The Dream Master and the novelette "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth". He died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on 14 June 1995 and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.

For collectors

The principal Zelazny firsts are the Ace Books edition of This Immortal (1966), the Doubleday Lord of Light (1967) and the Doubleday hardback of Nine Princes in Amber (June 1970), which opened the Amber series.