SethH Hi there, and welcome back to the Hugo's There podcast. I'm your host, Seth Heasley. And this time, we're going to be talking about a Nebula and Hugo finalist, which is Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny, which was a finalist for both of those awards, like I said. um SethH And my guest for this episode is returning guest Bob Marle, who previously joined me for one of my early zoomed out episodes about pandemic fiction. So hi, Bob, welcome back. bob Well, thanks. And i wanted to let everyone know how amazed I was at the editing job you did on that episode. i almost sounded coherent when you were done. This time you may have to edit out of some coughing and sniffling. bob I'm still getting over that cold that is sweeping the nation. SethH Hmm. It's the most wonderful time of the year. so bob Uh-huh. SethH So, Bob, you're a science fiction reader and writer with a short story and novelette publications back in the 1900s, as we say. um i remember talking about that last time, but it's been two years since we recorded the previous episode. So any updates? bob Yes. um Right after we recorded that episode, a novelette I had submitted to Asimov's got accepted. It was my first 21st century sale after coming back to writing while i after I retired. SethH Sweet. bob And since then, I've sold and published an analog as well. And I have a really fun story called ah Chuck's Gun out now in one of the newer online magazines called Trollback. SethH Nice. So you went from no 21st century sales to three. bob Thus far, i'm I'm hoping to add a few more. SethH Excellent. bob um Yeah, and thanks. So as you said, the book we're talking about today is Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny. It was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula, but it lost in both awards to the same book, Forever War. bob um And, um you know, I understood it at the time. It was right after Vietnam and Forever War spoke to a lot of people and me included. SethH Sure. bob But I think the real reason Doorways in the Sand probably lost is that it's heavy on comedy. And ah the awards, I think, value, devalue comedy as an art form. SethH Yeah, yeah, i I tend to agree. I mean, no, no ah Hugo's or Nebulas for Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. bob Yeah, exactly. And and I think it's it's just that some people take life and literature way too seriously, and they assume something that makes you laugh is beneath them. I'm sort of the opposite. To me, comedy is the highest art form. SethH It is interesting, though, that recently John Scalzi has been garnering Hugo finalist spots with with books that are high on humor and pretty low on literature. SethH But is humor the reason that you wanted to look at this book? Yeah. bob Mostly. i do like Zelazny, particularly Lord of Light and and some of his short stories, and at least the first Amber book. SethH Yeah. bob To me, though, this book is, it seems like a a lost gem. SethH I see what you did there. It seems like a good segue into a bit of the non-spoiler plot synopsis for this one, for reasons that will become apparent. bob a All right. bob Yeah. Okay, I'll start. um This book is told in first person by one Fred Cassidy, a college student with a penchant for climbing buildings. SethH I thought that was interesting. Sure. And it's the near future, or really retro future. bob Yeah, right. There's flying cars, but no cell phones. SethH Yeah, they always miss wireless communication. um But of course, there's also aliens from outer space. bob Yeah, lots of them. The plot, it centers around an alien artifact called a star stone, an ancient, mysterious, gem-like artifact that's been lent to Earth as part of a cultural exchange, if you will. bob And when a supposed replica of the stone goes missing, all sorts of people and aliens are upset, and they all seem to think Fred knows something about it. SethH Hmm. bob and He dodges hoodlums, would-be helpful aliens in absurd animal costumes, and State Department officials, all the while receiving strange messages in his dreams or after he's been drinking. bob you know and And I'll admit, there are a few specific aspects of this book that made it a personal favorite when I first read it. SethH Ah, you get messages as well when you've had too much to drink? bob ah I wish. The only message I ever get when I drink too much is that I've drunk too much. um Yeah, no, the the re though the thing I liked was when I read it, I was in college like Fred. bob Not exactly like Fred, but close enough. And also, I occasionally climbed buildings. I did until a really scary incident convinced me that I should restrict my acrophilia to skydiving and hang gliding where the ground was far enough away you could do something about it. bob um Yeah, Fred, Fred also, and this was probably the the biggest thing was that Fred was getting way more enjoyment out of his very extended undergraduate days than I was. So there was kind of an aspirational aspect. I wish I could do it like him. SethH Yeah, I mean, I've definitely had times where where I thought, you know what, going back to school could be fun. But I think really what I'm wanting to go back to is just being younger. um But Fred is like the internal eternal student. He's in his 13th year as an undergrad. SethH um It reminded me of the famous line from Better Off Dead, the John Cusack movie. Lane, I've been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I'm no dummy. bob Yeah. In Fred's case, it's not that he's a bad student. He intentionally changes majors just to avoid graduating because that way he can extend his mostly deceased uncle's bequest for his education. bob So among the people that he has to dodge is college official that's trying to force him to graduate. SethH Yeah, yeah. And that's established pretty early in the book, the the antagonism between the two. Although, you know, it's probably not fair of me to picture him as William Atherton from Real Genius or Ghostbusters or Die Hard. SethH Any dick in a movie was played by William Atherton. But in this one, there's also kind of a detective mystery aspect. bob Yeah. yeah um SethH But you don't really know what the crime is. bob Yeah. Which makes it kind of hard to figure out. But but, you know, some things are obvious. SethH Mm-hmm. bob But some are kind of buried deeper in the story. um I normally do not like detective mystery subgenre of science fiction, but this was done in such a fun kind of non-detective style. bob I didn't mind. The book really, though, came alive for me in the last line of chapter three, when a wombat and a kangaroo rescue Fred from the desert. SethH as As normally happens, the six-fingered aliens in animal suits with the kangaroo who extols the virtues of peanut butter as a source of protein. bob Exactly. i was That was when I was hooked. And I just fell in love with the story and the absolutely absurdist prose. SethH Oh, yeah. Yeah. the The writing is fun and it's kind of trippy as well. bob Yeah, the main character is often narrating from an altered mental state. He's either half asleep, dreaming, drunk, or recovering from various injuries that have been afflicted upon him. There's a lot of bewilderment and free association type thinking. You know, part of me wonders if this was a kind of reaction to the hyper rational protagonists of of the first superstars of science fiction, people like Clark and Asimov. SethH The book is dedicated to Asimov, actually. bob yeah and And it said with affection. maybe Maybe that was a preemptive apology for poking him a little bit. SethH Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, at the beginning of the book, the main thing going on with the character is confusion. And I definitely shared that confusion when I started reading it. I think i I mentioned over email, like, I have no idea what's going on, but I'm enjoying it. bob yeah Yeah, I actually think the confusion is intentional. You know, Zelazny seldom uses a straightforward narration. In this book, every chapter flashes forward in time. SethH Yeah, yeah. bob You know, SethH Like skipping ahead to a pivotal point in the chapter's narrative without any explanation and then kind of walking it back to see how you got there. You know what? and the sort of they I guess you're wondering how I got into this situation. bob Yeah, exactly. Although a lot of times he just doesn't even tell you what's going on. It's just a big change. SethH No, no. bob you know and you know So you get the Latin term for this kind of narration is in media res. And it's something very similar to what Zelazny did in Lord of Light, where he just actually moved the chapters in and out of out of order. SethH Right. bob In the first Amber book, if you remember, he gave the main character amnesia. and let the the reader and the character figured out what was going on ah together. SethH ah Okay. bob so SethH Interesting. i I actually have not read any of the Amber books. They're on my list for for early next year, I think. So the the character in the book, I think, probably figured things out faster than I did. SethH um i i I would say it's not a book that you can easily put down for a few days and come back to because you're going to lose some of the thread of it. But fortunately, it's an easy enough read that I didn't really want to put it down. bob Yeah, i I actually kind of prefer a slow reveal. You know, all fiction starts with a reveal of, you know, who who the person is and whatnot. SethH Hmm. bob But in science fiction and fantasy, you have a lot more to explain. And, you know, the quick and boring method to do is info dumps. But I enjoy kind of slowly piecing it together. bob Yeah. SethH Yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of info dump in the first couple chapters with the retiring professor kind of reminiscing. bob Yeah, yeah, but that's mainly about the main character and and his education and and the setting. But the the reveal of the plot of the story comes much, much slower. SethH Yeah, yeah. And I mean, adding to the confusion of the flash forwards are that there's a lot of literary and scientific allusions that can be probably hard to puzzle out. bob Yeah, the main character has been hopping from one college major to another, so he's absolutely filled with obscure knowledge, and he absolutely loves to use it. SethH Yeah, i I kind of took it as a challenge um because, you know, some of them you're going to get right away and other ones are a little obscure and you might want to go down and a Wikipedia click hole on them. um I actually have both an engineering and a liberal arts degree. So the interdisciplinary nature of of his references worked for me. bob Well, i was not even I was not as well armed in my first reading of it. I did i had an incomplete biology degree. SethH Hmm. bob um but you know And I know I missed a lot. SethH Hmm. bob um But an example of this kind of flash forward trippy writing and confused mental state, you can find it at the very beginning of chapter three, which goes like this. bob "Sunflash, some splash, darkle, stardance. Phaethon's solid gold Cadillac crashed where there was no ear to hear. Lay burning, flickered, went out. Like me. At least, when I woke up again, it was night and I was a wreck." SethH Yeah, and and that flashes way, way forward. um Just kind of inexplicably taking Fred from campus to being delirious after the criminals had staked him out in the Australian desert. bob Yeah, there's there's a lot to walk back there. But what got my attention was Phaethon, which I read to be a reference to the son of the Greek god Helios. SethH Yeah. SethH Mm-hmm. bob Phaethon borrowed his dad's fiery sun chariot, but he didn't know to control it and had to be knocked from the sky after he flew too close to the earth, burning it, and then too far away, freezing it. SethH Yeah, yeah, and you know, it's a description of the the burning desert day and the freezing desert night. bob Exactly, and eventually Zeus is strikes him out of the sky and he crashed where no ear could hear. SethH And "lay burning, flickered, went out" is sunset. bob Yeah, the whole book is filled with these. Now some are obscure and there is no way you can get them all. ah SethH Mm-hmm. bob the the The very start of the very next chapter, Fred is again inexplicably in orbit over the earth. you know, but he's and he's watching and he sees California and starts hoping that it might drop into the Pacific while he had a good look at it. SethH That's pretty dark. bob Yeah, well, it California dropping into the Pacific was a really popular joke meme in the 1960s and 1970s because plate tectonics had just been invented and nobody understood it. bob um SethH Right. bob At any rate, Fred, musing from space, speculates how the event could provide, quote, some Donnelly of the future material for a book, end quote. bob You know, I know I did not get that one on my first read, and I had to wait until the Internet was invented So I could look it up. And what it refers to is Ignatius Donnelly, a pseudoscientist of the 1800s, who wrote this book about Atlantis dropping into the sea. SethH Yeah, talk about obscure. bob Yeah, ah yeah, but, and it's not really tied to the narrative or plot, so it's kind of more of an Easter egg, if you will. And the the book is filled with things like this. Some are one-off references, some are narrative hints, like the Phaethon's chariot, but others, such, there are a lot of references to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and they're woven all through the story and plot. SethH Mm-hmm. SethH Yeah, yeah. And, you know, of course, the the nature, like like you mentioned before, of the character being and in college for 13 years and constantly changing majors makes him the perfect narrator to be able to pull off that kind of thing. bob Exactly. And it's also what makes the book really re-readable. As you get things a second and third time, you read them. SethH Hmm. SethH Yeah. bob Or in my case, someone invents Google so you can actually look it up. um SethH Exactly. Yeah. bob I did not get many of these until years later. And one we'll get to later that I didn't get until you pointed it out. And I'm i'm sure there's some I'll never get unless I go back to school for a literary degree. SethH Hmm. SethH Hmm. Yeah. ah Literary mythology, chemistry. um I do you think it would be possible for some readers to kind of find it distracting all the references. bob Yeah, and and actually, i sort of think he was doing that on purpose. There are a few things in this plot that are going to be obvious to the reader. SethH Hmm. bob And and so throwing in a razzle-dazzle allusion to Greek mythology may be intended to just throw you off balance. Again, you know, intentional confusions. SethH Yeah, I mean, this is treading kind of close to to spoiler territory, but, you know, it's kind of obvious that all the trouble is not just about this replica of the Starstone. bob Yeah, that's true. And the location of the stone is a mystery that some people will get. i certainly didn't. ah Though it was obvious once once they explained it. SethH Hmm. bob But there's another mystery driving the plot, which is much deeper and surprised me when it came. SethH Yeah, yeah. And I did kind of caught into where the Star Stone was, but I think the other mystery you're talking about is the Bujum. bob Yeah, yeah, our snark. ah SethH Yes. SethH um So, like I said, we're we're getting kind of close to spoilers. that's some Let's go ahead and just switch over to spoilers. But in case anybody hasn't gotten the message, the book is really, really enjoyable. It's a quick read. I don't know. It's like 180 pages in the library bound hardcover that I had. um And it's a quick read. It has some absolutely delightful turns of phrase. So, spoiler time. SethH The Starstone. I kind of pictured it like the Life Day orbs from the Star Wars Holiday Special, which I just saw in Vancouver. bob Oh, wow. bob Excuse me. yeah But now who's obscure doing obscure references? SethH Right. bob Yeah. So the Starstone replica that everybody is bothering Fred about is, of course, the real one. Which one of his academic friends had been tasked with duplicating. SethH Right. SethH Oh, right. and And of course, you know, as things do, the replica and the real stone get mixed up and end up with Fred via a roommate. bob Yeah, I think this much most readers will see. Fred's kind of slow to figure it out. And I like that as as readers, SethH Yeah. Yeah. bob we know we're reading a novel so we expect something to be unusual but in real life you know a very unlikely thing is not quite easily accepted you know um i prefer my characters to act realistically in that sense um in the asimov story that i published last year SethH Mm-hmm. SethH Mm-hmm. SethH Yeah. bob I actually gave my main character grade two concussion to excuse him for not figuring out what was going on because I knew it was going to be obvious to the reader. SethH Mm-hmm. bob um SethH Right. bob Zelazny does the same thing to Fred more than once, and like is including, like I said, shooting him. SethH Yeah, yeah. SethH Yeah, yeah. I mean, it can be frustrating when, especially if you have a book like, I remember a Digital Fortress from Dan Brown. It was supposed to be this smart thriller, and it has all these nuclear scientists and geniuses, and they can't figure out the difference between... SethH Uranium 238 and 235 is three. Like the climactic moment of the book is is that. And i'm like, ah come on, guys. But anyhow, um and to be fair to Fred, you know, it's it probably is kind of hard to think straight where you're being chased or tortured. And you know there's different human criminals trying to steal the stone, the government and aliens sort of trying to help. um So it can be confusing to the reader and, of course, to Fred. bob Right. It's a big distraction. know, watch this hand. Don't watch that one. But there are two invisible layers going on. Spoiler, the the strange voice Fred is hearing is the star stone itself, which is an artificial intelligence that has been absorbed into Fred's body. SethH Right. Yeah. That makes it kind of hard to find. I think in the first thing he hears is, do you hear me dead? bob hey SethH Or do you see me dead? bob You're right. And he hears several versions. SethH I can't remember which what it was now. bob you hear You do you hear me lead? But there's a um there's another um even more hidden layer, which is an alien who is trying to sabotage Earth by stealing the stone, which would set the Earth back diplomatically. SethH Yeah. SethH So yeah, diplomatically, because for political reasons, in the Confederation of Intelligent Species, where Earth is now a member, the the alien construct inside Fred is trying to warn Fred about this. And then in a climactic scene, Fred finally puts it together and chases the alien up a tower using his acrophilia powers. bob Right. it mean It really hangs together once it's resolved, which I think is pretty remarkable because one of the obscure facts about this book is that Zelazny wrote it in a single draft on a typewriter with no editing. SethH Wow. bob Yeah. And I can tell you, as a struggling writer, I'm absolutely in awe of this. SethH As a podcast editor, I am in awe of it as well. bob Yeah. My first attempts at writing happened before word processors. and And I wrote and edited on a paper with paper and pencil long over and over again before I would go even near a typewriter. bob Now, you know, with a word processor, i I'm endlessly editing. I don't even, I don't get writer's block anymore. I get stuck in editing loops. SethH Right, right. bob You know, yeah I cannot even imagine just sitting down and pounding out a novel without a delete key. I think i personally think we should separate literature into those written that what was written before the word processor and what was written after the word processor and and writers that could go straight to copy. SethH Mm-hmm. SethH Yeah. bob They're to me, they're mythic giants of old, you know, with a lost kind of underappreciated talent. SethH Yeah. and And I do think the book kind of reads that way, a stream of consciousness kind of, because because it's like he's just ad-libbing or or spitballing. Like that that phrase that you read earlier, it sounds like song lyrics. bob Yeah. Yeah. I mean, i agree. um and though Sometimes think he's just, you know, noodling along, um along literary or philosophical things while he just sort of gathers his his thoughts and proceeds to the next one. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. i I also love the bumbling antagonists, Morton Zemeister and Jamie Buckler. It's great names. May may as well have called them Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. bob Yeah, you know I totally didn't did not think about that, but are are you talking Shakespeare, Gilbert, or Stoppard's play? SethH ah I was thinking, actually, I don't even know. Is it Gilbert and Sullivan? bob Well, it's it's actually from Shakespeare, and then Gilbert and Sullivan did it as a play, and then Jamie Buckler did another play, all with those same two characters. SethH um Yeah, no, I was thinking of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. bob Oh, okay. And that's, that's, um yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. But, you know, it's, it's a classic kind of thing that you can just go spinning off in, you know, into other thoughts. SethH Yeah, yeah. So we do need to talk about the Rhennius machine. bob Yeah. um I mentioned that there are a lot of parallels to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. And a lot of them revolve around the Rhenius machine, which is an alien device also involved in the cultural exchange. The device inverts things in three dimensions the way a mirror does in two. bob But unlike the mirror in through looking glass, which inverted logic, the Rhennius machine operates at the molecular level, making our left-handed proteins right-handed. SethH and bob And so Fred gets reversed in the device and he gets to enjoy stereo isomers of bourbon and French fries, which all of which gets very cleverly woven into the plot. SethH Yeah, it talks about how his tastes change, right? There's like, I can't remember if it was cigarettes that all of a sudden are are terrible or like the the commissary. bob It was a milkshake. A milkshake was undrinkable. SethH It was a milkshake. Okay. bob Yeah. SethH Right, right, right. um Yeah, that that's fun. And with the Rennius machine, right, at some point, I think he puts a penny through it and it just makes Abe face the other direction and then he puts it changes, it switches it in the other direction as well. bob Yeah, well, goes inside out first and then back. SethH Yeah, yeah. bob but But the inside out proves to be a very effective weapon later in the book. SethH Okay. SethH A gruesome weapon. bob Yeah. Yeah, rather, rather. SethH Yeah. um So slightly off topic here. do you Do you feel like the book has aged well? bob ah You know, I think it's aged better than most of that period. it It is, like all science fiction of that time, weak on women characters. SethH Hmm. bob But by not having very many ah female characters, Elasny sort of avoids a lot of the cringeworthy sexism you can occasionally find in people like Heinlein or Asimov. SethH Hmm. SethH Sure. Yeah. I guess sins of omission, is that better than sins of commission? bob Yeah, and it's still noticeable. There was one poem about the female form. It didn't objectify women as much as it formulized them or geometricized them. SethH Yeah. Yeah. bob it was That was an interesting poem. SethH ye SethH Yeah. and I mentioned the retro future because there's there's no internet, there's no cell phones, but there's space flight. bob Right. If you're a young reader, you know I guess you're just gonna have to suspend disbelief and imagine what life was like for your parents or your grandparents. SethH Yeah. bob You know, spent half my life without cell phones, so this is easier for me. But when I reread it this last time, there was a line where he, quote, cradles it. SethH Yeah. bob And I puzzled me for a second till I realized that it was a phone. I'd forgotten about phone cradles. You know, and ah the most glaring thing I noticed on this reread was the main character's complete disregard for getting permission to do an archaeological dig at an Australian indigenous site. SethH Yeah, that's that's ah that's a no-no. And he did seem to kind of operate on the, I'll get forgiveness rather than permission. bob Yeah, as college students are wont to do. and My own age showed on this reading. SethH Mm-hmm. bob When he was tromping over people's roofs, I was wincing. I mean, I was thinking, did he scare the people with his inside with his footsteps? SethH Mm-hmm. bob Did he mess up the shingles on their roofs? SethH Mm-hmm. bob You know, being a homeowner kills part of the fun of this book. SethH Yeah. Yeah. All those punk kids always running around my roof. Yeah. bob Yeah. SethH yeah I mean, there's a little bit of dissonance there too, right? Cause he's a, you know, over 30 undergrad still living the undergrad party and prank lifestyle. bob Yeah. and And another thing that was common for Zelazny, at least in the first half of his career, his main character smokes a lot. SethH Yeah. Yeah. bob And having worked at a cancer center, that made me wince more than the lack of cell SethH Well, maybe they could use the Rennius machine to turn people inside out to ah to pull the cancer out of their lungs. bob phone. SethH that That actually kind of reminds me of the the big time. bob price. SethH There's a machine where they they can turn things inside out in that. The Fritz Leiber book. but So um you read this book when it first came out? bob right. bob Yes, yes. SethH and And I think you mentioned that some folks were disappointed in it. bob Yeah, you know, it's 76, so the space race was pretty much over. SethH Mm-hmm. bob going to be several years before the shuttle flew. um And That was had been one of the big drivers of science fiction. And the what people first called soft science fiction and later called new wave was was supplanting scientist writers like Asimov and Clark. Writers like Zelazny and Le Guin were the big names of that movement. So some people expected more. bob And but if you look back at their bibliographies, you realize that in retrospect, both Zelazny and Le Guin were near the end of their. their imperial period. um And I sort of view Doorways in the Sand as Zelazny's last really good novel. mean, I know some people really like A ah Night in Lonesome October, but in fact, that was written very shortly after Doorways in the Sand, but wasn't published until near the end of his life when he finally got Gay and Wilson to illustrate it. SethH And he wrote his Amber series for quite some time. I think he was still writing it ah at this time. bob Yeah, he was still writing it in. SethH Yeah. bob But, you know, to be perfectly honest, most people view the Amber books as as as as commercial rather than artistic works. SethH Mm. bob I think the joke was said that one of the Amber books paid for a swimming pool. You know, yeah, the most the the more conventional aspects of Doorways in the Sand may you know have been perceived by some people as selling out. bob You know, he did write continue writing more experimental works. SethH Mm. bob I mean, his very next novel, Bridge of Ashes, was way out there. I mean, Zelazny even said Bridge of Ashes taught him the limits of puzzlement. SethH Mm. SethH given how confused I was with this one, i i may pass on that one. bob Yeah, me too. In retrospect, I think the problem was that new writers with new ideas and energy were coming up while older writers, or at least middle-aged writers like Zelazny, they had mortgages to pay. SethH Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's kind of the eternal paradox of in art, right? Or it's, well, you're just doing a rehash of your old favorites. Um, if you, if you stay too safe, right, you stay in similar tones and themes or, well, this is too different from your other work. If you push the boundaries, you're kind of damned if you do damned, if you don't. bob Exactly. I mean, Doorways in the Sand, like I said, is either Zelazny's last great novel or it's the beginning of his decline. Either way, it's near enough to his peak that I found it just loads of fun. SethH Hmm. bob And I still reread it about every five years or so. um I always notice something new. I mentioned how Fred's acrophilia and college lifestyle resonated me with me when I read it. bob But I have one more thing i I should mention that was in this book. It was the single most useful thing I ever got from a book, at least for for my career. SethH OK. All right. Let's hear it. bob All right. So when Fred was trying to understand the aliens that were assisting him, he ruminates on a law of large organizations, such as the one that the aliens were clearly part of. bob and And that law states that the longer and a large organization exists, the, quote, more it grinds out restrictions that hinder its own functions, end quote. SethH Right. SethH Hmm. Ladies and gentlemen, government. bob You don't have to. Yeah, there you go. ah But in the end, ah Only those on the very edges of the organization could get anything done, and they always have to violate rules to do it. SethH Hmm. bob So I read these words just months before starting a career at a large academic and highly bureaucratic medical center. SethH Hmm. SethH Hmm. bob ah And that law was clearly in operation. I recognized it right away. And I managed to steer my career a little bit, bending the rules when I could or finding places where the rules hadn't reached yet. And at the end of my career, when the restrictions became unavoidable, I retired early. SethH I mean, that's it's a pretty valuable life lesson. You're not necessarily thinking that you're get that from a a paperback science fiction novel. bob know. SethH So it makes sense why this book is special to you. bob Yes, um it is, but most of all, it just makes me laugh. And these days, laughter is a very precious commodity. SethH Yeah, definitely. I i wrote down a few quotes. um So let me give a couple of representative samples. There's one where... um Let's see. where he's He's thinking about. um Oh, yeah right. bob Going to bed. SethH OK, yeah, he's he's he's getting ready to go to bed after after quite a bit of drinking. bob You left out a D. SethH And he says, maybe we'll have some fresh ideas in the morning, he said, rising. Thinking them will be painful, whatever they are, I said. Going over to the couch and kicking off my shoes. Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes. SethH I sprawled, not a cogito or sum to my name. Which, it's like, it's very highly literary. And then, um I'm not sure if it's after that. At some point he wakes up with a hangover. SethH And he says, caffeine, nicotine, the games the blood sugars play. I do not know what it was that pierced the dark bubble as I sat there assembling the morning and myself. SethH And then another one when he um he believes he's about to be painfully consumed by a gigantic carnivorous looking plant alien that is just a telepath, I think. SethH um am Am I thinking of that right? I think I am. bob Yes. Yeah. SethH And this is one of those ones where it's at the right at the beginning of a chapter, so you don't really know what's happening or how we got into that situation. um And it says... As it paused for an instant, perhaps debating the best disposition of the alkaloids my excess nitrogen would provide, the past couple of days flashed before me. No more than that, as I was still fresh on earlier portions of my life from the last time I had been about to die. SethH So he didn't have to have his whole life flash before his eyes anymore because he would so he was getting used to almost dying. bob He'd already done it several times. SethH Yeah, yeah, yeah. um Any quotes you want to share or or other other thoughts about this one? bob Well, I would just say that um in one way, this book is kind of old school science fiction, because old school science fiction would deliver you a dollop of real science wrapped up in a fun story. SethH Yeah. bob But in Doorways in the Sand, it's not just science, but literature, mythology, and a dozen other disciplines. And I think that makes it definitely worth reading. SethH Yeah, yeah. And things kind of get reconfigured as you go through the book because because you have the the portion of the book where he's reversed, which was really interesting. And he's he's trying to figure out how to um how to go to the correct door on a car. SethH um and I think it took him a while to figure out how to drive when he was when all all of his perceptions were reversed. bob Yeah, I thought that was exceptionally well thought through. SethH Mm-hmm. bob and we you know It wasn't just kind of mirror, it was just the whole topography was was messed up in his head. SethH Yeah. Yeah. And, um and just some of the, I don't know, the, the, the character, the main character is clever, but you know, there's a limit, a limit to clever. SethH He keeps getting himself um put into these, these awful situations. And I just, I love the fact that the, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kept showing up. Just, just when you think you're, you're, you're shot of them, know, there they are again. bob Yeah. bob Yeah. SethH And until finally, bob sort of him... SethH Yeah. bob yeah i sort of found him SethH Finally, there was a reappearance of, uh, of the uncle, right? bob The uncle finally resolved it, to the mostly dead uncle. SethH Yeah. bob But ah you know there was a a unit of a well thought out aspect of his character. SethH Right. bob Like you said, he kept missing things and getting in trouble. But when he was doing something specifically, he planned it well ahead and thought it through like it was homework, something that he ah was very good at after 13 years being an undergrad. SethH Yeah. SethH Mm-hmm. bob So, you know, he was meticulous, but didn't seem to see the big picture quite as well as he might have. SethH Mm-hmm. SethH Mm-hmm. Well, and and even like the the the skill Zelazny mixing in the antagonism between him and the the college dean or whoever it was, who at a critical point in the book announces, hey, by the way, and I think he reads it in reverse, right? SethH Because that's right after he's been reversed. bob Right. Right. SethH He's presented with his diploma that says he now has a PhD degree. bob Yeah, just skip the undergrad, just go straight to the PhD. That turned out to be easier than than cornering him in some major. SethH Right. And then then that that allowed him to get put into a a position that was important, I believe. bob Yes, yes. And you know you talk about aspirational. If you're in get nearing the end of your college degree, having somebody who gets a job like that, man, you go, oh, man, I'd like that job. bob So yeah. SethH Yes. Yeah. Let me see if there's anything else that I had to... Oh, that's not the right one. Helps when I can see the whole screen. Hang on. SethH I don't know. I think I clobbered my own notes. bob Yeah, that that was the end of the my notes. SethH Okay. SethH Yeah, so, I mean... SethH I said earlier that this is a, it's a very easy book to read. um I enjoyed looking at the, at the variety of covers for them i don't know if you can still see my video, but it's a, it's kind of like a ah third eye image almost, um which I think is, it's is trying. bob I can't. bob right i've seen that one the one i have is the old one which is him sitting up on on a high building and a a jewel beneath him and if i could make my video work i'd show it to you SethH m Yeah. um Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, send me a photo of it. i i'll I'll put a couple of the the photos in here just because i I really enjoy, you know, kind of classic science fiction book cover art. SethH It's really cool. But yeah, like I said, the the the version that I have, I think is think it's 181 pages, something like that. Just, you know, took a few days to read at a pretty leisurely pace. um And you know i I wrote down i wrote down a bunch of quotes. SethH I restrained myself from from showing all of them because because i just I kept doing it. i kept taking photos of it and then and then having my phone pull the text out of it so I could throw it into a a Google document. SethH But like it it it was every chapter. There was something that was just an absolutely delightful way of phrasing something. bob Yeah. Yeah. I really enjoy it for that reason. i mean, even the first time I read it, when like you, I had no clue what was going on, I would still stumble across these lines that were just so much fun. SethH Yeah. Yeah. And if we haven't sold it, you know, the like like Bob said up top, you know, the the the book is just about this guy who has no idea why he's being chased. Well, he knows why he's being chased, but doesn't have any idea, you know, like, look, I would give you the information if I could, and I don't have it. um And at some point, you know, you might catch on to a bob Right. SethH to something that he doesn't know. Um, but it's just a, it's a fun chase through all that stuff. And I really enjoyed the, um, the early reveal of these six fingered tiny aliens inhabiting the, the bodies of, uh, uh, fauna, right? SethH Like, um, like the wombat. bob Yeah, a wombat and a kangaroo. SethH Yeah. Yeah. bob Yeah. SethH Uh, and a donkey, of course, um, at some point, um, bob Yeah, Donkey. But I loved it when he was trying to when he was dressed as a dog at the end and he was trying to get him to play Frisbee. And they he just said, and you suck at this. SethH Right. bob this you know And he said, well, if it's any consolation, there was something similar on my planet and I sucked at it there too. so Yeah. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Really, really, really interesting book. And, you know, I can kind of see, especially given the the year that it was set in with 75 for the Nebulas and 76 for the the Hugos, um you know, losing to the Forever War. The Forever War is the right winner. SethH um I think it's it's the more kind of enduring classic. um But this one, i think, you know, it's ah it's kind of underrated. um I'd never heard of it. SethH Yeah, your video's back. Oh, cool. SethH Okay. um but But yeah, yeah, a good one. I enjoyed it. So thanks thanks for exercising your ah yeah thanks for exercising your nerd director powers on Patreon. um So if you want to ah to force me to do a book, just you know make it and make it a fun one like this one and join up on on Patreon and and you can do that. SethH Um, so, uh, Bob, any place people can find you or find your work? SethH All right. Well, Bob, it's great to talk to you again. And um i I still get people commenting on the pandemic fiction podcast because I i think that was that was one of the the highlights of the zoomed out series that I did. So thanks for coming back. SethH All right. Bye now.