Unicorn Variations

Good read for passing time: This is a good book for the water closet or a trip in the car if you don't want to look out the window. The stories are funny, Zelany does a good job of communicating his stories in 10-20 pages, and his ideas are fairly original.

Two of my favorites are Unicorn

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Variations, mostly because I like chess and beer, and this story has both. The second favorite story is "Go Starless Into The Night", I won't ruin it for you, but I thought it was very intriquing.

Of course, there are a few stories along the way that could probably be considered "filler". Most notably his triple short short stories "fire and ice...a very good year". It's a nice idea, but it just left me feeling like he was trying to experiment with a new style and hadn't quite got the hang of it.

Overall, it's a very good shorts collection, worth the read, but just realize that there are a few stories that look like they were put in there to fill out the volume.

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SF & Fantasy short stories, several of which won awards. As always, he's a great read. His stories take fantasy into SF & vice versa in strange ways with a deft touch. He's one of the few authors that was a master of both the novel & short story.

Zelazny's short fiction is almost always jewel like, and the stories in Unicorn Variations aren't any different.

Zelazny's humor permeates several of these stories, and even those that seem hokey (hunting rouge automobiles) ultimately work.

While he's best known for his Amber series, Zelanzy's short

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works of fiction frankly outshine most of his novel-length work.

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This is an eclectic collection of SciFi, Fantasy, and other speculative tales, all written by one author, Roger Zelazny. Zelazny seemed to delight in twisting the plot of his strange narratives, usually with guffaw-inspiring results, at least for me. While not all the stories in this collection are

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vintage Zelazny, enough qualify, and make the read highly worthwhile.

If you've never tried exploring his strange worlds, this book might be a good introduction to the Zelazny talent, a writer who is greatly appreciated, and missed, by many of us.

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Two of the stories in this volume are award winners. Home is the Hangman won both the 1975 Nebula Award and the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Unicorn Variation won the 1982 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

I rather enjoyed the stories in this book. Some, of course, more than others. It has a good

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range of content with different subjects and moods, so it didn't seem like I was reading the same story over and over. A nice touch was the fact that the author had written a short introduction for the entire volume and for each individual work. He also included two essays The Parts That Are Only Glimpsed: Three Reflexes, and Some Science Fiction Parameters: A Biased View.

Stories (and essays) included in this collection: Unicorn Variation; The Last of the Wild Ones; Recital; The Naked Matador; The Parts That Are Only Glimpsed: Three Reflexes; Dismal Light; Go Starless in the Night; But Not the Herald ; A Hand Across the Galaxy; The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current; Home is the Hangman; Fire and/or Ice; Exeunt Omnes; A Very Good Year; My Lady of the Diodes; And I Only Am Escaped to Tell Thee ; The Horses of Lir; The Night Has 999 Eyes; Angel, Dark Angel; Walpurgisnacht; The George Business; Some Science Fiction Parameters: A Biased View.

Experiments in Reading

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