Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
The timeless science fiction novel Lord of Light is written by the legendary Roger Zelazny. One of six Hugo Awards that Zelazny won throughout his illustrious career, along with three Nebula Awards and many other accolades, Lord of Light is regarded alongside Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and Frank Herbert’s Dune as one of the seminal works that revolutionized how readers viewed science fiction.
Lord of Light
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Because of the immense Jungian archetypal truths it provokes in each of us and instils in each of us as a herald, this book is a masterpiece among masterpieces. Dealing with aspects of life that seem to be dominating but that, if we so choose, we may actually use to our benefit.
With the examination of myth and history, as they would eventually climax in the present, Roger Zelazny ushered Science Fiction into a new era. After that, SF was never the same.
The heart of the novel’s internal action is its love story. It is a three-way power struggle love triangle involving two extremely powerful men and a very powerful woman. The development of a new planet’s culture and future serves as its backdrop.
The significance of this tale, set in the Past that will become the Future of Earth, follows the course taken by the Lion in Winter as it combines with the entire epic tale of the Dune series. However, it’s possible that it’s about you and me.
The good news is that love never fails in the end, despite all of the novel’s journeys through our inner selves, hopes, dreams, failures, and successes.
The future planet where Lord of Ligh takes place was colonized many years ago by people from Earth. The individuals who were formerly the colony’s officers and commanders have changed their identities to become Hindu deities. One of them thinks that this isn’t good enough and tries to reinvent himself as the Buddha in order to start a religious revolution in this world. This is essentially the plot of the narrative. All of the divinity-related activities, including reincarnation, a central plot device, are carried out by technical deception. They do succeed in using technology to accomplish rebirth.
People who pass away sometimes reincarnate as animals or, if they’re fortunate, as other people. That system is undoubtedly susceptible to abuse and corruption because it is managed by people rather than a divine fate.
In an effort to upend human culture, our hero forms an alliance with the native non-human residents of the planet, which has strange parallels to colonialism—a subject we haven’t really touched on before. It’s not a very in-depth critique of colonialism, but it’s an interesting one that, like Dune, originates from the middle of the 1960s, when the white world was viewing the non-white world very differently.
