Thoughts on This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

Recently I needed a book that I could take with me on a journey by plane without adding much to the weight and volume of my carry-on luggage. It also had to be well-written and absorbing, something that would hold my attention despite the uncomfortable circumstances of modern plane travel. My thoughts turned quickly to this perennial favorite, a novel that I always keep on my shelf for whenever I need the comfort, excitement, and satisfaction of reading a true classic.

I’m not sure exactly how many times I have read This Immortal. At least three times, and maybe four. I’ve written two previous reviews of the novel, which you can find here and here. It’s one of my favorite science fiction novels of all time. To put it in perspective, in 1966 it won the Hugo Award for best novel of 1965 in a tie with Frank Herbert’s Dune – and I like This Immortal better. Dune, of course, became an acknowledged classic and has experienced a revival with the new award-winning two-part film, while This Immortal remains much more obscure. Despite the imbalance of popularity, here are some reasons I find Zelazny’s amazing novel so alluring.

First of all, Zelazny was a brilliant writer with a unique, intelligent, fast-paced, and poetic style. (I speak in the past tense because he died of cancer at the age of 58 in 1995.) No one has ever written like him before or since. His stories are action-packed and larger than life, yes, but they are also imbued with mythological and literary references that give them great depth and emotional resonance. Despite these references, though, the prose is never ponderous or slow; it is obvious that Zelazny had great fun writing it, and the ebullience is infectious.

And much of This Immortal is set in Greece, where I raised my family with my Greek wife. This is an added attraction for me. The main character, who tells the story in first person, the “immortal” of the title, has lived for several centuries under various guises. Much of Earth has been devastated by an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust that has left large portions of the planet almost uninhabitable, and the majority of humankind has left for other planets and solar systems. In irradiated hot spots mutants have arisen that are uncannily similar to mythological creatures. The protagonist leads a team of humans and an alien observer to historic sites in Haiti, Egypt, and Greece while evading perils and attempting to discover what the alien’s motives are.

Another advantage of this novel is that it is short. I don’t mean to say that length determines quality; however, many modern novels encapsulate a novella’s worth of story in a gigantic, ponderous door-stopper of a book that would be more effective if it was a third of the length. Zelazny’s novel is lean yet strong, the exact length it needs to be to tell the story well and not a word longer. Reading it once again made me long for the days when writers didn’t feel the need to pad their prose with extraneous bullshit on the supposition that longer stories will sell better. Gone are the days, it seems, when writers can simply tell their stories and then stop rather than stuff them with an abundance of cloying superfluities.

All that to say that This Immortal is one of those tales that gets better and better with each rereading. In my reviews I often say that I “highly recommend” this book or that, but even that superlative is inadequate. This Immortal is a classic. You can read it once, twice, thrice, and experience greater pleasure every time. So what are you waiting for? Find a copy and get started.