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Isle of the Dead (novel)
Encyclopedia
Isle of the Dead is a science fiction
novel
by Roger Zelazny
published in 1969. It was nominated for the Nebula Award
for Best Novel
in 1969, and won the French Prix Apollo
in 1972. The title refers to the several paintings
by Swiss-German painter Arnold Böcklin
. In the novel, Francis Sandow refers to “that mad painting by Boecklin, The Isle of the Dead.” Böcklin created at least five paintings with that title, each depicting an oarsman and a standing figure in a small boat, crossing dark water toward a forbidding island. A later Ace books edition featured a cover painting by Dean Ellis that was deliberately reminiscent of Böcklin’s work.
As to the novel's inspiration, Zelazny noted, “This was a spin-off from the novelette I did called ‘This Moment of the Storm.’ Actually, it wasn’t the guy I was interested in, at first. I wanted somebody that was born in the twentieth century, who had made it aboard one of these generation starships
where he’d been frozen and spent generations getting to this new planet which proved habitable. By the time he got there, they’d invented a faster-than-light drive, because several centuries had gone by and they’d become more sophisticated. Earth had much higher technology, and he had the means of going back fast if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he was happy on the world he’d reached, though, and decided to go out and try a few others, since it was easy to do. There were still time dilation
effects and, through making a few sharp investments here and there, with so much time passing, he became quite wealthy. He also happened to become the oldest human in the galaxy, and because of the fancy new medicine he was in very good shape. He also just happened to have been through the initiation ritual which would make him a god in this other religion, even though he didn’t believe in it wholeheartedly. But it was the concept of the big expanse of time that interested me."
planets. The process of becoming a worldscaper culminates in a mystic rite called Naming that binds the mortal to one of the gods in the Pei'an pantheon, and it is believed that the worldscaper is actually acting as an avatar for the god. There are only twenty seven worldscapers in existence; Sandow, bound to Shimbo of Darktree, Shrugger of Thunders, is the only non-Pei'an among them (although outworlders are welcome to practice the religion, which is called Strantri; Sandow opines it will be the first major religion to outlive its founders). While the rite of Naming was once reserved for the high priests of the Pei'an religion, modern Pei'an worldscapers tend to think of their relationships with the gods much more in terms of mental constructs, and Sandow is a confirmed agnostic as far as the objective existence of the gods is concerned.
At the beginning of the novel, Sandow is one of the most famous men in the Galaxy, wealthy beyond imagination, living a life of seclusion and luxury in worlds he fashions according to his taste. But he is lured into action by a series of photographs sent to him anonymously, showing him old enemies, old friends, and old lovers -- most of whom should be dead, but appearing in the photographs to be alive.
The novel is partly a tribute to Ernest Hemingway
and some of its meditative sequences are written in a Hemingway-like style. Through Sandow's narrative, Zelazny presents observations on 20th-century American culture and how it has changed as other planets are created or discovered. An episode in a luxurious city of an earth colony leads to a rant on gratuities
, for example.
Eventually Sandow makes his way to Illyria, a world he created as an idyllic paradise, but finds it has been severely damaged. The enemy is a Pei'an rival who as an orthodox member of the faith feels that Sandow's Naming was sacrilege. The ultimate conflict takes place on the Isle of the Dead, at the center of a great lake. It is a replica of Arnold Böcklin
's famous Isle of the Dead
painting.
Sandow also appears as a character in To Die in Italbar
(1973) and the short story "Dismal Light" in the collection Unicorn Variations
.
Sandow soon learns that somebody has been stealing the memory records and tissue samples of people who died on Earth. These things are required of everyone who lives on Earth, so they can be recalled to life should the need arise. The six missing sets are of the people whose photos Sandow received.
Visiting his Pei'an mentor Marling, who is dying, Sandow learns that his tormentor is Gringrin, another Pei'an who was denied communion with a deity despite passing almost all the tests. Gringrin vowed revenge on the other worldscapers, starting with Sandow. Somehow Gringrin has been able to unite himself with Belion.
Sandow helps his mentor end his life with the glitten root ceremony, in which two telepaths take the hallucinogenic root and have a shared dream, from which only one returns alive. This is also used for duelling between telepaths, which is what Sandow must do when he finds Gringrin. After the funeral, Sandow sets out for Illyria, the world he made which has the Isle of the Dead.
Landing by stealth, and armed to the teeth, he sets out to walk the remaining distance to the Isle of the Dead. He now believes that Gringrin intended him to be lured there, and slowly humiliated before all the people who ever mattered to him. He is sure Gringrin has made a major mistake by staging this on a world Sandow made. All the forces on the planet will be allied with Sandow; he is the world's God.
He comes upon Gringrin himself, alive but injured. Things have gone badly wrong. One of the recalled persons is Mike Shandon, a con man who is also a telepath, and a deadly enemy of Sandow's. He has persuaded the god Belion to abandon Gringrin and go to him. Apparently the Pei'an gods are real and Gringrin, attempting to ordain himself independently, asked for a creative spirit to come to him, but instead was chosen by Belion. Now, Belion's abandoned him and gone to Shandon. Gringrin wants to flee, but Sandow is determined to rescue as many of his friends as possible.
As the two cross the river to the island they meet more of Sandow's revived enemies and friends. From one of them, a feisty dwarf named Nick, Sandow learns that his recalled wife Kathy is having an affair with Shandon.
Sandow decides to buy Shandon off, which he is well-equipped to do. As the two negotiate and link minds to confirm the deal, the gods assert themselves and a battle begins in which Shimbo's air and water battle Belion's earth and fire. A storm rages as the ground shakes and splits. Both Sandow and Shandon are consumed by their godgame, until Sandow sees Nick try to help Kathy, only to fall with her into a fissure. Both die, and at the same moment Shimbo deserts him. Shandon/ Belion continues attacking, and Sandow goes down under a pile of rocks, breaking his leg. Sandow has one last trick - a laser weapon surgically implanted in his middle finger. In a supremely ironic gesture, he "gives Shandon the finger", killing him and ending the battle.
Sandow crawls away to find a "power-pull" energy nexus, so he can use its energies to summon his orbiting ship. On the way he meets Gringrin, mortally wounded. Gringrin begs him to perform the glitten rite with him. In a psychedelic trance, Sandow faces Death in the shape of the Valley of Shadows. But he sees all the worlds he has made, and realizes that as long as he can create life, casting worlds like "jewels in the darkness", he has a purpose. Gringrin in turn loses his dread of death, and walks happily into the Valley.
Waking, Sandow crawls on and encounters his last revived friend, Lady Karle, alive but entombed in a cave. Sandow bitterly dismisses her cries and goes on, but once reunited with his ship he goes back for her. They hobble to the ship together.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series...
published in 1969. It was nominated for the Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
for Best Novel
Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year.- Winners and other nominees :...
in 1969, and won the French Prix Apollo
Prix Tour-Apollo Award
The Prix Tour-Apollo was an annual French award given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year. Awards were given in 1972-1990, inclusive, and usually went to a work first published in English in the US or UK.-Winners:...
in 1972. The title refers to the several paintings
Isle of the Dead (painting)
Isle of the Dead is the best known painting of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin . Prints of the work were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century — Vladimir Nabokov observed that they were to be "found in every Berlin home." Freud, Lenin, and Clemenceau all had prints of it...
by Swiss-German painter Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss symbolist painter.-Life and art:He was born at Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin , was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city...
. In the novel, Francis Sandow refers to “that mad painting by Boecklin, The Isle of the Dead.” Böcklin created at least five paintings with that title, each depicting an oarsman and a standing figure in a small boat, crossing dark water toward a forbidding island. A later Ace books edition featured a cover painting by Dean Ellis that was deliberately reminiscent of Böcklin’s work.
As to the novel's inspiration, Zelazny noted, “This was a spin-off from the novelette I did called ‘This Moment of the Storm.’ Actually, it wasn’t the guy I was interested in, at first. I wanted somebody that was born in the twentieth century, who had made it aboard one of these generation starships
Generation ship
A generation ship is a hypothetical type of interstellar ark starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than the speed of light...
where he’d been frozen and spent generations getting to this new planet which proved habitable. By the time he got there, they’d invented a faster-than-light drive, because several centuries had gone by and they’d become more sophisticated. Earth had much higher technology, and he had the means of going back fast if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he was happy on the world he’d reached, though, and decided to go out and try a few others, since it was easy to do. There were still time dilation
Time dilation
In the theory of relativity, time dilation is an observed difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to each other or differently situated from gravitational masses. An accurate clock at rest with respect to one observer may be measured to tick at...
effects and, through making a few sharp investments here and there, with so much time passing, he became quite wealthy. He also happened to become the oldest human in the galaxy, and because of the fancy new medicine he was in very good shape. He also just happened to have been through the initiation ritual which would make him a god in this other religion, even though he didn’t believe in it wholeheartedly. But it was the concept of the big expanse of time that interested me."
Plot introduction
Francis Sandow is the last surviving human born in the 20th century. An early space colonist, he spent long centuries of space travel in suspended animation, and then suddenly woke in a far future world where everything had changed. Desperate for something to hold to, he sought out a mentor, who happened to be a member of a slowly dying alien race, the Pei'ans. Under this tutelage, Sandow eventually became a telepath and "worldscaper". Worldscapers have the ability to create and/or terraformTerraforming
Terraforming of a planet, moon, or other body is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to those of Earth, in order to make it habitable by terrestrial organisms.The term is sometimes used more generally as a...
planets. The process of becoming a worldscaper culminates in a mystic rite called Naming that binds the mortal to one of the gods in the Pei'an pantheon, and it is believed that the worldscaper is actually acting as an avatar for the god. There are only twenty seven worldscapers in existence; Sandow, bound to Shimbo of Darktree, Shrugger of Thunders, is the only non-Pei'an among them (although outworlders are welcome to practice the religion, which is called Strantri; Sandow opines it will be the first major religion to outlive its founders). While the rite of Naming was once reserved for the high priests of the Pei'an religion, modern Pei'an worldscapers tend to think of their relationships with the gods much more in terms of mental constructs, and Sandow is a confirmed agnostic as far as the objective existence of the gods is concerned.
At the beginning of the novel, Sandow is one of the most famous men in the Galaxy, wealthy beyond imagination, living a life of seclusion and luxury in worlds he fashions according to his taste. But he is lured into action by a series of photographs sent to him anonymously, showing him old enemies, old friends, and old lovers -- most of whom should be dead, but appearing in the photographs to be alive.
The novel is partly a tribute to Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
and some of its meditative sequences are written in a Hemingway-like style. Through Sandow's narrative, Zelazny presents observations on 20th-century American culture and how it has changed as other planets are created or discovered. An episode in a luxurious city of an earth colony leads to a rant on gratuities
Tipping
Tipping may refer to:* Paying a gratuity for services rendered* Giving information*Cow tipping, a rumored activity involving pushing over a sleeping cow*Fly-tipping, British term for illegally dumping waste...
, for example.
Eventually Sandow makes his way to Illyria, a world he created as an idyllic paradise, but finds it has been severely damaged. The enemy is a Pei'an rival who as an orthodox member of the faith feels that Sandow's Naming was sacrilege. The ultimate conflict takes place on the Isle of the Dead, at the center of a great lake. It is a replica of Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss symbolist painter.-Life and art:He was born at Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin , was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city...
's famous Isle of the Dead
Isle of the Dead (painting)
Isle of the Dead is the best known painting of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin . Prints of the work were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century — Vladimir Nabokov observed that they were to be "found in every Berlin home." Freud, Lenin, and Clemenceau all had prints of it...
painting.
Sandow also appears as a character in To Die in Italbar
To Die in Italbar
To Die in Italbar is a science fiction novel by Roger Zelazny. To Die in Italbar follows Mr. H, a man who needs only to touch someone to heal or hurt them, during a deadly galactic pandemic....
(1973) and the short story "Dismal Light" in the collection Unicorn Variations
Unicorn Variations
Unicorn Variations is a collection of stories and essays by author Roger Zelazny, published in 1983. The title story, "Unicorn Variation", was written as a result of Zelazny having been asked to contribute to two different upcoming anthologies — one collecting stories set in bars, and one...
.
Plot summary
Sandow is jolted from his wealthy, indolent lifestyle by a series of messages, each accompanied by a picture of one of a number of people once important to him, and all dead for many years. Sandow realizes the pictures could be fake, and he has other obligations, one of which is responding to a call for help from a friend, Ruth Laris. In the course of investigating her disappearance, he receives another message that he will find all his friends "on the Isle of the Dead". The message is in Pei'an, addressed to Shimbo (the name of the Pei'an god connected with Sandow) and signed by Belion (Shimbo's traditional enemy in Pei'an mythology).Sandow soon learns that somebody has been stealing the memory records and tissue samples of people who died on Earth. These things are required of everyone who lives on Earth, so they can be recalled to life should the need arise. The six missing sets are of the people whose photos Sandow received.
Visiting his Pei'an mentor Marling, who is dying, Sandow learns that his tormentor is Gringrin, another Pei'an who was denied communion with a deity despite passing almost all the tests. Gringrin vowed revenge on the other worldscapers, starting with Sandow. Somehow Gringrin has been able to unite himself with Belion.
Sandow helps his mentor end his life with the glitten root ceremony, in which two telepaths take the hallucinogenic root and have a shared dream, from which only one returns alive. This is also used for duelling between telepaths, which is what Sandow must do when he finds Gringrin. After the funeral, Sandow sets out for Illyria, the world he made which has the Isle of the Dead.
Landing by stealth, and armed to the teeth, he sets out to walk the remaining distance to the Isle of the Dead. He now believes that Gringrin intended him to be lured there, and slowly humiliated before all the people who ever mattered to him. He is sure Gringrin has made a major mistake by staging this on a world Sandow made. All the forces on the planet will be allied with Sandow; he is the world's God.
He comes upon Gringrin himself, alive but injured. Things have gone badly wrong. One of the recalled persons is Mike Shandon, a con man who is also a telepath, and a deadly enemy of Sandow's. He has persuaded the god Belion to abandon Gringrin and go to him. Apparently the Pei'an gods are real and Gringrin, attempting to ordain himself independently, asked for a creative spirit to come to him, but instead was chosen by Belion. Now, Belion's abandoned him and gone to Shandon. Gringrin wants to flee, but Sandow is determined to rescue as many of his friends as possible.
As the two cross the river to the island they meet more of Sandow's revived enemies and friends. From one of them, a feisty dwarf named Nick, Sandow learns that his recalled wife Kathy is having an affair with Shandon.
Sandow decides to buy Shandon off, which he is well-equipped to do. As the two negotiate and link minds to confirm the deal, the gods assert themselves and a battle begins in which Shimbo's air and water battle Belion's earth and fire. A storm rages as the ground shakes and splits. Both Sandow and Shandon are consumed by their godgame, until Sandow sees Nick try to help Kathy, only to fall with her into a fissure. Both die, and at the same moment Shimbo deserts him. Shandon/ Belion continues attacking, and Sandow goes down under a pile of rocks, breaking his leg. Sandow has one last trick - a laser weapon surgically implanted in his middle finger. In a supremely ironic gesture, he "gives Shandon the finger", killing him and ending the battle.
Sandow crawls away to find a "power-pull" energy nexus, so he can use its energies to summon his orbiting ship. On the way he meets Gringrin, mortally wounded. Gringrin begs him to perform the glitten rite with him. In a psychedelic trance, Sandow faces Death in the shape of the Valley of Shadows. But he sees all the worlds he has made, and realizes that as long as he can create life, casting worlds like "jewels in the darkness", he has a purpose. Gringrin in turn loses his dread of death, and walks happily into the Valley.
Waking, Sandow crawls on and encounters his last revived friend, Lady Karle, alive but entombed in a cave. Sandow bitterly dismisses her cries and goes on, but once reunited with his ship he goes back for her. They hobble to the ship together.