The Last Defender Of Camelot (My second read of this colle..

I find short stories challenging, by the time the concept and
characters are grasp, it is time to move on. It has been years since
I read The Last Defender Of Camelot, the first time well over a decade
ago, if not a decade and a half. At the time I had read and re-read
the Amber series that had been released up until then, and thus was
disappointed that it was not more of the same.

Now that I'm older, I can read it with a more open mind and adjudge
the stories anew. When I bought the book, something did not seem
right, and about three-quarters of the way through I realized upon a
visit to a used books store the problem: the new ibooks version is
missing the forward from Roger Zelazny, as well as several of the
stories.

As I read, I decided to rate the stories in terms how I enjoyed them,
from least to most. Here it goes:

Halfjack - It was an OK story, but I guess a story about a cyborg
pilot in human disguise and the women who love them, just did not
intrigue me.

24 Views Of Mt. Fuju, By Hokusai - Good writing, interesting concepts,
but the story was long for one that moved so slow…

For A Breath I Tarry - An interesting story considering it is told
from the POV of robots.

The Last Defender of Camelot - A nice twist to the Arthurian legend.

Come Back To The Killing Ground, Alice, My Love - I liked the idea, an
AI composed out of the accretion disk of a tiny black hole. A strange
pocket universe. At times the visuals where hard to follow. A monklike
protaganist that does amazing some stuff by controlling a cosmic
string and shoots arrows blindfolded. My favorite part is when he
shoots at a passing bird, while blindfolded, and extracts a single
feather from the bird. The Alice clone asked him if he meant to hit
the bird or the feather.
His answer: "To eat the bird is not to digest its flight"

Engine At Heartspring's Center - a man joins a euthanasia colony,
refuses to die, finds love. A nice twist at the end, and I like the
recap in the final paragraph.

Home Is The Hangman - A nice combination of sci-fi and a good old
fashioned detective story.

Permafrost - the small section Frozen Watch Embedded In Permafrost is
actually my favorite part in the entire book, very rhythmic, dynamic,
and is fun to read aloud.

Mana From Heaven - this time a combination of fantasy and mystery,
reminding me slightly of the Trumps Of Doom.

Comes Now The Power - it feels like the first chapter a good novel I
would like to have read.

LOKI 7281 - This proved to be my favorite story. Which of course was
mostly humorous and poking fun at himself and other genre writers. It
was not serious, but it was no impediment to my enjoyment of this.

The iBooks "The Last Defender of Camelot" is a completely different
book from Zelazny's collection entitled "The Last Defender of
Camelot." I think it is stupid, quite frankly, that they did that.
Whether it was the publisher or the editor (Robert Silverberg), who
knows, but someone thought it didn't matter that they were titling a
new collection that way when there was already a collection in
existence with that same title but a completely different set of
stories. The newer collection is purportedly Silverberg's
determination of the best Zelazny short stories.

There was both the original Pocket books version with Book Club
hardcover, and then the limited edition from Underwood-Miller than
continued four stories not contained in the Pocket Books or Book Club
editions. All three editions came out in 1980.

Then there is the 2002 ibooks edition that should have had a different
title altogether.

Chris

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christopher_scott_owens.DeleteThis@hotmail.com (Chris Owens) wrote in message news:<c4ea6831.0404181753.4d19f17b.DeleteThis@posting.google.com>...
 > When I bought the book, something did not seem
 > right, and about three-quarters of the way through I realized upon a
 > visit to a used books store the problem: the new ibooks version is
 > missing the forward from Roger Zelazny, as well as several of the
 > stories.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->