Oldschool Sci-Fi - Roger Zelazny "Prince of Light"

Hey-ho Habr!

What do we love, besides technical articles, reviews of iron novelties and a saxess story with a move to Nicaragua? Fantastic!

Habr knows / loves Neil Stevenson ( one , two ...) and Liu Cisin ( one , two ..), but for some reason does not remember Roger Zelazny or Ursula Le Guin. Anyway, the 50-70s were prolific from the point of view of science fiction, it's a sin not to remember.

Unfair, I thought, I need to fix it. Zelazny and Le Guin are titans of the genre, repeatedly awarded world awards and leaving a rich legacy in both science fiction and fantasy. Hopefully the younger generation of techies will get the same emotional boost and creativity from this literature as I do.

Today we have Roger Zelazny's book "The Prince of Light" ("The God of Light") on the shelf, Hugo's 1968 Best Novel Prize . Important - the book is not out of date for these 50+ years. Some visionary ideas have already taken root or are close to implementation (human cloning, electronic copy of consciousness, "cloud" storage, digital karma / social index).

The ideal epigraph to this book is Arthur Clarke's third law :

" Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. "

By magic, in this case, we mean the myths and religions of ancient peoples, and specifically India. Roger Zelazny built a book with a large number of references to the culture of this country, it is problematic to find them without being immersed in oriental studies. The resulting fusion of science fiction, mythology, Hinduism and Buddhism is still breathtaking, and the author's cynical humor and the habit of throwing the reader into a maelstrom of concepts / events provide the book with readability.

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