# Roger Zelazny - Maker: Author - Date: 1937–1995 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/roger-zelazny/ > A poet-turned-novelist who worked for Social Security by day, won Hugos by night, and wrote The Chronicles of Amber — a multiverse of Shadow worlds that inspired Gygax's Appendix N and a diceless roleplaying game. **Why it matters:** Zelazny brought mythic scope, modern wit and literary style to 1960s science fiction and fantasy. His Amber series, named on Appendix N, gave games the idea of walking between infinite worlds, and spawned one of the most original RPGs ever designed. ## Quick answers **Who was Roger Zelazny?** A poet-turned-novelist who worked for Social Security by day, won Hugos by night, and wrote The Chronicles of Amber — a multiverse of Shadow worlds that inspired Gygax's Appendix N and a diceless roleplaying game. **When was Roger Zelazny born?** Roger Zelazny was born in 1937 in Euclid, Ohio and died in 1995. **What is Roger Zelazny known for?** Roger Zelazny is best known for The Chronicles of Amber. **Why does Roger Zelazny matter to fantasy and games?** Zelazny brought mythic scope, modern wit and literary style to 1960s science fiction and fantasy. His Amber series, named on Appendix N, gave games the idea of walking between infinite worlds, and spawned one of the most original RPGs ever designed. ## Life Roger Joseph Zelazny was born on 13 May 1937 in Euclid, Ohio, near Cleveland, the only child of a Polish-born father and an Irish-American mother. He wrote poetry and stories from childhood, studied English at Western Reserve University (BA, 1959) and took an MA at Columbia University in 1962, specializing in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. He then went to work for the U.S. Social Security Administration, first in Cleveland and then in Baltimore, writing fiction in his spare hours with remarkable speed and success. By the mid-1960s he was one of the most celebrated young writers in science fiction, associated with the literary "New Wave" — a label he himself disliked. On 1 May 1969 he left the civil service to write full time. In 1966 he married Judith Callahan, and in 1975 the family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lived for the rest of his life; late in life his partner was the writer Jane Lindskold. He died in Santa Fe on 14 June 1995, of kidney failure brought on by colorectal cancer, aged 58. ## Work Zelazny's early career was a blaze of award-winning fiction that mixed mythology with science fiction. "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (1963) imagined a poet among the dying Martians; *...And Call Me Conrad* (1965, also published as *This Immortal*) shared the 1966 Hugo with *Dune*; *Lord of Light* (1967), in which colonists on a distant world have used technology to make themselves the gods of the Hindu pantheon, won the 1968 Hugo. *Creatures of Light and Darkness* did the same with Egyptian myth, and *Jack of Shadows* (1971) was a science-fantasy of a world with one side forever in daylight and the other in darkness. *Nine Princes in Amber* (1970) opened his most famous work. A man wakes in a private hospital with no memory, and discovers that he is Corwin, a prince of Amber, the one true world, of which all other realities — including our Earth — are merely Shadows. Members of the royal family can walk through Shadow, altering reality step by step until they find any world they can imagine; they communicate through magical Trumps, a deck of tarot-like cards; and they scheme ceaselessly against each other for the throne. Four more books completed Corwin's story by 1978; a second quintet, following his son Merlin, ran from 1985 to 1991. Together they form [The Chronicles of Amber](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-chronicles-of-amber/). Zelazny won six Hugos and three Nebulas in all. ## Legacy Zelazny's influence on games is unusually direct. [Gary Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/) listed *Jack of Shadows* and the Amber series on [Appendix N](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/appendix-n/), and the notion of a multiverse of alternate worlds reachable by those who know the way — alongside [Michael Moorcock](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/michael-moorcock/)'s multiverse — is part of the imaginative background of fantasy gaming's planes-hopping campaigns. Telarium, an imprint of Spinnaker Software, adapted the first two novels as the illustrated text adventure *Nine Princes in Amber* (1985) for the Commodore 64, Apple II, MS-DOS and other computers. Most strikingly, Amber inspired a genuinely new kind of roleplaying game. Erick Wujcik's *Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game* (Phage Press, 1991) abolished dice entirely: players begin by bidding their character points against one another in an auction for the attributes of Psyche, Strength, Endurance and Warfare, and the highest bidder in each is simply the best at it. Conflicts are settled by comparison, narration and cunning — the scheming of Amber's royal family made into rules. The game became a landmark of diceless and [narrative](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/narrative-rpg/) design. Zelazny also worked directly in games: he wrote the story of the adventure game *Chronomaster* (DreamForge Intertainment, 1995) with Jane Lindskold, who went on to write the game's 1996 novelization. ## Facts - Zelazny worked for the U.S. Social Security Administration in Cleveland and Baltimore from 1962 until he became a full-time writer in 1969. - His novel ...And Call Me Conrad (This Immortal) shared the 1966 Hugo with Frank Herbert's Dune; Lord of Light won the Hugo in 1968. - The Chronicles of Amber ran to ten novels, from Nine Princes in Amber (1970) to Prince of Chaos (1991). - Gygax listed Jack of Shadows and the Amber series on Appendix N. - Erick Wujcik's Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game (Phage Press, 1991) resolved conflicts with no dice at all, beginning with an auction for attributes. - Telarium's graphic adventure Nine Princes in Amber (1985) adapted the first two novels for home computers. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Zelazny) - [Wikipedia: Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Diceless_Roleplaying_Game) - [Wikipedia: Nine Princes in Amber (video game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Princes_in_Amber_(video_game)) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.