In the early part of his career, and in
an indirect sense throughout it, Roger Zelazny combed Earth’s cultures,
religions, and legends for story material.
His brilliant Lord of Light
and This Immortal riffing off
Hindu/Buddhist and Greek mythology respectively, he established himself as
writer who combined the classic themes of myth and legend with more modern,
imaginative tropes of science fiction and fantasy. His 1969 Creatures
of Light and Darkness is no exception.
Egyptian myth and cosmology the source
material, Creatures… is an epic tale
of warring gods where space and time have little meaning—or all the meaning if
the story as a whole is viewed. Stakeholders
in universal power, Osiris, Set, Anubis, Isis,
and a variety of other deities from Egyptian myth come alive in the
narrative. But the story is also
grounded in semi-reality. Regardless
whether a far future vision or simply an extra-terrestrial fantasy setting, six
versions of human life inhabit six worlds in the Middle Realm of the gods’
domain. Some worlds more advanced than
others with the gods being able to control and apply technology at will, there
is a distinct sci-fi edge to what is otherwise a full-on fantasy story.
