Update on Zelazny collection

[ckovacs]

A lot of people have been asking how many uncollected or unpublished pieces exist that will be in the planned collection. I've done some preliminary counts on this which I can share here.

The total number of potential items of fiction and poetry number over 300, but that includes many novel excerpts and serials. Novel excerpts are generally NOT being included except for likely "Death and the Executioner" (a separately published chapter of Lord of Light), "The Steel General" (published excerpt from Creatures of Light and Darkness) and the two-part Hugo-winning serial ...And Call Me Conrad.

After subtracting the other novel excerpts and serials, there remain (at the moment) 265 items of fiction and poetry. This number might actually increase if additional items are discovered and obtained. Note that all of these items are planned to be included; some people have mistakenly thought that this collection would only publish previously uncollected material. Not so, it is an attempt to publish everything (minus the novel excerpts).

Of the 265 items, 101 are previously uncollected. “Uncollected” means that the item has not appeared in any of Zelazny’s previous short story or poetry collections. This includes Zelazny's Wild Cards stories featuring Croyd Crenson, and other uncollected items from 1953 through 1995. It includes the incomplete Amber tale "A Secret of Amber" and the deleted sex scene from The Guns of Avalon.

Of the 101 uncollected items, 29 are poems. So roughly 2/3 of the uncollected material is fiction, including stories, a script for a play, and several film treatments and outlines for novels.

Of the 101 uncollected items, 32 or roughly 2/3 of the material is previously unpublished. Of these unpublished items, 10 are poems. So roughly 2/3 of the unpublished material is fiction.

I haven't mentioned the non-fiction. There are at least 155 non-fiction pieces by Zelazny and at least 58 published interviews, far too much to be included. The non-fiction pieces range from short introductions to other authors' works (eg books by Saberhagen, Gaiman, Farmer, others) to long essays on science and the art of writing, to GOH speeches. The tentative plan is to include 2-3 non-fiction pieces per volume, so with an estimated 5 volumes to this collection, that means 15 pieces. I've tentatively selected 21 items that include essays on science, essays on writing craft and theory, a couple of GOH speeches, and a couple of essays about aspects of the Amber universe. Several of these are previously unpublished and most are previously uncollected.

Chris Kovacs

 

[ckovacs]

I made a typo in this - should have read 1/3 is previously unpublished.

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

Thank you, Ckovacs,

When did this splendid project begin?

 

[Snowdog]

Thanks. I have the Croyd Crenson stories from Wild Cards and they're excellent. The Sleeper's my favourite character from those books along with The Great And Powerful Turtle.

 

[ckovacs]

As to when this project began, that's hard to say...5 years of collecting all of the obscure, rare appearances of stories and poems is one way of looking at it. Visits to university archives where other material is stored. But the past 18 months is when the major work has been done on digitizing all of the stories/poems, annotating the stories/poems, assembling story introductions from Zelazny's own commentary taken from various essays and correspondence, researching and assembling the bibliography, and writing the biography. My co-editor estimates that it may take him 12 months to assemble all of this into the projected volumes before the first is actually published.