Roger Zelazny (1937 – 1995)

He won the Nebula award three times and the Hugo award six times, including twice for novels: This Immortal). Zelazny was born in Euclid, Ohio, an only child of Josephine Sweet and Joseph Frank Zelazny (Żelazny). His father had emigrated from Poland when he was a young man and met Josephine Sweet in Chicago. In high school, Roger Zelazny was the editor of the school newspaper and joined the Creative Writing Club. In the fall of 1955, he began attending Western Reserve University and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1959. He was accepted to Columbia University in New York and specialized in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, graduating with a M.A. in 1962.

Zelazny had a rare gift for conceiving and portraying worlds with plausible magic systems, powers, and supernatural beings. His captivating descriptions of the nuts and bolts of magical workings in his imagined worlds set his fantasy writing apart from otherwise similar authors. His science fiction was highly influenced by mythology, poetry, including the French, British, and American classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and by wisecracking detective fiction. A frequent theme is gods or people who become gods. His novels and short stories often involved characters from classical myth, depicted in the modern world.

He was a prolific writer and, with the exception of the Amber novels (and the related pairs The Changing Land), created a completely new setting for each book.
While his earlier works won greater critical acclaim, Zelazny is probably best known for the Amber novels. These fall into two distinct series; the second series is widely perceived as being of markedly lesser quality than the first.

The first five books describe the adventures of Prince Corwin of Amber and comprise:

* 1970 Nine Princes in Amber
* 1972 The Guns of Avalon
* 1975 Sign of the Unicorn
* 1976 The Hand of Oberon
* 1978 The Courts of Chaos

The second series tells the story of Corwin's son Merlin (Merle) - a wizard and a computer expert. These volumes are:

* 1985 Trumps of Doom
* 1986 Blood of Amber
* 1987 Sign of Chaos
* 1989 Knight of Shadows
* 1991 Prince of Chaos

An interactive fiction computer game based on Nine Princes in Amber was released by Telarium in 1987. The Amber novels also inspired a role-playing game, Amber Diceless Roleplaying, published by Phage Press. The game is distinctive in that it suggests that players ignore or alter any rule as they see fit.