To Die in Italbar

First: a personal puzzle.


I originally read Roger Zelazny’s To Die in Italbar sometime in the late 70s as a wee youngin’. Then, nearly twenty years later, I came across the book again, recalled the title, and re-read it. A few years ago I put it on the Acquisitions List and just recently acquired it for a third go-round.

Why?

Well, despite the supreme awesomeness and noir-ish suavity of that title, for the life of me I could never remember what the story was about. It was as if Zelazny incorporated a brain-wipe formula on the last page that forever and completely erases any memory of the 180-or-so pages that preceded it.

It’s something that’s stuck with me, well, all my life, I guess.

But Zelazny’s brain-wipe formula, like those allegedly used by the Grays when they abduct us for their nefarious night-time genital exams, is not failsafe. In my case, with this book, three items and three items only seeped free.

(1) Hero / antihero Miles Malacar is doing a raid on some futuristic government depot on another world.

(2) He’s assisted by a furry telepathic creature

(3) He says the word “capital” – meaning okily-dokily – at least twice in the novel

That’s it. But there’s one other element which terrified me when I perused these pages for the third time last week – my second bestest novel has a hero / antihero raiding a futuristic government depot on another world assisted by another creature! Ah! But it’s just the one scene the novels share in common. The accomplice is not telepathic, and my heroine does not say “capital” ever. Heart, slow down.

Let’s discuss To Die in Italbar, shall we?

A man mates with (or, perhaps, is mated by) a goddess of healing/disease and transforms into a conduit for her power over life and death; Miles Malacar wants to use this walking contagion as a weapon; Malacar’s old army buddy, now a psychic artist making clients’ dreams incarnate, wants to stop him; an undead doctor and the universe’s richest man (whose vast backstory is only hinted at) watch and act at varying intervals. There’s telepathy, insanity, pathology, archaeology, politics, a stoning, double-crossing, a tough-as-nails-yet-vulnerable chick, and Good Old Time Pagan Religion.

How can a mix so memorable be forgettable?

What I love about reading a Zelazny book (and his oeuvre encompasses a broad range from pulpy quick writes to award-winning classics) are the characters. The ingenuity behind them. Life stories, life circumstances, heck, this one even had an undead character, plausible from a scientific perspective. They seem very real to me, and when characters are such lifelike, it becomes quite easy to fall lost in the story. The pattern holds here; I kinda liked these characters; I felt I was planet-hopping with them. In fact, perhaps the biggest drawback, in retrospect, is that I wanted to know more about them.

But for those sufficiently interested (and I very may well be), that question might be easily solved. Apparently, Italbar is part of a series. I think. That’s only because one of the main characters, Francis Sandow, appears in more than one Zelaznian book. Again, I think. Who knows – perhaps I read that other book, decades ago, and Roger slipped another anti-forget-me-not in the final pages?

All kidding aside, a good, short, sweet SF adventure. Intriguing themes, three-dee folks, a neat … ending … I guess … Confound it! I can’t remember what exactly happened!!! And it’s only been five days!

ARGHHHHHH!!!

Grade: B+