Doorways in the Sand

Zelazny mixes other genres into his science fiction and fantasy works. In his fantasy Amber series, Krulik identifies space opera, mystery and fairy tale elements in Nine Princes in Amber; tales of knighthood and allegory in The Guns of Avalon; drawing-room mystery in Sign of the Unicorn; and, as in Doorways, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in The Courts of Chaos.[21]

Doorways is a science fiction novel with mystery and comic elements that evokes[22] and offers homage[23] to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Hunting of the Snark; and to notes by Martin Gardner in The Annotated Alice.

While it is difficult to define "science fiction," some features often cited include:

• Science or pseudoscience orientation to the story
• The future
• Space near earth
• Space travel[24]
• Aliens, especially visits by aliens
• Visiting other worlds
• Different political systems[25]
• New inventions and technologies[26]

Many of the hallmarks of science fiction are part of Doorways: The setting is Earth in the near future. Aliens come in space ships giving the Rhennius machine and the star-stone. Fred leaves Earth in a space ship to orbit the globe. In the end Fred and the star-stone are on an alien world.

Doorways is also detective fiction. Some characteristics of detective stories are:

• Detectives, amateur and police
• A crime or mystery
• An investigation
• Clues
• A solution to the crime or mystery
• Exposure of the guilty parties
• Hardboiled detective language (See text box.)

In Doorways there are two mysteries: the location of the star-stone and what it can do. Fred investigates because everybody keeps after him thinking that he knows where it is. Two alien law officers run a parallel investigation. Some clues are offered such as the fading smile and Speicus' communications. The star-stone and its functions are discovered. The evil party, the Whillowhim, and its goals are revealed. Its death ends the detective story.

While Doorways is clearly not a fantasy novel, it is necessary to understand the differences between fantasy and science fiction since Zelazny converts elements of one into elements of the other. Some traits of fantasy are:

• Inspiration from mythology and folklore[28]
• Self-contained world different from ours.
• Consistent rules of magic.[29]
• Fantastic devices[30]
• Supernatural elements

Doorways shares none of these characteristics.

Zelazny laces many of his works with humor, but with Doorways he set out to write a truly comedic novel.[31]

Krulik writes:

An important reason for Doorways' success is Zelazny's humor. This novel is probably his most wildly comic work, combining the kind of verbal humor he is known for with ridiculous situations that border on the absurd, and secondary characters whose posings and behavior give an antic flavor to the comedy.[32]

An example of the absurd is the name Zelazny gives to the cryonics facility that stores Fred's uncle: "Bide-A-Wee."[33]

Here is an example of wordplay between Fred and his best friend, Hal Sidmore:

"Enter, pray."
"In which order?"
O bless this house, by all means, first. It could use a little grace."
"Bless," I said, stepping in.[34]

Here he satirizes some silly practices of bureaucracies with some double-talk. This is a series of conversations between Fred and the alien cop, Ragma:

"Indicated by whom?" I asked.
"I am not permitted to say"
He cut short a snappy rejoinder by pouring more water down my throat. Choking and considering, I modified it to "This is ridiculous!"[35]

"How? How did you know?"
"Sorry," Ragma said. "That's another."
"Another what?"
"Thing we are not permitted to say."
"Who does your permitting and forbidding?"
"That's another."[36]

"However, since it is all contingent on the results of the analysis, it would be an exercise in redundancy to detail the various hypotheses which may have to be discarded."
"In other words, you are not going to tell me?"
"That pretty well sums it up."[37]

In Doorways as in The Courts of Chaos the evocations of and homage to Lewis Carroll's works provide many of the gags and mad humor. Lewis Carroll is mentioned by name in the novel.[38] Here are some of the many allusions to Alice in Doorways:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Doorways begin on warm May afternoons. On page one of Doorways Fred says, "I glanced at my watch. It indicated that I was late for my appointment."[39] Zelazny relates Fred to the White Rabbit, who on page one of Alice says, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late."[40] He then takes out his pocket watch and looks at it. Many other Doorways characters are parallel to Alice characters:

• Morton Zeemeister and Jamie Buckler are sadistic versions of the Walrus and the Carpenter. Zeemeister is described as "a little under six feet—but heavily built and beginning work on a paunch." He produces "a surprisingly delicate handkerchief."[41] Alice's Walrus is tall, corpulent and dabs his eyes with a prettily decorated handkerchief in Tenniel's drawing.[42] The Walrus and the Carpenter mercilessly consume the oysters that they have lured out of their beds, and Zeemeister and Buckler torture Fred at length and threaten to pull out Mary's fingernails.
• Ralph Warp, Fred's partner in the crafts store, Warp and Woof, is described as having bad posture and much dark hair. He teaches basket weaving and moves his furniture around so often that it's always confusing to Fred.[43] Chapter 5 of Through the Looking Glass is entitled Wool and Water. Tenniel's drawing shows that the sheep in the shop has dark wool and no shoulders to speak of, and is knitting. Whenever Alice tries to look directly at an item on a shelf, it moves.[44]
• Throughout the story Fred is haunted by a phantom smile, perhaps telepathic touches of the Whillowhim, his evil alien nemesis. Before his fight with the Whillowhim who is disguised as a cat he sees on the wall of the building housing the Rhennius machine: "massive teeth framed by upward curving lips on the far wall. Then fading, fading . . . Gone."[9] In Alice the Cheshire-Puss slowly disappears beginning with its tail and ending with its grin full of teeth hanging in the air for a few moments before disappearing.[45]

Zelazny refers to well-known Carrollian quotations throughout the novel:

• "Curiouser and curiouser."[46][47]
• "Our snark is a Boojum."[48]
• Zelazny lampoons Carroll's Jabberwocky: "Behold the riant anthropoid, beware its crooked thumbs!"[49] The corresponding lines of Jabberwocky are "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!/The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"[50]

Other references to Alice include:

• Zelazny writes a nonsense poem that uses the non-Euclidean geometry of Nikolai Lobachevsky and Bernhard Riemann to extol the curved features of the female form.[51]
• One device used in Doorways is reversed writing, a result of Fred's reversal through the Rhennius machine. Carroll uses mirror writing for the first stanza of Jabberwocky before printing the whole poem correctly.[50] After his inversion, Fred reads all writing backwards, most notably the writing on his Ph.D. diploma.[52]
• Alice talks to many different creatures in her walks through Wonderland. Fred talks to aliens disguised as a kangaroo, a cat, a dog, a wombat and a donkey. The kangaroo, a cat, and a (non-speaking) dog are found in Alice. Gardner suggests that Alice's dormouse may have been modeled after a real wombat.[53] The donkey is absent.

Doorways is mostly narrated in the first person by its protagonist, Fred Cassidy. However, in the last chapter Speicus, the sentient sociological computer, takes up the story.

One reviewer has been critical of Zelazny's use of the first-person narrative technique: "It's a difficult form to control, since the narrator has to be used to tell his . . . own story, give us a sense of his own personality, suggest enough of outside events and responses to give another perspective on that character. Over and over in his work, Zelazny only accomplishes the first of these tasks."[18]

Zelazny experimented with a number of narrative techniques.[54] Doorways uses a flashforward technique which can be confused with flashback. Zelazny himself used the term flashback:

Once I knew what the story was to be, I ran it, a piece at a time, through a flashback machine, using the suspense-heightening flashback trick so frequently and predictably that the practice intentionally parodied the device itself.[55]

Zelazny divided most chapters into two to five sections, placed the most mysterious or exciting part first, then arranged the other pieces of the narrative out of sequence. His use of this method had a mixed reception.

Susan Wood in Locus magazine wrote, "Used sparingly, it could effectively create suspense. Used in each chapter, however, it becomes monotonous and mannered, interfering with the flow."[18] Another critic stated, "It seems like grandstanding, and it gets in the way of my enjoyment of the story. . . . It makes it easy to identify with a protagonist who doesn't know what's going on either, but it's irritating."[56] However, Fred Kiesche of SF Signal felt that "The magic of the plot [is] where you're never sure of what exactly is going on."[57]

Zelazny has been repeatedly referred to as a prose-poet.[58][59][60] However, there does not appear to be agreement about the true nature of his prose.

Geis writes that Doorways "is written with the Zelazny magic; that indefinable stylistic touch that makes him extremely readable."[17] The prose in Doorways has been variously described as "straight-forward,"[20] "well-written and fast paced," "colloquial and functional."[18]

Cowper writes that Zelazny

has fashioned for himself a style which . . . is designed to dazzle. Seen at its best, . . . it is allusive, economical, picturesque and witty [and] highly metaphorical. There are felicities of style, of invention of learning or wit, which stamp it as being his own.[61]

Sturgeon praises him for his "texture, cadence and pace."[62]

Lindskold asserts that "In the final analysis . . . unlike a poet, a fiction writer must emphasize content and character over form, image, and structure."[58]

Lindskold adds as elements of poetic diction alliteration, internal rhyme, and metaphor to form, image, and structure.[64]

In Doorways, with the exception of Speicus' narration in the last chapter (See text box.), Zelazny utilizes the language of poetry to characterize the mental states of falling asleep or into a stupor, or awakening from such states.

In the Australian desert, bound and being tortured by Zeemeister and Buckler, Fred evokes losing consciousness: "Sunflash, some splash. Darkle. Stardance. Phaeton's solid gold Cadillac crashed where there was no ear to hear, lay burning, flickered, went out. Like me."[65]

In Charv and Ragma's space vehicle Fred comes out of unconsciousness with Speicus speaking to him in his head:

Thus, thus, so and thus: awakening as a thing of textures and shadings: advancing and retreating along a scale of soft/dark, smooth/shadow, slick/bright: all else displaced and translated to this: The colors, sounds and balances a function of these two.

Advance to hard and very bright. Fall back to soft and black . . .
"Do you hear me, Fred?"—the twilight velvet.
"Yes" —my glowing scales.
"Better, better, better . . ."
"What/who?"

"Closer, closer, that not a sound betray . . ."[66]

On a long bus ride Fred nods off drunkenly: "Drifting drowsy across the countryside, I paraded my troubles through the streets of my mind, poking occasional thoughts between the bars of their cages, hearing the clowns beat drums in my temples."[67]

Again with Speicus in his head, Fred describes going to sleep and dreaming:

Some upwelling in the dark fishbowl atop the spine later splashed dreams, patterns memory-resistant as a swirl of noctilucae, across consciousness' thin, transparent rim, save for the kinesthetic/synesthetic DO YOU FEEL ME LED? which must have lasted a time-less time longer than the rest, for later, much later, morning's third coffee touched it to a penny's worth of spin, of color.[68]

More than half of Zelazny's novels have characters who are immortal or nearly immortal.[69] Zelazny believed living a long life would make people have great intellectual and perceptual faculties and would produce a good sense of humor.[70]

Immortality for Zelazny generally meant an immortal can be killed like any other person, but not from old age. A long life according to Zelazny would not cause ennui, but rather curiosity, changing and maturing, growing and learning, and lead to knowledge, culture and satisfying experiences.[71][72] According to Samuel R. Delany, Zelazny believed that "Given all eternity to live, each experience becomes a jewel in the jewel-clutter of life; each moment becomes infinitely fascinating because there is so much more to relate it to."[73]

In Doorways Fred achieves near immortality as a host for Speicus. In the hospital after being shot all of Fred's injuries heal speedily. Later Speicus tells Fred that he is able to repair his body indefinitely.[74]

For Zelazny one of the attractions of immortality was that an immortal could continue to learn forever. And Zelazny had a lifelong love of learning.

In college he often audited courses he found interesting in addition to his regular plan of studies. In 1971 he designed an evolving curriculum of studies for himself that he would pursue for the rest of his life. One of his concerns was to obtain greater amounts of diverse information that would make him a better writer. These studies included cultural and physical geography, ecology, education, history, biography, literature, and other sciences and humanities. A principle of his studies was the notion that we create ourselves, and learning is part of that process.[75]

In Doorways Fred has a similar program of studies, not just motivated by a desire to learn, but also to keep money flowing from his cryogenically frozen uncle's trust fund.

During his thirteen years of studies at the university he takes just enough courses in each discipline to not receive a degree according to the mandatory departmental graduation requirements, making him very broadly-educated.

Zelazny wrote science fiction and fantasy, receiving Hugo and Nebula awards in both genres. However, he sometimes took elements from one and converted them to the other. Krulik writes: "This imposition of science upon magic, and its reverse, forms a fascinating conflict that is apparent in his writings."[76] In Doorways Zelazny changes three fantasy elements into science fiction elements.

Jewels with supernatural properties are a staple in fantasy. In Zelazny's Amber series the Jewel of Judgment plays a decisive role in the plot. In Jack of Shadows, Jack is imprisoned in a jewel that is worn around the neck by another character, the Lord of Bats.

Zelazny takes the jewel fantasy motif and revises it into the star-stone in Doorways. Instead of having magical qualities, the star-stone is described in the vocabulary of science:

To function properly, [Speicus] requires a host built along our lines. It exists then as a symbiote within that creature, obtaining data by means of that being's nervous system as it goes about its business. It operates on this material as something of a sociological computer. In return for this, it keeps its host in good repair indefinitely. On request, it provides analyses of anything it has encountered directly or peripherally, along with reliability figures, unbiased because it is uniquely alien to all life forms, yet creature-oriented because of the nature of the input mechanism. It prefers a mobile host with a fact-filled head.[77]

Another fantasy element that Zelazny converts to science fiction is Alice's looking glass. Looking through her mirror Alice observes that objects are the same as in her drawing room, but ". . . the things go the other way."[78] A book held up to a mirror in the right hand has reversed writing in the mirror and the book is in the left hand of the mirror image of the person on the other side of the looking glass. The mirror reverses the image from one side to the other.

In Doorways Zelazny reimagines Alice's looking glass as the Rhennius machine, the device given to man by the aliens that reverses objects into their mirror images. At Speicus' urging Fred puts himself through the machine. The left side of his body is on the right and vice versa. Also left becomes right and vice versa, and writing is backwards for Fred.

And finally, Zelazny reenvisions another Alice artifact in Fred's mind. In Alice the White Rabbit goes down the rabbit hole which leads to Wonderland. While Fred is being tortured in the Australian desert, he looks around for a doorway in the sand, a passageway that will take him out of his surreal nightmare back to his normal world.

However, at the end of Doorways Zelazny revises the rabbit hole again. Fred imagines all the doorways in the sand that will lead to all the exotic places he and Speicus will visit and experiences that they will have throughout the galaxy: "Behind me the beach was suddenly full of doorways, and I thought of ladies, tigers, shoes, ships, sealing wax. . . ."[79][80]

Zelazny's literary biographers have disagreed over the basic profile of his protagonists. Krulik writes:

More than most writers, Zelazny persists in reworking a persona composed of a single literary vision. This vision is the unraveling of a complex personality with special abilities, intelligent, cultured, experienced in many areas, but who is fallible, needing emotional maturity, and who candidly reflects upon the losses in his life. This complex persona cuts across all of Zelazny's writings. . . .[81]

Fred Cassidy does not appear to be a complex personality, but he has two special abilities: he climbs buildings well because of his acrophlia and he has an extraordinary thirteen-year education in all the departments of the university. He is intelligent, cultured and experienced due to his education only, fallible, needs emotional maturity and experience, but does not dwell on his life's struggles very much.

Lindskold believes that Krulik's view oversimplifies Zelazny's protagonists and proposes four classifications: heroic, morally ambivalent "heroes," more villain than hero, and ordinary people.[82] She classifies Fred as an ordinary person "who is forced into action by extraordinary circumstances."[83]

Zelazny portrays Fred as a hard partyer who sometimes drinks too much, a gambler, and a good student who wants to study but not get a degree. Professor Wexroth, Fred's academic adviser, calls Fred a playboy and an irresponsible dilettante with no desire to work or repay society.[84]

With regard to the maturation of his protagonists, Zelazny writes: "I am interested in characters in a state of transformation. I feel it would be wrong to write a book where the character proceeds through all of the action and winds up pretty much the same at the end as he was in the beginning, just having an adventure. He has to be changed by the things that take place."[85]

In this vein Krulik observes: "Growth of any fictional character depends on what he learns about himself during the course of a work, and how he changes as a result of this knowledge. This is a basic tenet of all literature and certainly one that Zelazny subscribes to."[86]

In Doorways Fred goes through a series of life-changing experiences. He is stalked, slapped around, beaten, chased, threatened, terrorized, tortured and shot. He fears mutilation and contemplates his own death.[87]

In the end he accepts a responsible position as an alien culture specialist for the U.S. legation to the United Nations. And he agrees to serve as host for Speicus and travel the galaxy studying various cultures. His old mentor, Professor Dobson, urges him to learn something in his job, if only humility. Using Fred's acrophilia as a metaphor, Dobson tells him to "Keep climbing. That is all. Keep climbing, and then go a little higher."[88]

Zelazny makes many obscure literary and scientific allusions. His critics disagree over the effect these references might have on readers.

Theordore Sturgeon in his introduction to Four For Tomorrow calls Zelazny's more obscure allusions "furniture." Some allusions, he writes "can keep a reader from his speedy progress from here to there, and that his furniture should be placed outside the traffic pattern."[89]

Krulik takes the view that "It's a risky business, but Zelazny has enormous stylistic power, and his strong characterizations are usually able to draw back the reader to the written word after chewing momentarily on the morsel given to him for thought."[90]

Lindskold feels that in stories "the reader who is uninterested in delving into the subtext can still enjoy the story simply for the plot alone."[91]

Below are a few of the literary and scientific allusions in Doorways:

• A quotation from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Berryman's The Dream Songs is written in reversed writing: "I stalk my mirror down this corridor/my pieces litter. . . ."[92]
• Zelazny refers to Flatland and Sphereland, books which discuss applications in Euclidean (flat) and non-Euclidean (sphere) geometry.[93]

• Along the same lines, Zelazny writes a nonsense poem, Lobachevsky alone has looked on beauty bare, evoking the non-Euclidean geometry of Lobachevsky and Riemann to describe the curves of the female anatomy.[51] This is a takeoff on Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare, a 1922 poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
• See above under "Literary revision" and "Comedy" the many tributes to Alice.
• Zelazny refers in passing to B. Traven, a mysterious German novelist who lived most of his life in Mexico. He is known for his novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.[94]
• A "brace of roods" does not describe two crosses in Doorways, but rather a double cross.[95]
• Fred says he does not want to remain a "Spiegelmensch" (a mirror man) very long. This is a reference to Franz Werfel's 1921 play whose title is translated as Mirror Man. The play is about a pair of doppelgangers, one good, one evil.[67]
• Hilbert space is a mathematical concept that is about the conversion of 2-dimensional space to spaces with more than two or three dimensions.[94]
• After Fred gets shot the next chapter does not begin in the hospital showing that he is alive, but rather is preceded by two pages discussing Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard University and his impact on the modern liberal arts curriculum, and the pseudosexual behavior of an African wasp and an orchid.[96]
• When going to sleep Fred says, "'Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes.' I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name." This refers to Descartes' famous dictum "Cogito ergo sum," "I think therefore I am."[97]