Stephen Colbert to develop CHRONICLES OF AMBER TV series

American talk show host and fantasy uber-fan Stephen Colbert has agreed to produce an adaptation of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber fantasy novel series for television.

Colbert will executive produce the show with his Spartina production company. Skybound Entertainment and Vincent Newman Entertainment have been developing the project since 2016. At one point, Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) was in talks to join the project but those seemed to dry up.

There is no streamer or studio currently attached to the deal, although Colbert has a first-look deal with CBS, and Paramount+ is currently looking for new projects to help its aggressive growth plans.

The Amber sequence tells the story of the two "true worlds," Amber and Chaos, and the shadow worlds of parallel universes that lie between the two, including our Earth. The early books revolve around the adventures of Corwin, a Prince of Amber, whilst the later ones focus on his son Merlin, who is both a magician and a hacker.

The Chronicles of Amber has sold over 15 million copies since the first novel, Nine Princes in Amber, was published in 1970. Zelazny wrote ten novels in two five-book arcs for the series and was planning more at the time of his death in 1995. His estate later licensed another writer to publish a series of prequel novels, but these were received poorly by the fans.

The Amber saga is highly-rated by critics of science fiction and fantasy, and numbers George R.R. Martin amongst its fans. Martin saw Zelazny as a friend and something of a mentor after moving to the same town in the 1970s, but he will not be involved in this project due to his exclusivity contract with HBO (unless the show ends up at HBO, in which case I would assume GRRM would lend his expertise).

George R.R. Martin's WILD CARDS TV series moves from Hulu to Peacock; SANDKINGS in development at Netflix

Thanks to detective work by the team at Westeros.org, it appears that the long-percolating TV version of the Wild Cards shared universe has moved home. Previously in the works as an NBC-Hulu collaboration, it now appears to have found a new home at NBC's Peacock streaming service.

Peacock launched last April in the United States and is heavily reliant on legacy programming such as The Office and Parks & Recreation. It is unsurprising that they would be looking to bolster their lineup with original fare, and the Wild Cards universe gives them a large roster of superhero characters to develop shows around.

The Wild Cards universe was created by George R.R. Martin in the early 1980s as a roleplaying game setting. Starting in 1987, Martin began editing and publishing linked anthologies of stories from numerous writers in the shared world. Melinda Snodgrass has been heavily involved in the creative side of the universe, and writers including Paul Cornell, David Anthony Durham, Pat Cadigan, Emma Newman, Mark Lawrence, Roger Zelazny, Howard Waldrop, Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck and Walter Jon Williams have contributed stories to the setting. The twenty-ninth book in the series is scheduled for release this year.

Martin's other commitments preclude working on the show, so the heavy-lifting on Wild Cards is being done by Melinda Snodgrass (who previously worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation as a writer and script editor, penning one of the show's most beloved episodes, The Measure of a Man) and Michael Cassutt (Z Nation, The Outer Limits).

Meanwhile, the same source reveals that Martin's novella Sandkings is in development as a feature film at Netflix. Sandkings was previously filmed - heavily reworked by Melinda Snodgrass into a contemporary setting - as the opening episode of the second version of The Outer Limits in 1995.

HBO developing Roger Zelazny's ROADMARKS as a TV show

HBO are developing Roger Zelazny's 1979 novel Roadmarks as a television series.

Kalinda Vazquez (Star Trek: Discovery, Fear the Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time) will be the main showrunner on the project, as well as a writer and executive producer. Vince Gerardis, a producer on Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, will also produce the project.

The project was brought to HBO's attention by George R.R. Martin as part of his long-term development deal with the network, which has also resulted in the long-gestating Who Fears Death, based on Nnedi Okorafor's novel, and Game of Thrones spin-offs The Longest Night (aka Bloodmoon, which was cancelled after an unsuccessful pilot) and House of the Dragon, which starts shooting imminently. Martin will be listed as a producer on the project but will not be writing or involved day-to-day.

Zelazny was a friend and mentor of Martin's, working with him on the long-running Wild Cards superhero anthology series and on a TV adaptation of Zelazny's "The Last Defender of Camelot" for the rebooted Twilight Zone in the 1980s. Zelazny passed away in 1995.

Roadmarks is about a transdimensional highway that extends through time and space, allowing people to travel to other places and other times. It was created by a race of dragons for reasons that are initially unclear. The novel is notable for its structure, which incorporates a linear story and a non-linear sequence of events that unfold in tandem.

HBO, notoriously, only has a limited slate for developing original projects compared to other streamers and cable networks, but is expanding its development profile with a view to having some projects on HBO and others as originals for HBO Max. It's unclear what category Roadmarks will fall into. This is only a development process, not a formal greenlight at present.

Wild Cards: Aces High, edited by George R.R. Martin

The world has been divided by the wild card virus: the unaffected, the deformed "jokers" and the super-powered "aces". All have their own agendas, some darker than others, but all are threatened by the arrival of the alien Swarm. As Earth comes under concerted attack by the creatures, several of Earth's own alien allies (such as Dr. Tachyon) help lead a defence. But destroying the Swarm Mother may be impossible as a cult of sympathisers leap to her defence...

After the original Wild Cards focused on forty years of alternate history with the jokers and aces facing discrimination, political manipulation and questions over their loyalties, it's a bit of a tonal shift to follow that up with a full-scale alien invasion of Earth. Yet this kind of variety is what has kept the Wild Cards series fun and why it's still going thirty years after its creation. We know aliens exist in the setting - the wild card virus itself came from Takis - so it's fairly logical to see the aces and jokers joining forces to take on the menace.

There are of course complications. Unlike most superhero settings, Wild Cards doesn't hold much truck with big superteams. Aces tend to do their own thing, only joining forces when absolutely necessary. For most of its length, Aces High deals with several prominent aces and jokers (Tachyon, the Turtle, Jube the Walrus, Kid Dinosaur, Modular Man and Fortunato, with a few appearances by Croyd the Sleeper) tackling apparently unrelated issues relating to the Swarm and a Masonic cult before they realise how their individual threads link up, and there is the inevitable big showdown.


The stories that make up the book come from some of the bigger names in 1980s science fiction and fantasy: George R.R. Martin, Pat Cadigan, Walter Jon Williams, Melinda Snodgrass and Roger Zelazny are the big-hitters, but the rest are no slouches either. The stories vary from big, epic war stories as the Swarm invades in force to smaller-scaled tales of back-alley hustlings in Jokertown to things inbetween. They are all excellent, although it sometimes feels like you're only getting snapshots of the action. The Turtle gets a big, interesting storyline and then disappears off-page for a hundred-off page, during which time clearly some other stuff goes down, and suddenly he shows up for the big finale.

This is a recurring issue with these kind of shared worlds, the nagging sense that you are not getting the full story and having to infer that some big story-critical moments have taken place off-page. But it's not too distracting and is made up for the fact that each writer is clearly having immense fun creating and crafting their characters and taking their storylines forwards. The framing stories, "Jube" and "Unto the Sixth Generation", do a good job of keeping the larger over-arcing story on track.

The book builds to a big climax which is satisfying from an action and character perspective. But it's clear that although the aces have won a major victory over the Swarm Mother, they have neglected to account for her human minions. That's going to come back to bite them, quite hard, in the third book in the series.

Aces High (****) is a fine addition to the Wild Cards universe and a compelling follow-up to the original book. It is available now in the UK and USA.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 6

The publication of The Lord of the Rings, and in particular the explosion of its popularity after 1965, did not result in an overnight transformation in the way fantasy was perceived and written. Indeed, the dominant form of fantasy throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s remained sword and sorcery of the kind pioneered by Robert E. Howard.

Sword and sorcery and epic fantasy are distinct subgenres, although sharing some similarities (and both can be jointly referred to as secondary world fantasy). Sword and sorcery is seen as primarily action-driven, with violence and magic being dominant forces. Sword and sorcery books are generally shorter, and although often arranged in series there are perhaps less links between each book, with the focus more on stand-alone adventures. In the middle of the century sword and sorcery could also be quite weird, taking on board influences from science fiction as well as the fantastic.

Sword and sorcery had become the dominant form of fantastic fiction thanks to the likes of Howard and Leiber, and the work of other authors like L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter in popularising and expanding the genre. However, and perhaps surprisingly, it was this seemingly masculine subset of fantasy that brought in the first major female writers to the genre.

Starting in the 1930s, C.L. Moore wrote a number of short stories in both the science fiction and fantasy settings. Her works appeared in magazines such as Weird Tales and Astounding. Moore is notable for introducing one of fantasy's first heroines in the Jirel of Joiry series. In the following decade Leigh Brackett began writing numerous sword and sorcery-like stories, but set these on other planets like Mars and Venus, hence having them categorised as planetary romances (the same fate also befell male authors, most notably Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars-set Barsoom series which arguably has more in common with swords and sorcery then science fiction).

In 1963 Andre Norton published Witch World, in which a man from our world is transported to a fantasy realm of warring factions. It is later revealed that people from other worlds and universes have been brought to this planet and the fantasy-like backdrop is melded with science fiction ideas. Norton wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen novels, novellas and short stories in this setting, and allowed other writers to use it as well. Witch World introduces the idea of having a fantasy world where only women can use magic, an idea later utilised by Robert Jordan in The Wheel of Time (unlike that series, men can also use magic safely and later learn to do so).

Male writers also continued to expand the remit of sword and sorcery and take it in unusual directions. In 1961, Michael Moorcock published The Dreaming City, which introduced readers to the character Elric of Melnibone. An albino riven by angst and introspection, Elric was deliberately designed as the antithesis of traditional heroes like Conan. The early Elric stories ended with the annihilation of Elric and his world; later books and novellas would fill in his backstory. Moorcock, who swiftly gained a reputation as the enfant terrible of science fiction for his introduction of the New Wave of the genre, enjoyed skewering holes in the perception of fantasy as well. In the 1970s he published controversial criticism of Tolkien (for his conservatism) and H.P. Lovecraft (for his racist viewpoints that spilled over into some of his fiction).

Rewinding a little to the same year that The Lord of the Rings was published, 1954, Poul Anderson released his seminal fantasy The Broken Sword, a gritty story of war, death and magic based on Viking mythology. Although relatively obscure today, writers from Moorcock to Richard Morgan have sung its praises as a demonstration of a darker, less comfortable form of fantasy to that written by Tolkien. Indeed, some have cited The Broken Sword as the forerunner of the so-called "grimdark" movement of fantasy that would eventually continue through Stephen Donaldson to more contemporary authors like Scott Bakker and Mark Lawrence.

In 1968 another author took a step into the ring to write a work that was neither Tolkienesque, nor sword and sorcery. Ursula K. LeGuin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea was set in a (mapped) fictional archipelago with a predominantly black cast of characters, a fact lost on the writers of the poor SyFy mini-series based on the books. The book inverted the fantasy stereotype of wizards being wise old men by asking where they came from and how they learned to do magic. This began the "magical academy" trope of fantasy fiction, which later found its ultimate form of popularity in the Harry Potter series (and echoes may also be detected in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels are probably the closest we have to a "traditional" epic fantasy series between Tolkien and 1977, the year in which the modern genre really came into being.

In the same year, Anne McCaffrey published Dragonflight, the first novel in the Dragonriders of Pern series. Dragonflight is many respects an epic fantasy, but also a "rationalised fantasy", where the fantastic elements are explained by a science fictional background. The Pern series, despite its nominal SF background, would go on to influence many future fantasy novels, particularly with its depiction of dragons as allies and mounts rather than simple monsters.

Other authors continued to write tales of the fantastic without following up on Tolkien's lead. In 1970 Roger Zelazny published Nine Princes in Amber, about a man who discovers he was really destined to rule Amber, the one true world of which all others are reflections. This was the first of The Chronicles of Amber, which eventually extended to ten novels and enormous critical acclaim. Patricia A. McKillip achieved a significant breakthrough with her third novel, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld in 1974, but then surpassed it in 1976 with The Riddle-Master of Hed, the first novel of The Riddle-Master Trilogy. Children's fantasy also became more popular around this time, with notable works of juvenile fantasy including the Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper (1965-77), Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (1977) and Elidor by Alan Garner (1965).

However, the biggest and most successful juvenile fantasy of this time was Watership Down by Richard Adams, published in 1972. At first glance this book about rabbits has little to do with epic fantasy, but some of the tropes of the genre can be found within its pages. There is the lengthy, dangerous quest through unknown and hostile territory. There is a complex mythology including creation myths and spirits representing death. There is even magic, in the form of seers and visions. Foreshadowing the YA novels of modern times, the book is also fairly grim for a children's story, with major characters dying. Unusually, the novel's darker and more violent aspects survived into the excellent 1978 animated film adaptation.

By the latter part of the 1970s fantasy was a thriving form of fiction, but no-one had stepped forwards to really follow up The Lord of the Rings, or do something different with that form of fantasy. There was one last piece of the puzzle to slot into place before that would start to happen, and it came from two Americans who were not authors of fiction. Instead they were nascent game designers by the name of Gary Gygax and David Arneson, and the impact their creation would have on modern fantasy would be second only to Tolkien.

Wild Cards, edited by George R.R. Martin

An alien species decides to use Earth to test a new bioweapon. An airborne criminal seizes the weapon and tries to use it to blackmail the city of New York. A former WWII flying ace tries to stop him. And, on 15 September 1946, the world is forever changed when the wild card virus is unleashed in the skies over Manhattan.

Ninety percent of those infected by the virus die instantly. A further nine percent develop crippling deformities or abnormalities, becoming known as 'jokers'. And one in a hundred of those infected develops a wondrous superpower. They become the 'aces'. As an alternative history of the 20th Century unfolds, the American government first tries to use the aces for their own ends and then, in a paranoid frenzy, turns against them, before they finally win some recognition for themselves. But for the jokers, forced to live in a ghetto in Manhattan, their road to recognition and respect will be much harder.

Wild Cards is the first book in the series of the same name, which of this time of writing spans twenty-one volumes with two more planned. This isn't a series of novels, but collections of stories written by many different authors. George R.R. Martin (of A Song of Ice and Fire fame) and Melinda Snodgrass provide editorial control, ensuring that each volume has its own narrative drive and point beyond just collecting random short stories together. The stories are set in their own milieu, with authors sharing ideas, using each other's characters and building up a consistent, coherent shared world.

The first Wild Cards book opens with a bang, with Howard Waldrop giving us the origin story for the entire setting in 'Thirty Minutes Over Broadway'. This is a terrific slice of fiction, with Waldrop fusing pulp energy with his own idiosyncratic style to give us something weird, resolutely entertaining and rather tragic in its own right. Roger Zelazny - yes, that one, the author of the Amber series and Lord of Light - then provides the origin story for Croyd Crenson, the Sleeper, one of the original aces whose powers shift every time he goes to sleep. Crenson's periods of hibernation provide a handy way of fast-forwarding through the immediate aftermath of the crisis, showing how New York, the USA and the world adapt to the arrival of the virus. Walter Jon Williams and Melinda Snodgrass then show us two sides of the same tale through 'Witness' and 'Degradation Rites', the story of the Four Aces and their betrayal by the American government. These opening four stories provide a quadruple-whammy of setting up this alternate history and doing so whilst telling stories that are well-written (superbly so in both Waldrop and Zelazny's cases, though the others are not far behind), finely characterised and as gut-wrenchingly unpredictable as anything in the editor's fantasy stories.

Later stories remain highly readable, though perhaps not quite on a par with this opening salvo. Martin's own 'Shell Games' is, perhaps unexpectedly, the most uplifting story in the book, the story of the bullied boy who becomes a superhero. Michael Cassut's 'Captain Cathode and the Secret Ace' and David Levine's 'Powers', two new additions for the 2010 edition of the book, are both decent, filling in gaps in the history. Lewis Shiner's 'Long Dark Night of Fortunato' introduces one of the setting's less salubrious characters and makes for effective, if uneasy, reading. Victor Milan's 'Transfigurations' shows how the anti-Vietnam rallies of the late 1960s and early 1970s are changed by the presence of the wild card virus (and gives us an ace-on-ace rumble that is particularly impressive). 'Down Deep' by Edward Bryant and Leanne Harper is probably the weirdest story in the collection (which in this collection is saying something), a moody trawl through the underbelly of New York (figurative and literal). It's probably a little bit too weird, with an ending that is risks being unintentionally comical, but is still reasonably effective.

Stephen Leigh's 'Strings' and Carrie Vaughn's 'Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan' (the latter being another new addition in this edition) return to the quality of the opening quartet. The former depicts the jokers' battle for civil rights, resulting in riots and chaos in Jokertown and New York that a shadowy figure is manipulating for his own ends. 'Ghost Girl' is a straight-up adventure with the titular character teaming up with Croyd Crenson to find her missing friend. 'Ghost Girl' could be a novel in its own right, with the battling criminal gangs and dodgy drug-taking rock bands providing a canvas that's almost too big for the story, but Vaughn's method of keeping the story under control and resolving it is most effective. Finally, John J. Miller's 'Comes a Hunter', in which a 'nat' sets out to avenge the death of his friend by going up against some criminal aces, is a superbly-written thriller which examines how 'normal' people can stand up against aces and jokers.

The book as a whole is excellent, with the stories entwining around real history and changing it in a way that is mostly organic and convincing. There are a few issues with plausibility here - most notably the way no-one seems particularly bothered about the proven existence of an alien race that has just tried to poison the entire planet - but for the most part the writers use the premise to tell stories about the changed history of the USA (from McCarthyism to civil rights to Vietnam) in an intelligent, passionate manner.

Wild Cards (*****) introduces the world, setting and many of its memorable characters through a series of well-written, smart stories. There isn't a weak card in the deck, and the best stories (those by Waldrop, Williams, Snodgrass and especially Zelazny) are up there with the best of their original work. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

Wertzone Classics: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny has the reputation of being one of the most interesting and innovative speculative fiction writers of his generation. His Amber novels are regarded as classics of fantasy and Damnation Alley is highly regarded to this day. Unfortunately it wasn't until recently that I got into his work, starting with his Hugo-winning 1967 novel, Lord of Light.

The setting is the distant future. Earth - now called Urath - is nearly forgotten. Mankind has settled a distant colony world, but the original crew of the colonisation ship have, through advanced technology, become extremely powerful beings and taken on the mantle of the Hindu gods. The general population is kept in harsh, downtrodden servility to these deities. Advanced AIs and the gods judge the 'karmic debt' of each person when they die, deciding if they are to be reborn in another human body or reincarnated as an animal or elevated to godhood. It is the ultimate hierarchal structure, designed to keep the powerful in power and the downtrodden under the heel. Every time a major technological discovery is made, the gods crush it with merciless force to ensure that the status quo continues.

One person thinks differently: Mahasamatman. He is one of the First, but has never claimed to be a god. But then, he has never claimed not to be a god. He refuses to believe in the innate superiority of the gods and finds what they have done to the people they were supposed to be protecting and serving repellent. To this end he carves an identity for himself as the Lord of Light, Buddha, and seeks to bring about the end of his world...

Lord of Light is an exceptionally clever, thought-provoking and intelligent novel. It is an incredibly fresh work. 1967? It could have been written yesterday. Zelazny is a funny and poetic writer, approaching each chapter, each interlude and each character from a slightly different angle, sometimes invoking rich mythic imagery. He bears some influences on his sleeve: at some moments the book feels like a Hindu cover version of The Dying Earth (complete with Vancian dialogue exchanges), but only momentarily. The mystery of how a futuristic, space-faring civilisation became a dramatic reenactment of Hindu mythology is never fully explained, but Zelazny gives us enough clues to work out ourselves how it happened. He also packs a hell of a lot into this 300-page tome, including vast wars and battles, struggles with body-stealing alien entities, brief-but-intriguing philosophical discourses on the nature of humanity and humourous monkey episodes. It's a story about myth, power and absolute corruption that resonates as strongly now as it did forty years ago.

Lord of Light (*****) is yet more proof that Gollancz's SF Masterworks list is one of the best, most definitive lists of the SF&F classics anyone could ask for. It is available in the UK from Gollancz and in the USA from Eos.