Review by C.J. Bunce
Most of the world knew Roger Zelazny for his fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels. Neil Gaiman has cited Zelazny as his greatest influence. In his 58 years Zelazny won three Nebula awards and six Hugo awards, and is best known for The Chronicles of Amber. His “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” was included in the DVD collection Visions of Mars: First Library on Mars, taken onto the Phoenix Mars lander in 2008. In 2008 an unpublished novel was located, a crime thriller by Zelazny called The Dead Man’s Brother, and Titan Books’ Hard Case Crime imprint published it for the first time ever in 2009. We’re reviewing it here as part of our excursion into lost novels and our “Retro Fix” series for fans who thought they’d read the entirety of their favorite authors’ works. Previous works reviewed here include lost novels by Michael Crichton, James M. Cain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Gore Vidal, and others, as well as several forgotten classics of science fiction, fantasy, and pulp noir. In an afterword by the author’s son Trent Zelazny, he comments on his father and writing genre, “Great writers will never hold back due to genre. They will tell the story they want–or must–in spite of the limiting labels designed by publishers. They don’t think of themselves as science fiction writers or mystery writers or western writers. They think of themselves simply as writers, period.”
In Roger Zelazny’s crime thriller The Dead Man’s Brother, his hero Ovid Wiley runs Taurus art gallery in New York. Wiley is a former art smuggler and also a former CIA operative whose genetics (explained in the book) reflected a type of super soldier tendency. At present, the early 1970s, Wiley had cleaned up his act for the most part, still in the art world buying and selling artwork as a respectable art dealer. In the first scene we meet Wiley entering his gallery to find the dead body of his former partner in crime, a man he had neither seen nor thought about in several years. Wiley is then accused of his murder, but the CIA intercedes. It turns out they could use his unique skill set and familiarity with Rome specifically to earn a “get out of jail free” card by finding a missing priest alleged to have stolen millions from the Vatican. Wiley begrudgingly agrees, and his investigation re-introduces him to the dead partner’s girlfriend and finds the embezzling priest dead. Before he gets accused of that murder, he takes the girlfriend in tow and heads to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to locate the dead man’s brother. He is imprisoned and tortured by locals for days, getting into a bizarre national conflict he has no interest in. Armed with a machete and thoughts of revenge, he ventures home with a package and secret information.
Fans of Zelazny’s writing are the real target for this novel. The tale is not particularly gripping, yet readers will stick with Zelazny to the end simply to see what completely insane circumstance his hero is going to get involved with next. The Dead Man’s Brother often reads like an early draft–many stream-of-conscience paragraphs pepper the plot that conjure the image of a writer who sat “butt in chair” and wrote from beginning to end, intending to return with a few good edits later. Little is known why this novel was shelved, and it is only a guess that he wrote the book around 1970-1971. Was he merely experimenting with styles? Was he attempting to write his own version of an American James Bond or dabble with mainstream works? More than a few threads remain hanging by the end of The Dead Man’s Brother. Presumably he intended to return to finesse these once the novel was sold?
provides an update to these characters from the Marvel Comics stories of years past. It collects the four issue “Cosmic Avengers” mini-series and the one-shot “Tomorrow’s Avengers” stories from 2013’s Marvel NOW! line. Forget about mainstream, title-character superheroes. The Guardians are exciting and down-right fun. As a hook to bring these B-level heroes into the fore, Iron Man joins forces with the Guardians to protect the Earth from a nicely orchestrated attempt to eliminate Earth from the Galaxy’s stage prompted by a King from another world.
by Brian K. Vaughan, who has entertained me in several stories like Pride of Baghdad, Runaways and Y: The Last Man. 
(tough to make, but in the hands of someone like Tarsem Singh who did the underrated The Fall there would be some cool, trippy otherworld sequences) and 
(come on, aren’t we due for a great carnie movie?). Now, let’s do the countdown.
they’ve already got a pretty cool cinematic western. John Marston plays the typical western hero of a former rogue looking for redemption and trying to save his wife and child. It’s been done many different times, but if you have good actors, good scenery and good dialogue to go with this story, it could work. I can’t tell you much more about this particular story; I just know that I’m still surprised that a video game actually moved me.
and how they would look cool fighting Nazis as well. Then, I kept reading it over and over, and since 
already went back to World War II, there’s not much space for The Invaders. There won’t be more Bucky. There won’t be the original Human Torch, Toro, Union Jack or Namor, the Sub-Mariner. The Powerpuff Girls already have a TV show and a movie. However, if you’re looking for a silly parody of super groups as an alternative to The Avengers or I have to assume an eventual Justice League movie, then look no further than Captain Carrot, Yankee Poodle, Fastback, Pig Iron, Alley-Kat-Abra and Rubberduck. If they can fight the Nazis, that might be the perfect movie.
could effectively show the terror of an incurable disease spreading and the feeling of helplessness that follows. For the protagonist Kivrin, trying to not reveal you’re from the future adds a great layer to that tension, having to remain disconnected while not being sure if she’ll ever leave this doomed time.
in two previous Borg.com posts, so you know how much I like it. I also think that it would make a fantastic film noir. You have the femme fatale in Miss Misery, you have a guy that doesn’t know what’s good or bad anymore and you have crime galore. If that’s not a great film noir, with bonus super powers, I don’t know what is.
might be one of my favorite baseball books of all time. I took it in the third round of a baseball book draft. (I knew it would last until then, so I grabbed 
and 
with my first two picks). The story of the Ruppert Mundys and the forgotten Patriot League as told by “Word” Smith (thanks, Wikipedia) would run circles around Moneyball the movie. I think the fictional 14-year-old manager (I think that’s the age – goodness, I need to buy a copy of this book to read again and so I can look up such queries) would make a better representative of sabermetrics than the “fictional” Peter Brand.
the book was my fifth round choice in the baseball draft – and just another perfect example of how I dislike movie adaptations of books that I enjoy. As much as I would like to see this list made into movies now that I’ve written this post, my gut tells me it’s probably better if they’re not.
is a pretty wonderful book and I can’t help but think about what a friend said after her husband read it. He said, “I think this book would have blown my mind if I read it when I was eighteen.”
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