This Immortal

Conrad Nimikos, Earth's Minister of Culture, Arts and Monuments, has been assigned to play tour guide to blue-skinned Vegan, Cort Myshtigo. The Three-Day War, a nuclear event, has left most of the Earth destroyed by radiation, and the Vegan occupation hasn't helped much either. Myshtigo seems intrigued by Conrad's identity and apparent immortality - is he the god Pan, some other superhuman, or just a human affected by nuclear radiation? And why is Myshtigo actually touring Earth - to write a tour book or is there another nefarious reason?

Let me state right away that I enjoy Zelazny's work - The Chronicles of Amber series was imaginative and engaging, and the Millenial series co-written with Robert Sheckley was hilarious. I wanted to like This Immortal, and I didn't dislike it, but I didn't enjoy it the way I thought I might. Perhaps it was because I listened to the audiobook version, as I found my thoughts drifting away from the book. It seemed like there were loads of characters introduced quickly, and that certainly would have been better in print where I could leaf back through the book to recall who was whom. Zelazny was considered a modern sci-fi writer in his time, but from a 50-year distance, the book now seems very dated.

This Immortal shared the 1966 Hugo with Frank Herbert's Dune, which seems to have weathered the years much better than Zelazny's work.