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The Complete Amber Sourcebook by Theodore Krulik is basically an encyclopedia about Amber, I believe.

I got a copy of this from PBS yesterday. Yes, that's what it seems to be. I haven't had much time to leave through it, but it's fairly thick with smallish print. When I go back to finish up the series I'll pull it out to help refresh me.

I got a copy of it today for my birthday from the boys. I've glanced through it a bit. There's a lot of info there. I wonder what Zelazny thought of it. Chris, do you know?

Jim:

Sorry for the delay in replying; I hadn't noticed this message before today.

Here's some relevant excerpts from the biography that I wrote.

Krulik said:
"As I worked on the sourcebook, Roger reviewed each section and contributed details that do not appear anywhere in his novels. For instance, Roger told me that Corwin had obtained his sword Grayswandir from the Phantom Smith of Tir-na Nog’th, a character who is never mentioned in the Chronicles of Amber.�

And I added later in the same section:
The Zelazny archives at Syracuse University contain sections of
Krulik’s manuscript, which he mailed to Zelazny at intervals for nearly
a decade. These items contain no replies or revisions from Zelazny.

+++

I can also add to this that the manuscripts looked so pristine that I couldn't help but think that they appeared unread. It was also odd that the manuscripts were not accompanied by replies from Zelazny to Krulik. Pretty much everything else in the archives was organized such that letters to Zelazny from editors and colleagues were clipped to (or in the same folder as) copies of his letters of reply. But no copies of responses from Zelazny to Krulik. So it's not possible to tell from the archives what Zelazny thought of the book, what he revised, or even if he read the drafts. Also, since the book was published posthumously, it's not possible to determine what parts of the book were approved by him and which parts might not have been.

Chris

Jim, I also noticed that you said on the book's review page that it was published a decade before Zelazny's death and therefore should be accurate. No, it was published in 1996, the year after Zelazny died.

Thanks for the update, Chris. I guess I misread the 96 for 86 in the book's intro. I changed the bit of review I started. It doesn't sound as if Zelazny paid any attention to this at all. That's a shame.

Jim, I was very careful to say what available evidence is in the archives. And so in fairness to Krulik, I can't conclude that Zelazny didn't pay any attention to it at all. I can only conclude that so far I haven't seen any independent evidence of what Zelazny contributed to the book or thought of it. Those are two different things in my mind, i.e., absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, so to speak. I expect that Krulik should possess correspondence from Zelazny regarding the project and that it would prove informative.

Yes, Chris, I saw how fair you were about that. I read a blurb about him that said he interviewed Zelazny a lot. It would be interesting to hear how he reconciles the lack of replies in Zelazny's papers.

Well, I'm not trying for a doctorate in Zelazny studies, just kind of interested in how authentic some of these back stories in his Source Book might be. They're interesting, but I tend to forget a lot of details soon after I read them, so it's not a big deal. Makes it endlessly entertaining.
;-)

Krulik wrote a series of articles that are discussed here:
/topic/show/...

Looking back on what I wrote earlier in this thread, I can add that Ted Krulik has recently shown me copies of some correspondence with Zelazny in which a few points in the Sourcebook were clarified. And so there is no doubt that Zelazny was collaborating on the project before he died.

But as I mentioned earlier, the many draft manuscripts of the Sourcebook sent to him looked pristine in the archives, and so I suspect that Zelazny was probably skimming over things and commenting on major items. If he'd been scrutinizing the manuscripts in detail, I would have expected to see his handwritten remarks on many pages.

When the Visual Guide to Castle Amber was published, Zelazny later deliberately burned down part of Castle Amber in one of the novels because he said he didn't like being bound by the floor plan or architectural plans. Having its design fixed in a book made him want to break that plan. He said he didn't like being bound by rules.

That makes me wonder whether Zelazny would have followed along with everything that was in the Sourcebook, or if he would have deliberately changed things. Of course we'll never know because the Sourcebook wasn't finished and published until after he died.