Plot: 6/9. The pattern was as predictable as a cheesy video game constantly spawning new monsters for a player whose only skill was his superhuman strength. Worst of all, the protagonist never really faced a a critical challenge that fully demonstrated himself through his own unique solution, which was extremely noticeable considering the crudeness of the other writing elements.

1. Cassandra bantered with her lover before foretelling that the protagonist would change things.
2. The protagonist inadvertently let out the secret of his old age incompatible with his young appearance. Cassandra then accurately reminisced about the feats of the protagonist’s namesake—a Returnist who had bombed resorts. Before the protagonist boarded the air taxi, Cassandra omened the protagonist would come across danger.
3. He met his ex-girlfriend Ellen, who instructed him to visit the library for his mission.
4. He asked his old friend Phil to run interference for him. His boss, Lorel Sands, commanded him to guide Cort Myshtigo around Earth, who seemed to realise the protagonist’s anomalous age. Their first encounter was so unpleasant that the protagonist accused him of lacking the compassion abounding in his well-known grandpa.
5. In the library, Myshtigo mapped out the concrete route of his sightseeing tour across Earth. Don Dos Santos, the current secretary of Radpol—a radical group once founded by the protagonist’s former identity—offered to protect the alien from the possible assassination of his comrades, along with his consort Diane and their hired bodyguard Hasan. George requested to go along with them for the sake of his breakthrough research on extirpating Spiderbat. Finally, the alien beseeched the protagonist to take him to a voodoo ceremony, which the protagonist obliged.
6. In the ceremony, Hasan was possessed by a god who only favoured murderers or killers. So the protagonist sounded out whether he himself was Hasan’s target by offering a duel. Hason declined, because he had once witnessed how the protagonist knocked a boxer down with only bare hands, and therefore swore only to fight him from a distance afterwards. Hasan claimed he had possibly been hired to kill the alien rather than the protagonist, which was still contradictory to the protagonist’s responsibility as a tour guide.
7. As they arrived in Cairo, Myshtigo told the protagonist he intended to write a travelogue for this journey. Myshtigo didn’t agree with Santos’s political views, noting that the current generation exiled from Earth to Myshtigo’s planet didn’t miss their original home, let alone return.

8. The tourists found the great pyramid of Cheops was currently being dismantled under the authorisation of the protagonist to deal with the local material shortage. The protagonist even planned to film the entire demolition and run it backwards so as to simulate the construction of the pyramid and earn some money. All the other tourists especially Myshtigo were appalled at such sacrilege against the monument.

   “They are desecrating a monument to the past glories of the human race!” “Nothing is cheaper than past glories.”

   “You are a mad man!” “No. The absence of a monument can, in its own way, be something of a monument also.”

9. The protagonist thought the grenade was not suitable to handle the dangerous boadile and offered Myshtigo a pistol, which the alien rejected, but wondered how many legs this creature had.
10. The protagonist went berserk and ran amok upon hearing the bad news that his wife might be wiped out by a sudden earthquake. After he attacked the other tourists, Hasan sent off his wrestling Rolem with the power five times as much again as the ordinary to subdue the demented protagonist. The protagonist beat it down and regained senses before losing consciousness.
11. The protagonist took apart Rolem, still unsure whether Hasan had intentionally killed him.
12. Everyone consoled him except the alien. Although nobody seemed suspicious based on their words, he still had a feeling that someone had marked him for death.
13. In order to save Myshtigo, the protagonist had to confront boadile with bare hands. Hasan killed the creature by throwing his shaft accurately into its artery, and thus saved the protagonist. Phil wanted to participate in the journey to Greece.
14. Diane recognized the protagonist’s former identity and therefore confessed to the protagonist that Hasan had been hired by them—Radpol, to murder the alien surreptitiously. In fact, Hasan’s shot missed its true target—Myshtigo—and accidentally rescued the protagonist. Since Diane didn’t know why the alien deserved death, the protagonist resolved to safeguard the alien till the end.
15. Myshtigo sensed the protagonist had probed his mind and questioned the protagonist. The protagonist admitted and claimed the alien’s motive of travelling was above writing a simple travel book. Myshtigo rejected to reveal more information, but finally accepted the protagonist’s gun for self-defence.
16. He returned to Greece, his homeland and place where he had initiated the Returnist Rebellion. The hotel room he currently abode had been decorated with embarrassing, sometimes even bogus plates to commemorate his past.
17. The protagonist encountered Jason, his old son who had never met his father in nineteen years but had rushed here immediately after dreaming of the possible dangers awaiting his father: Dead Man who had once drunk the blood of Jason’s sheep, a burning stone, Black Beast, and an assassin resembling Hasan. He also mentioned Borton—the dog they once owned—burst out of home to find the protagonist but disappeared since then.
18. The protagonist played the pipe to ask satyrs to drive satyrs away.
19. Diane received no response from her headquarters and informed the protagonist of her final decision to proceed with the assassination.
20. The protagonist threatened Hasan to back off from the alien, and even insulted him. But Hasan behaved so well that he even told the protagonist that he would never fall into the protagonist’s trap by instigating a duel himself.
21. They saved an abandoned, deformed baby. The protagonist took himself as an example to explain the accepted custom of infanticide here.
22. Hasan pointed his gun at the alien and pretended the attempt just as a error during maintenance. The protagonist couldn’t stand such provocation and challenged Hason to a duel.
23. The protagonist practiced with the sling all night before Hasan reminisced about their past of fighting together for the independence of Earth.
24. The protagonist and Hasan hurled stones at each other until they were interrupted by a batch of Kouretes.
25. The Shaman of Kouretes, a researcher embracing Returnism to study the indigenous tribe, demanded them to fight the allegedly unbeatable Dead Man.
26. They observed Dead Man was actually an albino with Down’s Syndrome, manipulated by Shaman from birth as a toy for bloody ceremony, so Hasan fought him with the assistance of Magnesium flare.
27. The protagonist and Hasan delayed the enemy to help others escape.
28. The barbarian caught them both and tied them on the burning stones in a valley. Borton saved them moments before Shaman was about to gut them.
29. The protagonist asked Borton to bring friends to release them after it massacred all their enemies.
30. A Satyr remembering the protagonist passed by coincidentally and answered his petition.
31. They headed for the protagonist’s hometown Volos and slept a night in a cave.
32. In Volos, old Phil died peacefully in his sleep. Myshtigo declared the end of this tour abruptly, because he had gathered enough information and had remained little time remaining.
33. Phil’s last letter urged the protagonist to protect the alien off Earth, as Phil knew from Myshtigo’s grandfather that, despite Myshtigo’s incurable disease, he was going to carry out a plan of protecting Earth and conserving its invaluable culture. So the protagonist bade farewell to the guests and incinerated Phil. But the smell attracted Black Beast, which none of them was able to defeat.
34. Cassandra, somehow having escaped the disaster, saved them in time.
35. The protagonist set up an opposition party to Radpol, before he was informed that Myshtigo had purchased Earth from the expatriate Earth government and bequeathed it to the protagonist. Myshtigo’s real goal was to check whether the protagonist, an immortal with high survival potential, was qualified as the owner of Earth.

Core: 4/9. This work is not so much science fiction as apocalyptic Greek Mythology, featuring a mediocre adventure about a godlike protagonist fighting against mutants whose appearance coincided with the lore on godforsaken Earth. In the end, like the heroes of those antediluvian tales, the protagonist was suitably rewarded with Earth for his mettle and effort.

Although this work was favoured by Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1966 tying with Dune, I agreed partially with the opinion of Lawrence Ashmead, an editor who rejected this book for publishing and claimed that “the plot was terribly thin and uninteresting” with the “Germanic constructions and pseudo clever dialogue”.

Character: 5/9. At least Zelazny made some side characters distinctive enough like the arrogant alien, the sentimental poet, the sly assassin and the idiosyncratic scientist.

In contrast, the protagonist had lived long but seemed like a teenager who lacked calmness, restraint, patience and wisdom.

• He got so deranged upon hearing the bad news that he even attacked his accompanies. But given his age, he certainly suffered from the loss of many people around him.
• He didn’t warn the alien properly and exactly about the danger lurking nearby.
• He offered a duel so hot-headedly that even the alien didn’t understand their reason for the duel.

World and Others: 4/9. Combining the Greek mythology with the real world was one of the advantages of this book, though with hindsight, Zelazny needed to polish this part better to construct a more convincing world.

Do you not see a convergence of life and myth here during the last days of life on this planet?