“The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 13” -Peter Graham
I was 12 maybe, regulated to sleeping bag on the floor in a guest room of my father’s first wife’s apartment. We visited Ann Arbor once a year, Mumzie was keen on keeping a sense of family with my father’s side as well, despite my father’s extensive failures as a human being. His first wife and my half-sisters were this extended family.
Luckily they inherited the same bibliomania from our father as I had. There were several boxes of books in the guest room and I couldn’t sleep without at least getting some reading in.
It was a randomly chosen paperback, the cover ripped off, the exposed illustration of a swirling ghost figure moving through a hallway. The opening narration is from a disembodied, amnesiac voice who wanders a castle and comes upon a magickal duel.
And so I met ‘Madwand’ and the worlds of Roger Zelazny.
