Myth, machines, and revolution in ancient India: Roger Zelazny's 1967 novel ‘Lord of Light'

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25-05-2025

The circular nature of time has long been a favorite among those interested in philosophy, spirituality, and literature. There is Nietzsche with his theory of eternal return, Hinduism and its concept of the kalachakra, Gabriel García Márquez's large ring of Aureliano Buendias in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the deliciously tense scene in True Detective, where Rust Cohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) smashes his hand down upon a cold drink can and explains to his hapless interrogators that 'time is a flat circle'.
Roger Zelazny's 1967 novel Lord of Light – winner of the 1968 Hugo Award for science-fiction – makes this circular nature of time the book's primary conceit by making the far future reflect an ancient past. In the process, he marries science to fantasy, fuses myth and history together, and shakes up religion with colonialism to serve a technicolor dream that is part memory, part prophecy.
The Star of India
The story is set on an unnamed planet colonised thousands of years ago by the crew of an Earthen spaceship called The Star of India.
At the time of this colonisation, human technology is already advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic. In addition to space travel, it allows people to wield superhuman powers, called 'aspects' in the novel, move souls from one body to another, and create fantastic weapons.
The planet's native energy-beings are called rakashas, or demons, by the colonisers, who hunt and imprison them. The planet's current population is descended from the first settlers, the spaceship's crew, who have styled themselves after the Hindu pantheon and rule the world as gods from a sky-city called Heaven.
Since these 'gods' control the technology of soul-transfer, they can decide whether someone is reincarnated as a prince or a pauper, a Brahmin or a Shudra. They also have ways of knowing exactly how much charity one does (prayer-machines at temples to keep track of donations) and whether one entertains blasphemous ideas (psych-probes to detect errant thoughts).
To an extent, this is the old speculative trick of repeatedly throwing 'what-if' questions at a particular situation, concept, or idea (in this case, a religion). What if reincarnation was real? What if there was a way of measuring karma? What if the gods were really petty enough to keep tally of everyone's prayers? To his particular credit, however, Zelazny extends the tendrils of his speculation to touch history. As the fun-house mirror of his story reflects coloniser overlords from the future as ancient Hindu deities, so it reflects their challenger as the Buddha, the story's hero.
The non-linear narrative begins with Yama (the god of death) recalling the Buddha from a blissful non-existence, or nirvana. Going back and forth in time, we learn that Sam, as he prefers to be called, was once the reclusive prince Siddhartha, one of the planet's first colonisers. On a fateful day, he came out of his self-imposed exile to get a new body, and saw the world choking under excessive religious control. He grew so disgusted by the actions of his former friends and colleagues that he declared war against Heaven and started preaching an alternate religion (Buddhism) to the masses.
This new-age Buddha loses many battles, even dies a few times, but his ideas attack heaven like persistent rust slowly spreading over the hull of a warship. One by one, gods like Tak, Kubera, Ratri, Yama, and Krishna come over to his side. Heaven finds its ranks, conviction, and resolve weakening steadily over time.
As we are informed by the work of scholars like BR Ambedkar (notably in his 1948 book The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables), a version of this struggle did play out in ancient India with somewhat similar results. Buddhism rose as an alternative to the oppressive practices of Brahminism. It was particularly attractive to those who did not want to sacrifice their valuable animals like horses and cows in the frequent yajnas required by Brahmin priests.
In fact, according to Ambedkar, it was in reaction to the growing popularity of Buddhism that many Brahmins gave up animal sacrifices and declared beef-eating a mortal sin. Like Sam's defeats on the battlefield, Buddhism lost a lot of ground when the Buddhist king Brihadratha Maurya was overthrown and assassinated by his Brahmin commander-in-chief Pushyamitra Shunga (an event comparable to the French Revolution in its scale and socio-political effect, according to Ambedkar). After his death, Sam, like the real Buddha, is also declared an avatar of Vishnu, and his philosophies are appropriated by heavenly decree.
The lack of outrage
As a (non-practising) Hindu and an Indian, while reading Lord of Light 58 years after its release, I often wondered why it had not caused a furore upon its publication. Unlike apolitical mythological retellings (say, Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology or Stephen Fry's Mythos: Greek Myths Retold), Lord of Light is not just interested in repackaging religious stories. Zelazny puts a finger on sensitive points, say by alluding to the literal demonisation of a native population, or by framing the rise of Buddhism as a reformist religious revolution.
My personal theory about what may have worked in Zelazny's favour is the perception of science fiction as non-serious literature. By definition, non-serious literature does not merit serious consideration, while religious hardliners – across religions – are very serious people. They reserve their rage for books by Booker-winning literary stars, not mere Hugo Award-winners like Zelazny.
Critics and fellow writers also have similar notions of seriousness sometimes, which they extend to appreciation as well as outrage. This is probably why, in his introduction to the book, science-fiction writer Adam Roberts limits himself to appreciating Zelazny's blending of fantasy and sci-fi tropes (a neat trick, admittedly) while defending him against imaginary charges of orientalism. Similarly, in a 2010 article for The Guardian, Sam Jordison found pleasure in the book's 'dappy dialogue, eastern-tinged scene setting, and epic battles', instead of anything more literary (read serious).
Timing is also important. When Salman Rusdhie's The Satanic Verses came out in 1988, Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, had been in power for less than a decade. He and his minions really needed to demonstrate their capacity for taking offence. On the other hand, in 1967, when Lord of Light came out, India's image in the West was all about yoga–Gandhi–spirituality, not religious extremism. Rank-and-file fanatics, such as they were, were not ambitious enough to mine books for religious outrage.
At the end of Zelazny's story, the Buddha emerges victorious from a climactic battle and liberates his land from religious control. In the real world, however, we are further along the cycle of time. One hopes that new Indian readers will engage with the book on a less superficial level than its Western audience. After all, having been dead for the last 30 years, Zelazny is safe from outrage in death.
AM Gautam is the author of Indian Millennials: Who Are They, Really?. His literary interests lie primarily in cultural commentary, essays, and speculative fiction.