This Immortal (book)

Roger Zelazny This Immortal (1966). A picaresque adventure, during which the narrator-hero is under surveillance (unbeknownst to him) to determine whether he would be the right person to “inherit” the Earth. Interesting background: A Three Day War has destroyed a large part of Earth, leaving Hot Spots and mutants, many of which resemble the creatures of myth. The off-Earth government wants to sell out to the Vegans, and become their servant class. The Vegans are an old and wise civilisation, and most of them behave ethically, too. The radical political party wants to eliminate the Vegans, whom they suspect of making a  catalogue of things to buy, and have a hired an assassin to do it. He and the hero are old friends; etc etc etc – lots of pseudo-portentous hero-type talk ensues. The hero also happens to be an immortal. In the 60s, SF wasn’t very sophisticated, and far too much time is spent on gee-whiz heroics of the video game kind. Zelazny’s concepts are worth developing in a full scale future history series, but so far as I know he never followed up on this book. A fairly good read, especially the first half, in which the culture is presented and enough complications are started to serve a half a dozen novels. But it diminishes into a straight adventure-travel story. ** (2000)