Tor Double #24 was originally published in August 1990 and is the final volume in the series which compiled a classic story along with a sequel (or prequel) written by another author. Walter Jon Williams used the world Zelazny created with an overlap of only a few characters to expand Zelazny’s story. Not original to the Tor Doubles series, Elegy for Angels and Dogs was originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 26 years after The Graveyard Heart appeared.

The Graveyard Heart was originally published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination in March, 1964. Opening at New Year’s Eve 2000, Zelazny offers a decadent society of the Set, who live to attend flamboyant parties and be seen, going into cryosleep between the parties to prolong their lives. Alvin Moore has managed to get an invitation to the “Party of Parties,” where he promptly falls in love with Leota, one of the Set.

Since the Set only come out of hibernation every few years to attend elaborate parties, there can be no relationship between Moore and Leota. Unable to accept this, Moore decides he must be admitted to the Set and goes about figuring out how to improve his chances of achieving his goal.

Zelazny glosses over his efforts, making sure the reader understands that he applies himself to inventing and gaining patents to help build his prestige and bank account. He interviews Daniel Wilson to learn how to improve his chances. He marries Diana Demetrios and divorces her because he believes that a divorcee is more likely to be accepted than a bachelor. While Moore may be admirable for his dedication to achieving his goal, at the same time, he demonstrates an emptiness of character in achieving his goals, perfectly in line with the decadence of the Set.

Eventually, he finds himself in an interview with Mary Maude Mullen, a Victorian woman who was not only among the first of the Set, but also the arbiter of who would be invited to join. Seemingly perfunctory, Moore still feels confident, even though it is clear that Mullen caught him off-guard despite his preparation. Mullen is concerned that Moore may not be ready to leave his world behind, a necessity given the amount of time members of the Set spend in hibernation.

Nevertheless, Moore is admitted to the Set. He begins his attempts to woo Leota into a form of marriage, and although the two become friends and lovers, there is constantly the feel that their relationship is transitory. The decadent lifestyle of the Set isn’t conducive to any sort of long-term relationship. Moore also finds that he may have a rival in a poet, Wayne Unger, whose primary interest appears to be getting as drunk as possible.

Eventually, Moore does try to reconnect with his old life, visiting a laboratory he helped place on the map before joining the Set. The laboratory staff is aware of who he is in an historical manner and he discovers that not only is their campus completely new since the last time he visited, but the science they are doing is far beyond his knowledge, a situation Mullen warned him about during his interview. It becomes clear to him that leaving the Set will create more problems and be more difficult than joining it.

However, Leota finds herself pregnant, possibly with Moore’s child, and she approaches Mullen about leaving the Set so she can raise the child in a normal manner. Mullen encourages her to give the child up for adoption rather than drop back into the world of humans which would no longer be recognizable to her. Before she could make a decision, however, the choice is taken out of her hands.

Zelazny has created an interesting world in which the members of the Set are living in a parallel world to the majority of humanity. There are points of connection, with the world seemingly clinging to news of the Set’s parties, although we only have the Set’s view of the situation, and those of its hangers on, to support this claim. The Set also maintains a large portfolio in the world’s stock market to allow them to continue to live their lifestyle. The glimpses of the regular world that result from Moore’s visit to his old lab are limited in scope.

However, the very lifestyle of the Set makes it difficult for the reader to care about the individuals. Just at their connection to the “real world” is fleeting, little that they do seems to be on any consequence. They live in a perpetual party scene in which there seems to be little consequence for action or any depth of emotion.

The second story in this volume is set in the interesting world that Zelazny has construction, and while Walter Jon Williams picks up on some of the themes Zelazny introduced, he intelligently jettisoned most of Zelazny’s characters to explore different aspects of the world of the Set.

Elegy for Angels and Dogs was originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in  May, 1990 and is a sequel to The Graveyard Heart. Few of the characters from The Graveyard Heart show up in Elegy for Angels and Dogs. Walter Jon Williams mostly focused on the world Zelazny outlined and followed it into the future. Poet Wayne Unger appears throughout as a gadfly and Mary Maude Mullen, the doyenne of the Set shows up, but his major focus is on Lamoral, Prince of Thurn und Taxis and his twin brother, Alex.

Williams gets around one of the issues Zelazny faced in The Graveyard Heart by giving Lamoral interests outside the Set’s standard galas. The result is that the world in which he lives is not as decadent as the one depicted in the previous novella. Lamoral attends the parties, but he also maintains ties to the regular world, working through his relatives to monitor his investments, which are separate from most of the investments of the Set. He also participates in hobbies, such as mountain climbing.

Just as there was a murder in the Graveyard Heart, there is also a murder in Elegy for Angels and Dogs. A member of the Set, Cao Cao, is murdered and suspicion falls on Lamoral, as well as others for the death. Williams focuses more of the story on Cao Cao’s murder than Zelazny did on the murder he described, giving Elegy for Angels and Dogs more of the feel of a mystery novel, although the science fictional elements are never far from the surface.

In Williams’ version of the world, each time members of the Set are awakened, they are brought up to date on what is happening in the real world, although different members pay different amounts of attention to it. We also see that Moore’s interest in the world he left behind in The Graveyard Heart and Lamoral’s interest in his world are not as strange as previously depicted. Eurydike, for instance, a woman who has recently joined the Set, remains interest in how her nth dimension discoveries are being exploited.

Mullen’s decision not to wake Lamoral for a period of time, partly due to a major war raging across the world, leads him to decide it is time to make use of his independent investments and part of the novella deals with his attempts to launch a hostile takeover of the Set and remove Mullen from her position of power. Although this is clearly an important goal for Lamoral, Williams presents it in an almost off-hand manner.

While there feels as if there is more import to the actions of Williams’ characters than those of Zelazny’s stories, the characters still flit around. Lamoral interacts with many more characters than Moore did, hosts a boar hunt on one of his estates for members of the Set, has a rivalry with an operatic tenor who may be trying to kill him, and in the climax of the novel goes mountain climbing with his twin, Alex, and a local guide.

Seemingly disjointed, the ascent and descent from the mountain and the subsequent activities manage to tie several of the threads Williams introduced into a coherent and complex tapestry in which disparate activities introduced earlier in the novella are shown to relate to each other and often have a more major role than previously indicated. The reader finds themselves wanting to re-read the story to see what hints Williams seeded the story with.

Williams story also ties into the first Tor Double, reviewed back on April 11. Just as Lamoral, Alex, and Louis climb Chanabang, a mountain in the Himalayas, in Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson had his characters climb Olympic Mons. The climbs are completely different in nature and purpose, but the authors’ attention to detail mirrors each other and makes the reader think back to the earlier story.

One of my big complaints about The Graveyard Heart was that the sense of decadence that pervaded the Set society made it feel as if nothing really mattered. Williams addresses that issue and brings life and a sense of importance to the setting, not by tearing it down, but rather by extending it and exploring aspects that Zelazny hinted at, but didn’t follow up on.

This volume was published in the standard anthology format rather than tête-bêche. Bob Eggleton provided the cover.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.