The story is set on Venus at a time when mankind has achieved routine travel to the various planets of the solar system. Unlike the actual planet, Zelazny's Venus is Earth-like, offering breathable air, water-filled oceans and native fauna, one of which is the fictional Ichthyform Leviosaurus Levianthus, a 300-foot-long denizen of the Venusian oceans commonly called "Ikky". It has never been caught, despite numerous attempts to do so. The story's two main protagonists are Jean Luharich and Carlton Davits. Luharich is a successful businesswoman and media celebrity who is financing, and commanding, an expedition to capture an Ikky. Davits is a work-for-hire seaman who has been on the crew of several earlier attempts, and in fact had once been in Luharich's position: a playboy sportsman who commissioned the ship Luharich now owns, until he was injured in a disastrous try whose failure he blames himself for. Davits and Luharich were previously involved in a brief romantic relationship which ended years before the story begins. Davits has been hired on as a "baitman"—the crewmember who is tasked with diving to the end of a submerged cable so as to attach and activate an electronic lure. Because the lure is deployed only when an Ikky has been detected in close proximity to the ship, the baitman can find himself dangerously close to the Ikky. This happens to Davits. He manages to safely return to the ship, where he assists Luharich in a successful capture.
Zelazny's conception of Venus
John Clute described Zelazny's Venus as "fantastical, densely described" and "almost entirely 'unscientific'". Gardner Dozois believed that Zelazny certainly knew that the Venus of "Doors of His Face" was not the actual Venus. Instead, Dozois saw Zelazny's Venus as "an homage, a deliberate act of retro nostalgia" for the "lushly romantic pulp version... that had been popularized in tales from Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories decades before".
Publication history
In addition to its original appearance in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, "The Doors of His Face..." appeared in two best-of-the-year anthologies—The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction and Nebula Award Stories 1965. Since then, it has been anthologized at least twelve times, including translations into French, German and Italian. The story also appears in eight collections devoted to Zelazny's work, including translations into Dutch and Lithuanian. In 1991, it was published as a chapbook by Pulphouse Publishing. The foregoing was taken from the story's listing in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. More detail on its publication history can be found at that listing.
''The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories''
"The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" was the lead story in a fifteen-story collection published in the United States by Doubleday in 1971. The collection was published in Britain by Faber and Faber in 1973. The first Canadian publication was by Avon Books in 1974. A German-language collection was published as Die Türen seines Gesichts by Pabel-Moewig in 1980. An earlier German-language collection from a different publisher was an abridged version, including only five stories. The fifteen stories in the collection are:
"The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth"
"The Keys to December"
"Devil Car"
"A Rose for Ecclesiastes"
"The Monster and the Maiden"
"Collector's Fever"
"This Mortal Mountain"
"This Moment of the Storm"
"The Great Slow Kings"
"A Museum Piece"
"Divine Madness"
"Corrida"
"Love Is an Imaginary Number"
"The Man Who Loved the Faioli"
"Lucifer"
Starting in 2001, the versions published by ibooks, Inc. included two additional stories—"The Furies" and "The Graveyard Heart". More detail on the collection's publication history can be found at its listing in the InternetSpeculative Fiction Database.
