My Name is Legion
by Roger Zelazny
1976, Del Rey
"He did not exist...or did he?
He had destroyed his punchcards and changed his face. There was no credit card, birth record, or passport for him in the International Data Bank. His names were many...any he chose. His occupation was taking megarisks in the service of a vast global detective agency. His interworld assignments were highly lucrative, incalculably vital, and terrifyingly deadly. And more often then not, his life was a living hell!
Okay, ignore that blurb. My Name is Legion is a more or less a short story collection; three science fiction stories about an unnamed detective-for-hire set in the near future -- although, the near future of the 1970s is pretty much today.
The world finally gets its act together, and creates a centralized database with everyone's data fully collected and integrated; name, age, financial records, work history, it's all there. There was this one guy, tho, who worked to program the database and decided he didn't want to be in it. Or more exactly, he programmed in a backdoor so that he could attach any information he liked to himself. Naturally, we wouldn't be reading his story if he was just a reclusive computer programmer, so he's also a great adventurer. He works as a special agent for one of the largest detective agencies in the world, and often takes it upon himself to exceed his duties in order to make the world a better place.
This guy -- whose true name we never learn -- appeared in three of Zelazny's stories:
The Eve of RUMOKO, first published in Three for Tomorrow, 1969, edited by Robert Silverberg. A government program to create new islands by setting off underwater volcanoes (overpopulation is a big problem in the future) is under threat by mysterious saboteurs. Solving this problem will involve some serious James-Bondery.
’Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k, first published in An Exaltation of Stars, 1973, edited by Terry Carr. A dolphin killed a guy! Well, maybe. Ever since humans discovered that dolphins are intelligent, there has been basically no recorded dolphin-on-human violence, and many people doubt that the crime reported by the press is anything close to the truth. Solving this problem will involve some serious speculative dolphin psychoanalysis.
Home Is the Hangman, first published in Analog, November 1975 issue. The first robot granted true AI goes mad, disappears, reappears years later, and start killing people. This story won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1975, and has inspired surprisingly bad cover art for multiple editions of this book. Solving this problem will involve some serious speculative robot psychoanalysis.
All of these stories are very much science fiction, but most of the actual narrative revolves around good old-fashioned detective work interspersed with light philosophical ponderments. These are fairly good stories given the time they were written, and are fair detective stories, middling SF, and fine-if-outdated philosophical ramblings. They are very much not Zelazny's best work, and definitely not worth reading if you are not a fan of classic SF. Moreover, if you are a fan of classic SF, it might still be best to start with Home Is the Hangman and decide if the others are worth your time from there.
Having said that, the blurb from the back cover (as seen above) and the terrible, terrible cover art should not scare you off from reading this book; they are there for flavor, in much the same way that flies are there for the flavor of your tuna sandwich.