Glory Road

About Glory Road

Glory Road is a fantasy novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (July - September 1963) and published in hardcover later the same year. Heinlein himself reported that the book only took several weeks and was a lot of fun to write; some of his other works, such as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, required several years and were relatively difficult.

E.C. "Easy" Gordon, the protagonist, has been recently discharged from a war in Southeast Asia. As he ponders what to do with his future, he sits in a cafe in France hoping to win the Irish Sweepstakes. Into his life walks a beautiful woman, Star, who convinces him to embark on a perilous quest to retrieve the Egg of the Phoenix. When she asks what to call him, while noticing a scar which he carries, he tells her "Oh, Scar." She repeats this as "Oscar", and thus gives him his new name. Along with Rufo, her assistant, who appears to be a man in his fifties, they tread the "Glory Road" in swashbuckling style, slaying minotaurs, dragons, and other creatures.

Shortly before the final quest for the Egg itself, Oscar and Star get married, The team then goes on to enter the tower in which it is stored, navigating a maze where halls play tricks on the eyes and stairs that appear to go one way and actually go another. Oscar scouts ahead and finds himself crossing swords with the final guardian of the Egg, a fearsome foe known only as the "Never-Born" (the embodiment of the fictionalized version of Cyrano de Bergerac). Oscar slays his opponent and the party escapes with the Egg, after which Rufo informs him that Star is actually the empress of many worlds -- and Rufo's grandmother.