Background of Study
Introduction
Fritz Leiber was an incredibly prolific author, who won numerous awards during his life for works that nowadays seem more obscure than they should be. In addition to writing, he was a chess master, fencer, and Shakespearean actor. While most popular for the sword and sorcery duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, he wrote horror, urban fantasy, and science fiction just as easily.
Born Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. in Chicago, Illinois, on December 24, 1910, to Fritz Leiber, Sr. and Virginia Bronson Leiber, both Shakespearean actors. Toured with father’s repertory company in 1928 before entering the University of Chicago, from which he graduated in 1932; went on to study at General Theological Seminary in New York, and was briefly a candidate for ordination in the Episcopal Church. Toured intermittently with father’s company and appeared with him in films Camille (1936) and The Great Garrick (1937). Married Jonquil Stephens in 1936 and moved to Hollywood; they soon had a son. Corresponded with horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, who encouraged and influenced his literary development; wrote a supernatural novella,
Pelan also mentions in Horrible Imaginings (2004): “‘The Automatic Pistol” was so overshadowed by “Smoke Ghost” that many have forgotten what an excellent early story this was.”
The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich (1936; published posthumously in 1997), and showed Lovecraft early stories. Returning to Chicago, took job as staff writer for Consolidated Book Publishing (1937–41), contributing to the Standard American Encyclopedia. His first publication as a professional writer, “Two Sought Adventure” (in John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Unknown in 1939), introduced popular characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, developed with his friend Harry Fischer and modeled on their relationship; the story inaugurated a series he would continue for more than fifty years, helping to define the subgenre he labeled “Sword and Sorcery.” (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories were later collected in Two Sought Adventure, 1957; Swords in the Mist, 1968; Swords Against Wizardry, 1968; The Swords of Lankhmar, 1968; Swords and Deviltry, 1970; Swords and Ice Magic, 1977; The Knight and Knave of Swords, 1988; and other volumes.) Worked as a drama and speech instructor at Occidental College in 1941, and during the war as an inspector at Douglas Aircraft. His first novel, Conjure Wife—about secret witchcraft on a college campus—appeared in Unknown in 1943 (but not as a book until 1952; it was filmed three times). His first science fiction novel, Gather, Darkness!, was also serialized in 194 (book version, 1950). From 1945 to 1956, he worked as an editor at Science Digest in Chicago. Published science fiction novels Destiny Times Three (in Astounding, 1945; as book, 1957); The Green Millennium (1953); and The Big Time (in Galaxy, 1958; as book, 1961), the last winning a Hugo Award and inaugurating his popular “Change War” series. Moved back to Los Angeles in 1958, and turned to writing full-time; published science fiction novels The Silver Eggheads (1961), The Wanderer (1964), and A Specter Is Haunting Texas (1969). Lived in San Francisco after the death of his wife in 1969; the city forms the setting of his fantasy novel Our Lady of Darkness (1977). In 1976, he received a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and in 1981 a Grand Master Award from Science Fiction Writers of America. Married Margo Skinner in May 1992; died on September 5, 1992, in San Francisco, of an apparent stroke. In 2001 he was inducted posthumously into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
Fritz Leiber’s appearances in Weird Tales are both surprising and disappointing. As an outer member of the Lovecraft Circle, it was only natural that Leiber wanted to found in “The Unique Magazine”
After initial rejections, Fritz finally appeared in Weird Tales with “The Automatic Pistol” (Weird Tales, May 1940). Shortly before this he sold a classic to John W. Campbell, “The Jewels in the Forest” (Unknown, August 1939), the first Fafhrd & Grey Mouser tale, making “The Automatic Pistol” his second major publication. (Campbell paid a penny a word or better and on acceptance. Weird Tales on publication.) “The Automatic Pistol” is a story of a murdered man’s gun pursuing his killer, which seems like pretty usual fare for Weird Tales. But as John Pelan points out in his introduction to The Black Gondalier and Other Stories (2000):
Significance of the Study
From the very start his stories took on a modern attitude quite unlike that of his contemporaries in Weird Tales, who were busily scrambling to pen stories of improbably-named cosmic monstrosities and babbling aliens in a misguided homage to H.P. Lovecraft…
Many science fiction writers have written fantasy or horror fiction as well, although few have ex celled in more than one genre. Fritz Leiber is probably the only writer to have an enviable reputation in all three branches of fantastic fiction. His novel Conjure Wife (1953) and the short stories in Night’s Black Agents (1947) and elsewhere established him as an important horror writer, his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser sword and sorcery series rivals even Leiber, Fritz 225 Conan in popularity among fantasy readers, and his science fiction includes several award winning stories as well as the excellent Change War time travel series. Leiber’s first story sale was in 1939, but he wrote no significant science fiction until 1943, when Gather Darkness! first appeared in serial form. The setup is a future world dictatorship with the rulers cloaking themselves in the costume of an organized religion in order to frighten the mass of the population into obedience. The inevitable resistance movement springs up, and appropriately they adopt the guise of demons and devils in a dra matic, if not entirely credible, symbolic gesture. Despite its occasional lack of plausibility, the novel is a rousing adventure story with some clever plot twists; and the policy of the government to awe the populace by mimicking supernatural interven tion is a not particularly veiled swipe at human gullibility. His next novel, Destiny Times Three (1945), was a lackluster effort about a man who discovers that he exists in three different although interlocking realities, but The Sinful Ones (1950, also published as You’re All Alone) was much better. The protagonist in this case discovers one day that he is one of the few remaining human beings in a world in which robots are masquerading as people. The Green Millennium (1953), like many of Leiber’s short stories during the early 1950s, was satirical, following the adventures of a man who is con cerned that a robot might make him obsolete. Among Leiber’s targets was contemporary sexual mores, which he lampooned in a fashion somewhat daring for its time. The corrupt American govern ment is secretly in league with organized crime in an association reminiscent of that in The Syndic (1953) by Cyril M. KORNBLUTH. The Change War series appeared in the late 1950s, and despite the small number of titles in the series, it ranks with Poul ANDERSON’s Time Patrol as the best of its type. The BIG TIME (1958) won a Hugo Award, and the shorter “Try and Change the Past” is also excellent. The premise is that two organizations, known familiarly as the Snakes and the Spiders, are battling back and forth through time in an effort to maintain or change the existing course of history. The quality of Leiber’s short fiction in general improved dramatically, and the themes were wide-ranging. Leiber appeared equally adept at satire and adventure, serious themes and humor. Stories like “A Deskful of Girls,” “The Big Trek,” and “Night of the Long Knives” made him a fre quent and welcome contributor to the magazines. His next novel was The Silver Eggheads (1962), a satire on the writing community. Robots have been programmed to act like people, and authors use machines to produce their fiction, rather than doing it themselves, feeding in basic ideas but leav ing the prose and plot construction to their me chanical servants. The brains of prominent citizens—including a handful of actual writers— are preserved in smooth metal receptacles where they remain conscious. When a crisis threatens to disrupt the flow of new novels and stories, radical methods are used to save the situation. The Silver Eggheads is Leiber’s most underrated novel. Leiber became an even more productive short story writer during the 1960s, producing such minor classics as “Kreativity for Kats,” “The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity,” “The Secret Songs,” and “Far Reach to Cygnus.” His major col lections from this period are A Pail of Air (1964), Night of the Wolf (1966), and The Night Monsters (1969). He also produced his most praised novel, The Wanderer (1964), in which the world is rav aged by the near passage of another astronomical body. The story follows the separate stories of vari ous survivors, concentrating on realistic, common experiences rather than on the usual heroic efforts to reestablish civilization. His characters are delib erately flawed and occasionally fail, and the result is a much more convincing blend of tragedy and hope than is common in that form. Although The Wanderer is certainly one of the outstanding disas ter novels, it is somewhat surprising that it was more popular than Leiber’s more original work. A Specter Is Haunting Texas (1969) was an other superb satire. A visitor from the Moon— where the lower gravity has resulted in very tall, thin body types—visits a future independent Texas that dominates North America, and where genetic engineering has made Texans into virtual giants who tower over their Mexican slave popula tion. The visitor becomes the inadvertent inspira tion for a revolution in what is clearly a parody of a long-standing and often used science fiction 226 Leinster, Murray plot. Leiber’s knife-edged wit was at its best, and he handles the occasionally uneasy mix of sarcasm and light humor deftly. His short fiction continued to appear with regularity and was rarely less than excellent during the 1970s; the best of his work of that decade is probably the Hugo Award–winning “CATCH THAT ZEPPELIN.” Several major collec tions appeared during that period including The Book of Fritz Leiber (1974), The Second Book of Fritz Leiber (1975), and The Worlds of Fritz Leiber (1976). Although Leiber continued to write short fiction throughout the 1980s, his output dropped dramatically at that point. The Change War series has been assembled in its entirety as Changewar (1983). Other late collec tions include The Ghost Light (1984), The Leiber Chronicles (1990), and Kreativity for Kats and Other Feline Fantasies (1990). Leiber also wrote the autho rized novelization of the film Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), only marginally science fiction, but probably the best-known and most successful addition to the chronicles of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS’s most famous character. Leiber con tinued to contribute to all three genres throughout his career, and his last Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story appeared in 1988. The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich (1997) was a previously unpublished novel written in the 1930s and is only of historical inter est. Fritz Leiber will probably be best remembered for his short fiction, but several of his novels deserve an equal place of honor
Sample of his Writing
Big Time : Excerpt
Big Time : Excerpt of Literature Sample as he incorporates Illustration
CHAPTER 4
De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirledBeyond the circuit of the shuddering BearIn fractured atoms.
—Eliot
SOS FROM NOWHERE
I REALIZED the piano had deserted Erich and I cranked my head up and saw Beau, Maud and Sid streaking for the control divan. The Major Maintainer was blinking emergency-green and fast, but the code was plain enough for even me to recognize the Spider distress call and for a second I felt just sick. Then Erich blew out his reserve breath in the middle of “Door” and I gave myself another of those helpful mental boots at the base of the spine and we hurried after them toward the center of the Place along with Mark.
The blinks faded as we got there and Sid told us not to move because we were making shadows. He glued an eye to the telltale and we held still as statues as he caressed the dials like he was making love.
One sensitive hand flicked out past the Introversion switch over to the Minor Maintainer and right away the Place was dark as your soul and there was nothing for me but Erich’s arm and the knowledge that Sid was nursing a green light I couldn’t even see, although my eyes had plenty time to accommodate.
Then the green light finally came back very slowly and I could see the dear reliable old face—the green-gold beard making him look like a merman—and then the telltale flared bright and Sid flicked on the Place lights and I leaned back.
“That nails them, lads, whoever and whenever they may be. Get ready for a pick-up.”
Beau, who was closest of course, looked at him sharply. Sid shrugged uneasily. “Meseemed at first it was from our own globe a thousand years before our Lord, but that indication flickered and faded like witchfire. As it is, the call comes from something smaller than the Place and certes adrift from the cosmos. Meseemed too at one point I knew the fist of the caller—an antipodean atomicist named Benson-Carter—but that likewise changed.”
Beau said, “We’re not in the right phase of the cosmos-Places rhythm for a pick-up, are we, sir?”
Sid answered, “Ordinarily not, boy.”
Beau continued, “I didn’t think we had any pick-ups scheduled. Or stand-by orders.”
Sid said, “We haven’t.”
Mark’s eyes glowed. He tapped Erich on the shoulder. “An octavian denarius against ten Reichsmarks it is a Snake trap.”
Erich’s grin showed his teeth. “Make it first through the Door next operation and I’m on.”
IT didn’t take that to tell me things were serious, or the thought that there’s always a first time for bumping into something from really outside the cosmos. The Snakes have broken our code more than once. Maud was quietly serving out weapons and Doc was helping her. Only Bruce and Lili stood off. But they were watching.
The telltale brightened. Sid reached toward the Maintainer, saying, “All right, my hearties. Remember, through this Doorway pass the fishiest finaglers in and out of the cosmos.”
The Door appeared to the left and above where it should be and darkened much too fast. There was a gust of stale salt seawind, if that makes sense, but no stepped-up Change Winds I could tell—and I had been bracing myself against them. The Door got inky and there was a flicker of gray fur whips and a flash of copper flesh and gilt and something dark and a clump of hoofs and Erich was sighting a stun gun across his left forearm, and then the Door had vanished like that and a tentacled silvery Lunan and a Venusian satyr were coming straight toward us.
The Lunan was hugging a pile of clothes and weapons. The satyr was helping a wasp-waisted woman carry a heavy-looking bronze chest. The woman was wearing a short skirt and high-collared bolero jacket of leather so dark brown it was almost black. She had a two-horned petsofa hairdress and she was boldly gilded here and there and wore sandals and copper anklets and wristlets—one of them a copper-plated Caller—and from her wide copper belt hung a short-handled double-headed ax. She was dark-complexioned and her forehead and chin receded, but the effect was anything but weak; she had a face like a beautiful arrowhead—and a familiar one, by golly!
But before I could say, “Kabysia Labrys,” Maud shrilly beat me to it with, “It’s Kaby with two friends. Break out a couple of Ghostgirls.”
And then I saw it really was old-home week because I recognized my Lunan boy friend Ilhilihis, and in the midst of all the confusion I got a nice kick out of knowing I was getting so I could tell the personality of one silver-furred muzzle from another.
They reached the control divan and Illy dumped his load and the others let down the chest, and Kaby staggered but shook off the two ETs when they started to support her, and she looked daggers at Sid when he tried to do the same, although she’s his “sweet Keftian friend” he’d mentioned to Bruce.
SHE leaned straight-armed on the divan and took two gasping breaths so deep that the ridges of her spine showed through her brown-skinned waist, and then she threw up her head and commanded, “Wine!”
While Beau was rushing it, Sid tried to take her hand again, saying, “Sweetling, I’d never heard you call before and knew not this pretty little fist,” but she ripped out, “Save your comfort for the Lunan,” and I looked and saw—Hey, Zeus!—that one of Ilhilihis’ six tentacles was lopped off halfway.
That was for me, and, going to him, I fast briefed myself: “Remember, he only weighs fifty pounds for all he’s seven feet high; he doesn’t like low sounds or to be grabbed; the two legs aren’t tentacles and don’t act the same; uses them for long walks, tentacles for leaps; uses tentacles for close vision too and for manipulation, of course; extended, they mean he’s at ease; retracted, on guard or nervous; sharply retracted, disgusted; greeting—”
Just then, one of them swept across my face like a sweet-smelling feather duster and I said, “Illy, man, it’s been a lot of sleeps,” and brushed my fingers across his muzzle. It still took a little self-control not to hug him, and I did reach a little cluckingly for his lopped tentacle, but he wafted it away from me and the little voice-box belted to his side squeaked, “Naughty, naughty. Papa will fix his little old self. Greta girl, ever bandaged even a Terra octopus?”
I had, an intelligent one from around a quarter billion a.d., but I didn’t tell him so. I stood and let him talk to the palm of my hand with one of his tentacles—I don’t savvy feather-talk but it feels good, though I’ve often wondered who taught him English—and watched him use a couple others to whisk a sort of Lunan band-aid out of his pouch and cap his wound with it.
Meanwhile, the satyr knelt over the bronze chest, which was decorated with little death’s heads and crosses with hoops at the top and swastikas, but looking much older than Nazi, and the satyr said to Sid, “Quick thinkin, Gov, when ya saw the Door comin in high n soffened up gravty unner it, but cud I hav sum hep now?”
Sid touched the Minor Maintainer and we all got very light and my stomach did a flip-flop while the satyr piled on the chest the clothes and weapons that Illy had been carrying and pranced off with it all and carefully put it down at the end of the bar. I decided the satyr’s English instructor must have been quite a character, too. Wish I’d met him—her—it.
Sid thought to ask Illy if he wanted Moon-normal gravity in one sector, but my boy likes to mix, and being such a lightweight, Earth-normal gravity doesn’t bother him. As he said to me once, “Would Jovian gravity bother a beetle, Greta girl?”
I ASKED Illy about the satyr and he squeaked that his name was Sevensee and that he’d never met him before this operation. I knew the satyrs were from a billion years in the future, just as the Loonies were from a billion in the past, and I thought—Kreesed us!—but it must have been a real big or emergency-like operation to have the Spiders using those two for it, with two billion years between them—a time-difference that gives you a feeling of awe for a second, you know.
I started to ask Illy about it, but just then Beau came scampering back from the bar with a big red-and-black earthenware goblet of wine—we try to keep a variety of drinking tools in stock so folks will feel more at home. Kaby grabbed it from him and drained most of it in one swallow and then smashed it on the floor. She does things like that, though Sid’s tried to teach her better. Then she stared at what she was thinking about until the whites showed all around her eyes and her lips pulled way back from her teeth and she looked a lot less human than the two ETs, just like a fury. Only a time traveler knows how like the wild murals and engravings of them some of the ancients can look.
My hair stood up at the screech she let out. She smashed a fist into the divan and cried, “Goddess! Must I see Crete destroyed, revived, and now destroyed again? It is too much for your servant.”
Personally, I thought she could stand anything.
There was a rush of questions at what she said about Crete—I asked one of them, for the news certainly frightened me—but she shot up her arm straight for silence and took a deep breath and began.
“In the balance hung the battle. Rowing like black centipedes, the Dorian hulls bore down on our outnumbered ships. On the bright beach, masked by rocks, Sevensee and I stood by the needle gun, ready to give the black hulls silent wounds. Beside us was Ilhilihis, suited as a sea monster. But then … then …”
Then I saw she wasn’t altogether the iron babe, for her voice broke and she started to shake and to sob rackingly, although her face was still a mask of rage, and she threw up the wine. Sid stepped in and made her stop, which I think he’d been wanting to do all along.
CHAPTER 5
Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me.
—Ibsen
SID INSISTS ON GHOSTGIRLS
MY Elizabethan boy friend put his fists on his hips and laid down the law to us as if we were a lot of nervous children who’d been playing too hard.
“Look you, masters, this is a Recuperation Station and I am running it as such. A plague of all operations! I care not if the frame of things disjoints and the whole Change World goes to ruin, but you, warrior maid, are going to rest and drink more wine slowly before you tell your tale and your colleagues are going to be properly companioned. No questions, anyone. Beau, and you love us, give us a lively tune.”
Kaby relaxed a little and let him put his hand carefully against her back in token of support and she said grudgingly, “All right, Fat Belly.”
Then, so help me, to the tune of the Muskrat Ramble, which I’d taught Beau, we got girls for those two ETs and everybody properly paired up.
Right here I want to point out that a lot of the things they say in the Change World about Recuperation Stations simply aren’t so—and anyway they always leave out nine-tenths of it. The Soldiers that come through the Door are looking for a good time, sure, but they’re hurt real bad too, every one of them, deep down in their minds and hearts, if not always in their bodies or so you can see it right away.
Believe me, a temporal operation is no joke, and to start with, there isn’t one person in a hundred who can endure to be cut from his lifeline and become a really wide-awake Doubleganger—a Demon, that is—let alone a Soldier. What does a badly hurt and mixed-up creature need who’s been fighting hard? One individual to look out for him and feel for him and patch him up, and it helps if the one is of the opposite sex—that’s something that goes beyond species.
There’s your basis for the Place and the wild way it goes about its work, and also for most other Recuperation Stations or Entertainment Spots. The name Entertainer can be misleading, but I like it. She’s got to be a lot more than a good party girl—or boy—though she’s got to be that too. She’s got to be a nurse and a psychologist and an actress and a mother and a practical ethnologist and a lot of things with longer names—and a reliable friend.
NONE of us are all those things perfectly or even near it. We just try. But when the call comes, Entertainers have to forget grudges and gripes and envies and jealousies—and remember, they’re lively people with sharp emotions—because there isn’t any time then for anything but help and don’t ask who!
And, deep inside her, a good Entertainer doesn’t care who. Take the way it shaped up this time. It was pretty clear to me I ought to shift to Illy, although I wasn’t quite easy in my mind about leaving Erich, because the Lunan was a long time from home and, after all, Erich was among anthropoids. Ilhilihis needed someone who was simpatico.
I like Illy and not just because he is a sort of tall cross between a spider monkey and a persian cat—though that is a handsome combo when you come to think of it. I like him for himself. So when he came in all lopped and shaky after a mean operation, I was the right person to look out for him. Now I’ve made my little speech and know-nothings in the Change World can go on making their bum jokes. But I ask you, how could an arrangement between Illy and me be anything but Platonic?