Fritz Leiber - Best of Fritz Leiber

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best of fritz leiber

The Best of Fritz Leiber

by FRITZ LEIBER

With a special introduction by POUL ANDERSON

NELSON DOUBLEDAY, Inc. Garden City, New York

Published by arrangement with

Ballantine Books

Division of Random House, Inc.

201 East 50th Street

New York, NY 10022

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Introduction: The Wizard of Nehwon-Poul Anderson

Gonna Roll The Bones

Sanity

Wanted—An Enemy

The Man Who Never Grew Young

The Ship Sails at Midnight

The Enchanted Forest

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best of fritz leiber

Coming Attraction

Poor Superman

A Pail of Air

The Foxholes of Mars

The Big Holiday

The Night He Cried

The Big Trek

Space-Time for Springers

Try and Change the Past

A Deskful of Girls

Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee

Little Old Miss Macbeth Mariana

The Man Who Made Friends With Electricity

The Good New Days

America the Beautiful

Afterword

The Wizard of Nehwon

WHEN I was first asked to write an introduction to a volume of Fritz Leiber stories—the most important

of such collections at that—my reaction was inappropriately inelegant: “Huh?” I still think it had a

fundamental tightness. How can anybody properly comment on the work of one who is not only his

senior in the profession by a good many years, but is universally acknowledged to be among its three or

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best of fritz leiber

four all-time titans?

Yet this was an honor I could not decline. It was like being in a physics department back around 1935

and invited to introduce a series of guest lectures by Einstein. A person hi that position realizes the

audience hasn’t come to hear, or read, him. But he’ll try to avoid boring platitudes. If he’s lucky, he’ll

even convey a slight extra insight, which will help that audience appreciate the visitor and what he’ll say

a little bit more than they might otherwise have done. Maybe I’ll luck out.

Let’s first make a few remarks about the man himself, before going on to his writing. They will be only

a few—despite the keyhole school of criticism, the facts of a creator’s life are not required for an

understanding of his or her work; or if they are, then that person has to that extent failed as an artist.

Fritz Leiber does employ a certain amount of autobiography hi his work, perhaps more than any other

maker of science fiction or fantasy. But he’s far too skillful for you to need to know what the personal

element is. Besides, he lets you in on some of it himself, for your pleasure, in his afterword to the

present volume.

And I can’t claim deep knowledge of him in any event. We have been friends for a long time, guests in

each other’s homes, and so on; but until recently, geographical separation prevented frequent

encounters, and we never happened to strike up one of his extended correspondences which have

delighted a number of people. Therefore, a mere scattering of reminiscences and data:

I first met Fritz Leiber at the 1949 world science fiction convention in Cincinnati. The author of such

cornerstone tales as Gather, Darkness! and Conjure Wtfe seemed even more awe-inspiring In person,

towering, classically handsome, altogether theatrical. The last of these qualities was not deliberate—

rather, he was conventionally clad and soft-spoken—but he couldn’t help it; personality will come

through. He talked to me, a beginner with half a dozen stories in print, as graciously as he did to the

biggest-name writer or editor present, or the humblest fan. Here “graciously” is used in an exact sense

which is best defined by an example.

From time to time we are all afflicted with bores or boors. Some of us give them the brutal brush-off;

most of us suffer them for a short while, then escape on a mumbled excuse. Fritz Leiber has repeatedly

been seen to listen to such characters, respond to them, actively, sympathetically, and patiently enough

that they never suspect the toleration. He cannot have an enemy in the world; instead, there is a worldful

of people who all hope to be worthy of his friendship.

It is etymologically wrong but psychologically right to define a gentleman as one who is gentle, yet very

much a man. Leiber has been a championship fencer and a chess player rated “expert.” To see and hear

him recite Chesterton’s bravura “Lepanto” is an unforgettable experience. And, of course, in his writing

he has stared down— or laughed down—death, horror, human absurdity, with guts worthy of a Tetters,

Kafka, or Cervantes.

Born in Chicago near the end of 1910, his father a famous Shakespearean actor for whom Fritz was

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best of fritz leiber

named, he grew up in the atmosphere of the stage, which doubtless has a great deal to do with the highly

visual and dramatic quality of his work. But he took his degree in psychology, which also shows.

Variously a lay preacher, actor, college teacher of drama, and staff writer for an encyclopedia, he tried

free-lancing sporadically. His first published story appeared hi 1939, in that lustrous and mourned

magazine Unknown. During World War II he reached a painful decision—that the struggle against

fascism was more important than the pacifist convictions which he had long held, and still does—and he

accepted a job in aircraft production. Afterward, he was on the staff of Science Digest for a dozen years.

During all this time he acquired a wife and son and, between dry spells which readers regretted, wrote a

lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business. Eventually he moved from Chicago to southern

California and started writing full time. Since his wife’s death (everybody who knew her misses Jonquil)

he has lived hi San Francisco.

‘ So now Fritz Leiber is hi his sixties, an age when most artists have either retired or are sterilely

repeating themselves. The years show on him a bit—but not too much, and only physically. Inside,

while possessing all the wisdom of a lifetime, he’s younger than the average man of thirty. To give a

small personal illustration: not long ago, in his rambles around his newly adopted city, he discovered a

walking tour that will take you to every place where action occurs in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese

Falcon. Or… recently my wife gave an elaborate dinner to honor the memory of E. R. Eddison, upon the

date of Lessingham’s translation into Zimiamvia. Only those who would understand what that means

were invited, and they were expected to come hi costume. Fritz graced the party as the oldest, most

sharply humorous, and best-dressed man present.

If anything, he keeps growing younger, more actively creative. His past unproductive periods seem to

have been times during which, consciously or unconsciously, he was preparing himself to strike out hi a

different direction. The results were always surprising and consequential. Though ever aware of and

sensitive to the great issues of the real world around him, he has never been a merely “relevant” writer.

Instead, he has always been in the forefront in both themes and treatment. In these past several years we

have been witnessing a new burst of pioneering, which looks as if it will continue while he lives. That

makes especially appropriate the book, both retrospective and contemporary, which you are holding.

And it brings up our real subject, Fritz Leiber’s achievement.

I do not propose to offer you a critique. For one thing, while mildly disagreeing with a few of her

judgments, I couldn’t better the one by Judith Merril.* Besides, I lay no claim to being a critic, simply a

working writer.

To be sure, that distinction is far from absolute. Thus Merril published excellent fiction in earlier days,

while Leiber has done a certain amount of criticism. The question to consider is where the emphasis of a

life—in this case Leiber’s—has lain—or, at least, what an essayist is trying to do. I’ll say little about the

stories hi this volume. They speak for themselves; moreover, you have the author’s own notes. Rather,

I’d like to consider in a very informal fashion, and from the viewpoint of a fellow practitioner, some of

those items which are not on hand. You who already know them may enjoy a revival of memories. You

who don’t may get a better idea of Leiber’s accomplishment and, I hope, will be led to read further.

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best of fritz leiber

It’s too bad that we have no tale of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser here. Not only did that charming pair of

rogues—the tall Northern barbarian and the small city-bred trickster—launch the author’s career; they

are still going strong, to the joy of everybody who appreciates a rattling good fantasy adventure. But by

no means are these stories conventional “sword and sorcery.” The world of Nehwon is made real in

wondrously imaginative detail, its human aspects as true as in any conscientious job of reporting. To

visit the city of Lankhmar is to learn what decadence in fact means; to roam with our vulnerable

vagabonds is to experience pity and terror as well as suspense, wry humor, and uproarious hilarity. Here

Leiber hi his way—like the late J. R. R. Tolkien in his, and not vastly different—has done, and is doing,

for the heroic fantasy what Robert Louis Stevenson did for the pirate yarn: by originality and sheer

writing genius, he revived an ossified genre and started it off on a fresh path.

I could likewise wish that this book held a sample or two of Leiber’s horror stories. In my opinion,

which Fritz modestly does not share, Lovecraft and Poe himself never dealt out comparable chills. The

typical Leiber frightener gains tremendous power by its economy,

* In The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for July 1969, a special issue honoring Fritz Leiber.

Previously, in November 1959, Fantastic had run an all-Leiber issue. These, and the awards voted him,

indicate the esteem in which his work is held by those who know the field.

its evocative contemporary setting, and its bleak brilliance of concept—like “Smoke Ghost,” to name a

single tale, whose phantom is in and of the corrupted air pervading a modern industrial city.

And you would have enjoyed “The Sixty-Four-Square Madhouse” and/or “The Moriarty Gambit,” both

masterly chess stories, the latter also a grand Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Well, look them up. All the

omissions I have mentioned are not the fault of author or editor, but merely due to lack of space. They

would have crowded out equally vivid pieces that you do find here.

The novels were inevitably excluded. But any discussion of Leiber’s work, or of science fantasy as a

whole, must consider them. They are few in number, but each is unique and, with two exceptions, of

major significance in the development of present-day imaginative literature.

The first exception is Tarzan and the City of Gold, “only” a delightful continuation of Burroughs. Come

to think of it, though, a scholar of English letters would find it most interesting to trace out how Leiber

managed to convey the flavor of his model while avoiding all its crudities, outdoing Burroughs hi every

way that counts, and throwing occasional philosophical and moral issues into the bargain. Does anybody

need material for a master’s thesis?

Doubtless many will argue with my assertion that The Green Millennium is not a landmark. It is, in the

sense of being a fine book, highly recommended. But it carries further the world of “Coming Attraction”

and “Poor Superman,” both hi the present collection, and thus does not break new ground—by Leiber’s

standards—however inventive and often astoundingly witty it is. All the rest of us, from Heinlein on

down, would rank it among our own best, had we written it.

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bestoffritzleiberTheBestofFritzLeiberbyFRITZLEIBERWithaspecialintroductionbyPOULANDERSONNELSONDOUBLEDAY,Inc.GardenCity,NewYorkCOPYSIGHT©1974BYFRITZLEIBERAllRightsReservedPublishedbyarrangementwithBallantineBooksDivisionofRandomHouse,Inc.201East50thStreetNewYork,NY10022PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmeri...

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