The Fritz Leiber Home Page
I can only admit to being an occasional chess player, at school around 12 or 13 I was in the school team, that was the height of my achievements, Fritz on the other hand was rated expert and chess pops up in many of the stories, indeed a knight can be seen on the cover of his first collection, Adepts Gambit.
Perhaps his most famous, certainly the most collected chess story is ‘Midnight by The Morphy Watch’, written in 1974 and first published in Worlds of If.
A cover ideally must do two things for a book. Draw in the potential buyer by tantalising them, exciting them, ideally having sympathy with the content, augmenting the story(s) and adding to the gravitas of the volume.
So how do our covers stack up?
Upon its first appearance (as the slightly different ‘Pale Brown Thing’) in F&SF, it was given a mighty fine cover by Ron Walotsky . Whilst the building is merely a two story, the ambiance of the cover is great, it is daylight, and Corona heights and the TV tower are featured as reflections (with the metropolitan skyline behind). Paramentals dash and lurk around the composition, with a strong figure leaning out of the window. I like the realism of the piece, which mirror Franz’s hyper aware state of his environment, the clarity that lets him become aware of the paramental entities. F&SF did well by Fritz Leiber, and he had a number of fine covers, special mention should be given to the cover of ‘A Deskfull of Girls’ by Kelly Freas, a fine, fine cover indeed.
I have scanned in and converted the very interesting November 1992 issue of Locus magazine, that contained tributes from Justin Leiber, Marion Zimmer Bradley and L Sprague De Camp, plus numerous photos. Well worth a read.
In the process of getting this site up and running again I spent a good bit of time trawling the internet for some interesting Fritz Leiber related views and comment, and there was a fair bit to find. I have added these to the links page of the site, or where more sensible onto the actual page relating to the book.
Sadly some of the highest ranking links on Google point at The Guardian website, and Sam Jordison’s reviews of The Wanderer and The Big Time as part of his journey through the Hugo’s.
When Ace released the swords series in it’s own internal chronology, Fritz ended up writing many link pieces to fit the stories. He also had to formally set in place the backgrounds Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as well as their meeting.
He had already visited the antecedents of the Gray Mouser in 1962’s ‘The Unholy Grail’, in ‘The Snow Women’ we follow Fafhrd’s earliest adventure. There was a feeling of gothic in the Unholy Grail, with it’s mad lord, dungeons and waif like heroine, but the Snow Women, written in 1970, is much more typical of Leiber’s later work.
The always interesting Mr. Gaiman talks about the Big Time over at The Library of America, and fascination it is too…
“The Big Time is a remarkably sophisticated story, unusual for science fiction of its time period. It is Leiber’s most successful science fiction novel: it contains many of Leiber’s pet themes—Shakespeare and the theater, alternate identities, alcoholism and sadomasochism, Germany and Time. It’s funny, smart, and resonant, playing out huge themes on a tiny stage, and it demands a great deal of its readers, so it’s no surprise that it was rewarded with the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1958, nor that, over fifty years later, it remains relatively unknown.”
A very very good article on “Fritz Leiber at 100” over at conceptual fiction. It gives a very very clear view of why Fritz is still such an important writer…
A nice overview of the Swords Series at TOR.COM
Quite a fun read, especially how it relates to D&D..
Whilst browsing round the internet, I found Heloise Merlin’s Blog, which has a nice set of reviews and thoughts on the entire Swords series, plus numerous other interesting posts.
I see someone has posted an Ill Met in Lankhmar module over at the Neverwinter Vault. Looks like they have made a good effort to put the story into the module, I will have to download it and give it a go.
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