Last Updated: Sunday, August 18, 2019
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First published in 1964 by Ballantine as a Paperback
Contains a very wide range of stories, covering all the periods of his writing . Although duplicated heavily in The Best of Fritz Leiber, the inclusion of such stories as The Girl with Hungry Eyes, Smoke Ghost and The Secret Songs make it an excellent collection. Available in the UK only.
“SF and Fantasy stories of considerable variety and idiosyncrasy, many of them reprinted from earlier Leiber collections. As well as early standards like ‘The Smoke Ghost’, it include some interestingly unclassifiable tales from the 1960s such as ‘The Winter Flies’; and the title piece. ‘Every story in the book is finished with a craftsman’s care, and they are all thoroughly readable. M. John Harrison – New Worlds”.
Contains the following short stories (listed in alphabetical order)
A Pail of Air
Coming Attraction
Mariana
No Great Magic
Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee
Smoke Ghost
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes
The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity
The Moon Is Green
The Secret Songs
The Winter Flies
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Last Updated: Monday, August 19, 2019
Last Updated: Monday, August 19, 2019
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First published in 1990 by Dark Harvest as a Hardback
A quite superb selection. Billed as 50 years of Fritz Leiber many of the stories are uncollected before and the others are classics.
Notable Editions: Numbered, lettered and slipcased editions released
Kirkus Review
The cream of octogenarian Leiber’s fantasies, holding 50 years of stories (44 selections) in one giant volume that can be seen as the capstone of Leiber’s storytelling–although he has written some well-remembered novels (Gather, Darkness and Conjure Wife, filmed excellently as Burn, Witch, Burn). The present collection includes the second earliest swords-and-sorcery fantasy in Leiber’s Grey Mouser and Fafhrd series “”Two Sought Adventure”” (1939) and the latest, “”The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars”” (1983). “”Curse”” may be Fafhrd and Grey Mouser’s swan song, in that they die–for a while. If their deaths turn out to be only flirtations with death, the farewell notes seem to have sounded.
There’s not a dumb story in the book, though some–such as “”Poor Superman,”” the story of a gigantic artificial intelligence–have been outdone by others. Leiber’s classiest acts are here: “”The Automatic Pistol,”” in which a dead hood’s pistol pursues his murderer; “”Smoke Ghost””–a juicy updating of just what a modern ghost should be like (“”A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the neurotic restlessness of the person without purpose, the jerky tension of the high-pressure metropolitan worker. . .the aggressive whine of the panhandler. . .and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns. Each one overlying yet blending with the other, like a pile of semi-transparent masks. . .””); “”Gonna Roll the Bones,”” “”Ship of Shadows,”” “”Ill Met in Lankhmar,”” and the ironic antidefamation fantasy “”Belsen Express””–which is a gasser. Leiber’s best collection ever.
Contains the following short stories (listed in alphabetical order)
237 Talking Statues Etc
A Bad Day for Sales
A Pail of Air
A Rite of Spring
Alice and the Allergy
America the Beautiful
Bazaar of the Bizarre
Belsen Express
Catch That Zeppelin!
Coming Attraction
Endfray of the Ofay
Four Ghosts in Hamlet
Gonna Roll the Bones
Horrible Imaginings
Ill Met in Lankhmar
Mariana
Midnight by the Morphy Watch
Poor Superman
Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee
Sanity
Ship of Shadows
Smoke Ghost
The 64-Square Madhouse
The Automatic Pistol
The Bait
The Beat Cluster
The Button Molder
The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars
The Death of Princes
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes
The Glove
The Haunted Future
The Hound
The Jewels in the Forest
The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity
The Man Who Never Grew Young
The Moon Is Green
The Night He Cried
The Winter Flies
Try and Change The Past
Wanted - An Enemy
What's He Doing In There?
When the Change-Winds Blow
Yesterday House
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Last Updated: Monday, August 19, 2019
An excellent, if hard to find collection from Ballantine ...
Last Updated: Sunday, August 18, 2019
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