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Ace PB – Cover Walter Rane
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First published in 1961 by Ace as a Paperback
Originally printed as an Ace Double with the Big time.
I believe the Ace Double edition is the only version to contain all the stories, Try and Change the Past is missing from later editions.
Fritz’s introduction…
Years ago my window at the University of Chicago overlooked the west stands of Stagg Field. One evening I watched a lightning storm playing over the Loop.
Nature was badly off key that night. The thunder didn’t rumble or roar. It screamed faintly, four seconds after each flash. I remember thinking that if lightning could twang the rails of Chicago’s elevated tracks they might make such a sound. Several other persons heard it and shivered as I did.
Ten years later electronic experts discovered that on rare occasions lightning generates a radio signal which circles the earth and returns to its point of origin as an audible whistle. Maybe that was my scream.
But also ten years later there was built below the west stands of Stagg Field the graphite-dark atomic furnace that first released on earth the energy of the suns. Maybe the molecules felt that coming and screamed a warning.
Either way it’s a weird and wonderful world. Just consider: an infinite universe . . . stars that are living hydrogen bombs . . . trillions of atomic worlds in a grain of dust . . . jungles in a drop of water . . . black gulfs of space around each planet . . . black Freudian forests around each conscious mind—you know, I sometimes think the powers that created the universe were chiefly interested in maximizing its mystery.
That’s why I write science fiction.
Contains the following short stories (listed in alphabetical order)
Damnation Morning
Midnight in the Mirror World
The Haunted Future
The Mind Spider
The Number of the Beast
The Oldest Soldier
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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
Last Updated: Monday, August 19, 2019
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