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"For anyone who loves great literature, Fritz Leiber walked on water"
Harlan Ellison
One of the greatet
writers to grace the field of science fiction
(and fantasy, and horror), Fritz Leiber Jr. was born in Chicago, 1910,
the
son of shakespearean actors Fritz and Virginia Bronson Leiber. Education
includes Chicago University (majors in Psichology and Phisiology), Theology
school in New York (from which Leiber
emerged as a convinced atheist) and a few seasons spent on the stage (1935-36)
in
his father's company; Leiber worked as a drama teacher and as editor of the
magazine Science Digest (a job in which Laiber himself saw the origins
of his - later successfully overcome - alcoholic problems). He began writing
fiction in 1939, soon emerging as one of the most elegant and literate authors
in the field. Many lesser writers have made a carreer out of ideas that Leiber
was the first to introduce, and the best to develop.
A lover of the
fantastic since his youth, Leiber was probably the last to enter the circle
of writers, poets and simple fans gathering around H.P.
Lovecraft, with whom he briefly corresponded. Lovecraft's influence
can be seen in many of Leiber's works, and the latest "find" in the Leiberian
opus, the postumously published "The Dealings od Daniel
Kesserich" is clearly Lovecraftian in conception and development.
Through the years, Leiber has been one of the most sensitive critics
of Lovecraft's work.
Leiber's first
literary achievement comes in 1939, with the short story "Two Sought
Adventure", published by Unknown and being the first published (but
almost certainly not the first written) episode in the Fafhrd and Gray
Mouser series. By detailing the adventures of two sophisticated rogues
(modelled on Leiber himself and on his friend Henry Price) in an equally
sophisticated world, the series updates the fantasy cliches as used by R.E.
Howard, by adding elements taken from various sources (from Elizabethan drama
to Errol Flinn's movies) and marks the first and finest exhample of Sword
& Sorcery (a term created by Leiber himself). According to tradition,
various lovecraftian references were excised from the printed version of
the stories (expecially "Adept's gambit") on Lovecraft's suggestion
- making the Newhon-based saga self contained and independent. Today, the
Fafhrd and Gray
Mouser cycle fills six volumes, including a novel, "The Swords of
Lankhmar" (considered by many the best heroic fantasy novel ever
written), with apocriphal works
being produced under licence, and is a much needed counterpart to massive
items like "The Lord of the Rings".
The long story
"Ill Met in Lankhmar", that comes early in the internal chronology
of the Newhon/Lankhmar series but was written only in 1970, was awarded both
Hugo and Nebula Awards for its cathegory in that year - the second time Leiber
achieved this, the first being in 1967 with the short story "Gonna
Roll the Bones" (published as part of the anthology Dangerous
Visions). The feat was finally repeated for a third time in 1975 with
the paralle universes short story "Catch That
Zeppelin".
With
"Conjure Wife", published in 1943 and later made into
a movie, Leiber inaugurates an equally successful carreer as an horror writer.
The work,
set against the rationalistic background of a university campus, already
presents many of the trademark of Leiber's horror fiction: the adaptation
of traditional horror standards to a modern setting. "You Are All
Alone" (1950) delves deeper in the urban setting, descibing a world
in which only a few are really living, while the majority mechanically acts
out a life withouta any meaning. Further titles include
the short stories "The Smoke Ghost" (1941), on a modern incarnation
(sort of) of ancient ghosts that was praised by Marshall McLuhan, "The
Girl with the Hungry Eyes",
about a media-age non-standard vampire, and the novel "Our Lady of
Darkness" (1977), incorporating lovecraftian themes (the
cursed book,
the other-dimensional creatures) while being a tribute to writer, poet and
artist Clark Ashton Smith.
Through the years,
Leiber's science fiction selected and attacked warious targets of the
contemporary society. "Gather, Darkness!", also published
in 1943, that marks
Leiber's debut in the field, plays on the rebellion
against a dictatorship, deploying a gothic arsenal of rediscovered science
against the fake miracles of an artificial religion. The short story
"Coming
Attraction" describes a sadistic future America as seen through the
eyes of a British visitor. "A Spectre is Haunting Texas" is
a
gigantic satire not only on American attitudes, but also on the attitude
of much sociological science fiction, while the world of publishing is severely
lampooned in "The Silver Eggheads". "The
Wanderer" (1964, winner of a Hugo Award) is a vast
and articulated cathastrophe novel, with a hard scientific background and
a large cast of characters.
And then there's
The Change War
Series...
The idea is simple: anyone with access to a time machine
might fall to the temptation of going and altering the past - even if time
is resilient to such manipulation (see the short story "Try and Change
the
Past").
In the Change War
setting, a series inaugurated in 1958 after a four years publishing hiatus
caused by Leiber's fight against alcoholism, time travel technology (never
explained in its details)
leads
therefore to a war between two factions, known as the Snakes and the Spiders.
A war fought either by affecting past "proper" conflicts, or by infiltrating
undercover agents in critical times. The series comprises short stories,
novellas and a novel, "The Big Time" (1958, winner of the Hugo
Award.), that sets the scene by
giving us a perfectly theatrical representation of time behind the
time-lines. Other titles, all produced for Galaxy magazine, include
"A Deskfull of Girls" and
"The Older Soldier".
Leiber had already
published a time-travel/parallel universes novel in 1946, "Destiny
Times Three", an ambitious work that uses Norse Miths as a backdrop.Sadly
the story was considered overlong by the publisher (Horace Gold?) , so that
the author had
to cut away all the female characters (!) to make it fit the requested length
- no traces of the original uncut story survive today.
Curious fans can
also try and catch a glimpse of Fritz Leiber's other persona: as an actor
he is featured in a brief scene in the Greta Garbo vehicle
"Camille", and in Charlie Chaplin's "Monsieur
Verdoux"; in the latter Leiber is an impressive clergyman, therefore
showing us also a third persona, the Leiber-that-might-have-been -
had he
not dropped out of Theological
School.
