Fritz Leiber, Jr. (1910–1992)

Both novels in Dark Ladies depend upon a psychological uneasiness rather than gore, and while there are moments that startle and shock, they inspire anticipation and suspense more than nausea or disgusted intrigue. (Just my type of horror.) The philosophical underpinnings remain fascinating long after the stories are over, and while the two novels are independent from one other, if they're read as though they exist in the same world, the ideas behind each blend and deepen in some really show more interesting ways. I especially love how Fritz Leiber plays with the purpose and roles of men and women in supernatural situations. show less

Say you're about to die in a few minutes, maybe, like our narrator Greta Forzane, after ten minutes of being raped to death by soldiers of a Third Reich that goes from the salt mines of Siberia to the cornfields of Iowa. And then you are offered an opportunity to escape your fate - an opportunity no one ever refuses. Of course, you have to enroll with the Spiders or the Snakes, become a Demon in their eternal Change War, a vast cosmic struggle across millions of years to change history to show more ... well, no one is really sure what the war's point is. You just serve your side as a Soldier or an Entertainer.

Greta's an Entertainer, one of the staff in the Place, a zone outside of regular time and space, an R&R stop for the Soldiers back from missions to terminate the Roman Empire early, nuke Ancient Crete, or kidnap a baby Einstein. History is a stubborn, hard thing to change. And, if you succeed, there's always the blowback of the Change Winds which may you take you into nonexistence.

Part party girl, part song and dance trouper, part sex therapist and comfort woman, she has a thing for Sid, former contemporary of Shakespeare - when duty doesn't have her attending to Nazi soldier boyfriend Erich. Her co-workers are Beau, formerly of a Great South that never knew Grant's gunboats on the Mississippi, and Doc, a drunken, derelict medical officer, formerly of a Nazi occupied Czarist Russia. And then there's Maud from the 23rd Century and New Girl who seems destined to off herself in many versions of the early 20th century - until recruited.

Enter three soldiers - a Nazi, a Roman, and a casualty of Passchendaele - back from a botched mission. New Girl falls for the latter, a poet who starts suggesting something suspiciously like rebellion against their Spider masters. And then a distress call, a rescue mission for three other Soldiers - two of them aliens.

In 160 pages of story, Leiber creates and explains a world of Demons, Ghostgirls, Doublegangers, and Zombies, throws out a bunch of alternate histories, convincingly shows the psychology of those who are comfortable with the chaos of the Change War, and, ripped from normal lives, what they most miss.

Leiber puts his theatrical experience to good use. With only nine characters, one setting, and offstage action related in convincing, if sometimes poetic, dialogue, this is one classic that lives up to its billing. In fact, it's one of those rare science fiction classics that history and technological progress have not dated, not even a bit.

The book comes with an informative introduction by Leiber about the creation of the novel and the Change War series - though this story stands entirely on its own and an afterword by Robert Thurston on the theatrical elements of the novel. show less

Swords and Ice Magic is the sixth and penultimate volume and differs from the previous ones in having been first published after a seven year hiatus and collecting stories written in the seventies. It is generally considered to mark a decline in quality for the series, and indeed the volume is not off to a good start.

It begins with a series of vignettes, similar to those Leiber used in earlier volumes to embed his stories into some kind of coherent continuity by connecting previously show more published works. The earlier vignettes weren’t exactly successful for the most part, and the ones in Swords and Ice Magic, having not even that bridging purpose, seem entirely pointless. They also continue a tendency that was already observable in Swords of Lankhmar, namely of Fafhrd’s and the Grey Mouser’s adventures becoming increasingly over-the-top to the point where, in this volume, they cross the border into the outright silly. Now, I don’t mind humorous Fantasy, and this series always had an underlying comical strand, but it used to be just that – underlying. But it is very much on the surface in these vignettes, and, at least as far as I’m concerned, not to their benefit.

The bulk of the volume, however, consists of the connected novelette “The Frost Monstreme” and novella “Rime Isle” – together, they’re long enough to form a short novel, and indeed its structure (first part mostly taking place on sea, then a longer part on land) is rather reminiscent of Swords of Lankhmar. Different from that novel, though, and in very sharp contrast to the preceding stories in this volume, humor is almost completely absent from “Rime Isle” and its companion story – in fact, they are by a wide margin the grimmest tales in the whole Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series so far.

There are reasons for this darker tone: one of them is – as Leiber emphasizes on several occasions in particular during “The Frost Monstreme” – that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser have left their youth behind them and entered middle age, that their carefree lives are over and they are bearing the burden of responsibility now. Which, as a concept, is very fascinating – usually, you might see Sword & Sorcery gain in power but you never quite get the feeling that they’re actually aging and changing (King Conan would be a case in point here, I think, and most heroes in this genre do not even get that much development). There is also a sense here, which was largely absent in the earlier stories, that the actions of our heroes have consequences, and Fafhrd in particular will have to pay a steep price for his heroism. So everything seems set for “Frost Monstreme / Rime Isle” becoming one of the best stories in the series…. and yet they aren’t. They are good stories, mind you, and definitely an improvement over the vignettes opening this volume, but they come nowhere near earlier highlights of the series like “Bazaar of the Bizarre” or “Lean Times in Lankhmar.”

One reason for this is, I think, that the exuberance and sheer fun was just a huge part of what made this series what it is, and while toning that down towards a more realistic and darker attitude might be commendable in principle, it also cuts into what is essential for the enjoyment of this particular series. A grown-up Fafhrd and a responsible Grey Mouser might be more mature and better people, but they are also a lot less fun to hang out with. Another problem is that for heroes, they both have a surprisingly small amount of agency – and that’s even before the big reveal at the end when it turns out that everything that happened was part of an elaborate plot set in motion by a devious mastermind and that everyone was only a pawn in his scheme. Both Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser barely seem to act in those stories, but only ever re-act and generally are markedly more passive than we are used to (which of course might tie into the growing-up motif). Again, this might enhance realism, but at the cost of putting a dampener on the reader’s enjoyment, too. And finally, a smaller and more personal niggle – Leiber is up to his dimension-crossing ways again as he was way back in “Adept’s Gambit”. This time it is two gods from our world crossing over into Lankhmar, and while watching a tired, pedophile Odin and a fiery, manipulative Loki is not completely without appeal, overall it’s mostly irritating. show less

This is a collection of the titular short novel (aka The Sinful Ones) and two novelettes.

"You're All Alone" is an effective solipsistic fantasy, one of those stories which plays off that common feeling most of us have at one time or another - that we're trapped in some foreordained world of pre-plotted movements. Our hero, Carr Mackay, is one of those parts of the "big engine" who comes awake after viewing a girl. Said girl acts a little oddly when he meets her in his job working at a show more Chicago employment agency. Eventually, our hero finds himself wandering around a Chicago of puppets with the girl. She delivers him a list of things he needs to do to avoid attention from a gang of men and a woman of which she knows. They are most decidedly not puppets. This being a 1950 story, the sadistic pleasure they take with the puppets is usually muted but scary nonetheless.

To be sure, even when you're reading it, some logical questions occur to you, but Leiber pushes the story along to its exciting and mostly satisfying conclusion.

"Four Ghosts in Hamlet" is the star of this collection. It's a classic ghost story that uses Leiber's experience and knowledge of the theater, Shakespeare, and being an alcoholic. (Not only was his father a famous Shakespearean actor, but Leiber himself pursued an acting career when younger.). He gives us not only bits of theater lore but, with his characters, a thoroughly believable cast of characters for his traveling Shakespearean company and the odd circumstances that lead to, as the title indicates, a strange performance of Hamlet.

"The Creature From Cleveland Depths" from 1962 hasn't aged well though it reminds us that Leiber was capable of plausible scientific and technological extrapolation - albeit in a somewhat satirical vein. (After all, he was once an editor of Science Digest.) Here a future writer of science fiction-like novels is tapped by a corporation to come up with ideas for inventions. He comes up with sort of a PDA like device that morphs into a 20+ pound devices that rests on the shoulders (causing ulcers) with preprogrammed subliminal messages set by medical and political authorities, regulates physiological processes via drugs, and remembers things the wearer can't but still needs to know for their job. His off the cuff idea threatens subjugation of humanity - or, at least, the American portion, by an artificial intelligence. show less