THE DEEP ONES: "Mariana" by Fritz Leiber

"Mariana" by Fritz Leiber.

Discussion begins August 21, 2024.

First published the February 1960 issue of Fantastic Science Fiction Stories.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41170

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Best of Fritz Leiber
Masters of Science Fiction: Fritz Leiber
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://tinyurl.com/5dsza8u2

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGom7euUcVU

MISCELLANY

https://lankhmar.co.uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Leiber
https://cthulhuwho1.com/2010/10/07/fritz-leiber-audio-files-part1-being-intervie...
https://tinyurl.com/msxkdn6w

The Fantastic cover story by Herbert is intriguing.

I'll be reading from Centipede Press's Masters of Science Fiction: Fritz Leiber. And that's a nice long 2-part audio interview with Fritz up under Miscellany.

Just read it online - quite short.

I thought this was a very nice piece of sf-horror. Has the feel of a nightmare.

Loved the progression of switches, with the final one being both the most logical in terms of the story itself and also the most chilling, even if you saw it coming.

It's sort of strange that I read this story while in the midst of The Diamond Age. The wonderland of nanotech and virtual realities that Stephenson presents made me more prone to take the opening parts of the story at face value, I think.

>6 gwendetenebre:
I agree that it's not much of a surprise, but still impressive. The penultimate switch, opening the epistemological question in the face of the previously-apparent nature of the switches, makes the final one more disturbing, even if she had anticipated it earlier ("ROCKS? AIR? or even ...?").