Imaginings: Selected Stories

Compared to his work, most modern writing has very little style or poetry to it. Some of these stories were the first of their kind ever written like Smoke Ghost and were written in the 's or before, which in itself is astonishing. I find most modern writing dull and dated already. In years, people will still be reading his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories and the best of his horror and science fiction work. He will endure, like other great writers. Regarding this collection, I give it 5 stars because it contains some stories that are better than anything ever written in the genre, and for the most part, it's a great selection.

Best to just buy the whole series and read it. But it's good that Ill Met In Lanhkmar is included, which is a great introduction to the characters and world.

Pail of Air I'm not crazy about and Horrible Imaginings is not one of my favorite horror stories by him, but the rest are great. Aug 31, Chas rated it really liked it Shelves: Gaiman's right--most of Lieber's Science Fiction stories haven't aged so well, or at the very least, they're way less interesting than his horror and fantasy stories, of which his Gummitch represented here by the brilliant Spacetime for Springers and his Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories represented here by "Ill Met in Lankhmar" and "Bazaar of the Bizarre" are the best.

Sep 29, Arlen rated it it was amazing Shelves: This was a wonderful walk backward in time for me. The first is not in this collection though another of his chess stories, "Midnight by the Morphy Watch" is but the second is, as are a number of his immortal tales, such as "A Pail Of Air" and "Four Ghosts in Hamlet. Here, at least, you can find some of the best from this legendary writer. If you've not come across his before, I envy you the discovery you're about to make.

Jul 03, Gerry Huntman rated it it was amazing. I am a huge fan of Fritz Leiber pronounced 'Lie-ber' from my early days and this book does a faithful job of representing his scifi, fantasy and dark fantasy writing career. I was pleased to see two Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories What can I say except he was seminal, original, and a truly wonderful short story writer. All I can say is read it. It is worth it. Jan 18, Patrick rated it liked it. Leiber is most famous for creating Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the starring characters in a series of books and stories which were instrumental in developing the kind of sword-and-sorcery tropes associated with post-Tolkien fantasy fiction.

But elsewhere the stories are harder to pin down. At times I found this almost too uncomfortable to read, and I couldn't shake the sense that something in such a confessional style should have stayed in a bottom desk drawer somewhere - but perhaps that's just me being a prude. Sometimes, though, the strangeness on offer is so spectacular that moral concerns become lost in the fog. Neil Gaiman gave a glowing foreword so I was really looking forward to some great stories, especially in light of the fact my previous Leiber reads had been disappointing. I felt this collection was a mixed bag. I can say without hesitation the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories were thoroughly entertaining, some great fantasy writing that put a smile on my face with every story.

I felt the stories earlier in the collection, which also represent his earlier work chronologically, were stronger. They m Neil Gaiman gave a glowing foreword so I was really looking forward to some great stories, especially in light of the fact my previous Leiber reads had been disappointing.

They may be dated in some elements, but their weird was still effective and interesting. I just felt there was a certain sameness to them that was missing from his earlier works. The novella, "Horrible Imaginings", was at times dull, weird, dark and paranoid. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, despite some great writing.

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The end was both satisfying and unsatisfying. I guess I could say that about the collection in general. I would enthusiastically recommend the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, but much of the collection leaves me questioning Leiber's reputation as one of the all-time science fiction greats. Jul 07, Will rated it liked it Shelves: Where Leiber turns most completely from the hardboiled tone and attendant misogyny prevalent in the earlier stories, this collection becomes thoughtful, diverse, and sometimes magnificently strange.

In the better stories, even the queasy anxiety about women and desire gets worked through in a satisfying way, delineating a character's madness as in "The Inner Circles," or loneliness as in "Horrible Imaginings" which seems in many ways to be about an elderly writer confronting some of his hang-up Where Leiber turns most completely from the hardboiled tone and attendant misogyny prevalent in the earlier stories, this collection becomes thoughtful, diverse, and sometimes magnificently strange.

In the better stories, even the queasy anxiety about women and desire gets worked through in a satisfying way, delineating a character's madness as in "The Inner Circles," or loneliness as in "Horrible Imaginings" which seems in many ways to be about an elderly writer confronting some of his hang-ups. But I find that even though on review I enjoyed at least nine of these stories and thought a few of them were first-rate, important works of speculative fiction, the occasional clunkers like "Catch that Zeppelin!

I couldn't finish it. It took me almost the entire book to force myself to drop it I never drop a book! I bought this book because I wanted to have examples of "sword and sorcerer" literature and Fritz Leiber was a quoted and founder member of the contained gang. Of all his book I found on Amazon, this was the one that readers appreciated the most, so I got for this. But I didn't find what I was looking for.

I wish I could have given 0 stars but I had to give at least one in order to write a review. Oct 16, Anthony Panegyres rated it liked it Shelves: Selected Stories is a wonderful homage to an author who not only influenced so many other writers but was also profoundly respected by readers of his own era as his numerous Hugo and Nebula Awards indicate, as does his World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

His legacy among all three subgenres of the speculative field horror, fantasy and sci-fi is clearly evident in this collection. Brown, aimed to create a collection that reveals the broad work of Leiber rather than just a Best of. Neil Gaiman unequivocally touches on it in his reflective intro: But for any aficionado of the history of the spec-fic short story this will not diminish the collection.

Fritz Leiber

Leiber, after all, was a product of his times. And when speculative fiction writers willingly explore the values and attitudes and ideologies of their era they are always at risk of dating quickly. In terms of contextual understanding and appreciation of the era Leiber fascinates. If you read these stories with an appreciation that Leiber lived in times whereby the political ideologies of fascism as well as communism and capitalism were at the forefront you begin to understand his intentions.

The old East vs West Cold War arguments have changed though, which may mean a degree of inaccessibility for some contemporary readers. Although all the works may be dated a little in terms of prose, the stories that tend to date the most involve themes that explore political and nationalistic ideologies.

Leiber was passionate about speculative fiction having a dual role, whereby it not only told an interesting narrative but also explored societal issues of its day. I found it challenging to connect with these stories. But this time the story relates strongly to an ideology relevant, if not omnipresent, in our own present day society: Sure, the metaphor is overt - The Grey Mouser finds himself enchanted by garbage in a shop, all sold by a grotty alien race who produce garbage with the illusion of being something more - but the story is also a fun swashbuckling one.

It won me over both in terms of adventure and mystery but also for its satirical attack on consumerism. View all 3 comments. Apr 06, Viktor rated it it was amazing. A terrific over-all collection of Leiber's output.

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Has 6 duplicates from the "Best of" collection. The Kindle version does not have the Chabon Afterward. Mar 22, Jason A rated it really liked it. Read most of the stories, they were great. I happened up on this book by chance and was glad that I did. Sep 30, Marissa rated it liked it.

My favorite stories were two I'd already read in other anthologies "Smoke Ghost" and "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" plus one that was new to me and I quite liked "Belsen Express" but I was expecting more of that, i. The sword-and-sorcery fantasy stories set in Lankhmar weren't particularly bad, but they were so jarringly different from the other stories that I resented them for taking up space in the book that could have been filled with more Disappointing. I re-read the sword-and-sorcery stories in more of a fantasy mindset and really liked them.

Updating my rating from 2 to 3 stars. Sep 19, Kyle H rated it it was ok. I actually didn't completely finish this book. I tried various stories over time but finally decided there are too many good books to waste my time struggling through this one. I'm a fan of Lovecraft and John Collier and thought this might be similar but I just couldn't get interested in the characters, settings, or stories so Leiber wasn't one of my favourites, but I'm really enjoying some of these. In , the family moved to California, where Leiber served as a speech and drama instructor at Occidental College during the — academic year.

Unable to conceal his disdain for academic politics as the United States entered World War II , he decided that the struggle against fascism was more important than his long-held pacifist convictions. He accepted a position with Douglas Aircraft in quality inspection, primarily working on the C Skytrain ; throughout the war, he continued to regularly publish fiction in a variety of periodicals.

Thereafter, the family returned to Chicago, where Leiber served as associate editor of Science Digest from to During this decade forestalled by a fallow interregnum from to , his output including the Arkham House anthology Night's Black Agents was characterized by Poul Anderson as "a lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business.

By this juncture, he was able to relinquish his journalistic career and support his family as a full-time fiction writer. Jonquil's death in precipitated Leiber's permanent relocation to San Francisco and exacerbated his longstanding alcoholism after twelve years of fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous ; however, he would gradually regain relative sobriety an effort impeded by comorbid barbiturate abuse over the next two decades.

Perhaps as a result of his substance abuse, Leiber seems to have suffered periods of penury in the s; Harlan Ellison wrote of his anger at finding that the much-awarded Leiber had to write his novels on a manual typewriter that was propped up over the sink in his apartment, and Marc Laidlaw wrote that, when visiting Leiber as a fan in , he "was shocked to find him occupying one small room of a seedy San Francisco residence hotel, its squalor relieved mainly by walls of books".

In the last years of his life, royalty checks from TSR, Inc. In , the last year of his life, Leiber married his second wife, Margo Skinner, a journalist and poet with whom he had been friends for many years.

Description

Leiber's death occurred a few weeks after a physical collapse while traveling from a science fiction convention in London, Ontario , with Skinner. The cause of his death was stated by his wife to be stroke. Leiber's own literary criticism, including several essays on Lovecraft, was collected in the volume Fafhrd and Me As the child of two Shakespearean actors— Fritz Sr. Although his Change War novel, The Big Time , is about a war between two factions, the "Snakes" and the "Spiders", changing and rechanging history throughout the universe, all the action takes place in a small bubble of isolated space-time about the size of a theatrical stage, with only a handful of characters.

Leiber's costume consisted of a cardboard military collar over turned-up jacket lapels, cardboard insignia, an armband, and a spider pencilled large in black on his forehead, thus turning him into an officer of the Spiders, one of the combatants in his Change War stories. Due to the similarity of the names of the father and the son, some filmographies incorrectly attribute to Fritz Jr.

In the edited second version of the movie Leiber has no spoken dialogue in the film but features in a few scenes. The original version of the movie has a longer appearance by Leiber recounting the ancient book and a brief speaking role, all of which was cut from the re-release of the film. Leiber was heavily influenced by H. Lovecraft and Robert Graves in the first two decades of his career. Beginning in the late s, he was increasingly influenced by the works of Carl Jung , particularly by the concepts of the anima and the shadow.

These concepts are often openly mentioned in his stories, especially the anima, which becomes a method of exploring his fascination with, but estrangement from, the female. Leiber liked cats, which feature prominently in many of his stories. Tigerishka, for example, is a cat-like alien who is sexually attractive to the human protagonist yet repelled by human customs in the novel The Wanderer. Leiber's "Gummitch" stories feature a kitten with an I. His first stories in the s and 40s were inspired by Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The leading critic and historian of the wider Mythos, S.

Leiber's first professional sale was "Two Sought Adventure" Unknown , August , [15] which introduced his most famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. In , his first two novels were serialized in Unknown the supernatural horror-oriented Conjure Wife , partially inspired by his deleterious experiences on the faculty of Occidental College and Astounding Science Fiction Gather, Darkness.

Book publication of the science fiction novel Gather, Darkness followed in It deals with a futuristic world that follows the Second Atomic Age which is ruled by scientists, until in the throes of a new Dark Age, the witches revolt. Leiber published further books in the s. The Wanderer's gravitational field captures the moon and shatters it into something like one of Saturn's rings. On Earth, the Wanderer's gravity well triggers massive earthquakes, tsunamis, and tidal phenomena. The multi-threaded plot follows the exploits of a large ensemble cast as they struggle to survive the global disaster.

Leiber also did the novelization of the Clair Huffaker screenplay of Tarzan and the Valley of Gold. Many of Leiber's most-acclaimed works are short stories, especially in the horror genre. The short parallel worlds story "Catch That Zeppelin! Both stories reflect Leiber's uneasy fascination with Nazism , an uneasiness compounded by his mixed feelings about his German ancestry and his philosophical pacifism during World War II. Leiber was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America SAGA , a loose-knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in the s, led by Lin Carter , with entry by fantasy credentials alone.

Leiber himself is credited with inventing the term sword and sorcery for the particular subgenre of epic fantasy exemplified by his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. Leiber had just come out of one of his recurrent dry spells, and editor Cele Lalli bought up all his new material until there was enough [five stories] to fill an issue; the magazine came out with a big black headline across its cover — Leiber Is Back! His legacy appears to have been consolidated by the most famous of his creations, the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, written over a span of 50 years.

They are concerned with an unlikely pair of heroes found in and around the city of Lankhmar. Fafhrd was based on Leiber himself and the Mouser on his friend Harry Otto Fischer , and the two characters were created in a series of letters exchanged by the two in the mids. These stories were among the progenitors of many of the tropes of the sword and sorcery genre. They are also notable among sword and sorcery stories in that, over the course of the stories, his two heroes mature, take on more responsibilities, and eventually settle down into marriage.

Some Fafhrd and Mouser stories were recognized by annual genre awards: In the last year of his life, Leiber was considering allowing the series to be continued by other writers, but his sudden death made this more difficult. The stories were influential in shaping the genre and were influential on other works. Joanna Russ ' stories about thief-assassin Alyx collected in in The Adventures of Alyx were in part inspired by Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Alyx in fact made guest appearances in two of Leiber's stories.