Fritz Leiber | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Leiber in 1977 | |
| Born | Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (1910-12-24)December 24, 1910 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | September 5, 1992(1992-09-05) (aged 81) |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Period | 1934–1992[a] |
| Genre | Fantasy,horror,science fiction |
| Notable works | Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series,The Big Time |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Justin Leiber |
| Parents | Fritz Leiber (father) |
Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (/ˈlaɪbər/LY-bər;[1] December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
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Fritz Leiber was born December 24, 1910, inChicago, Illinois, to the actorsFritz Leiber and Virginia Bronson Leiber. For a time, he seemed inclined to follow in his parents' footsteps; the theater and actors feature in his fiction. He spent 1928 touring with his parents'Shakespeare company (Fritz Leiber & Co.) before entering theUniversity of Chicago, where he was elected toPhi Beta Kappa and received an undergraduatePh.B. degree inpsychology andphysiology[2] orbiology[3] with honors in 1932. From 1932 to 1933, he worked as alay reader and studied as a candidate for the ministry, without taking a degree, at theGeneral Theological Seminary inChelsea, Manhattan, an affiliate of theEpiscopal Church.[4]
After pursuing graduate studies inphilosophy at the University of Chicago from 1933 to 1934 and again not taking a degree, he remained in Chicago while touring under the stage name of "Francis Lathrop" intermittently with his parents' company and pursuing a literary career. Six short stories later included in the 2010 collectionStrange Wonders: A Collection of Rare Fritz Leiber Works carry 1934 and 1935 dates.[a] He also appeared alongside his father in uncredited parts inGeorge Cukor'sCamille (1936),James Whale'sThe Great Garrick (1937), andWilliam Dieterle'sThe Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).
In 1936, he initiated a brief, intense correspondence withH. P. Lovecraft, who "encouraged and influenced [Leiber's] literary development" before Lovecraft died in March 1937.[5] Leiber introducedFafhrd and the Gray Mouser in "Two Sought Adventure", his first professionally published short story in the August 1939 edition ofUnknown, edited byJohn W. Campbell.[6]
Leiber married Jonquil Stephens on January 16, 1936. Their only child, philosopher and science fiction writerJustin Leiber, was born in 1938. From 1937 to 1941, Fritz Leiber was employed by Consolidated Book Publishing as a staff writer for theStandard American Encyclopedia. In 1941, the family moved to California, where Leiber served as a speech and drama instructor atOccidental College during the 1941–1942 academic year.
Unable to conceal his disdain for academic politics as the United States enteredWorld War II, he decided that the struggle againstfascism mattered more than his long-heldpacifist convictions. He accepted a position withDouglas Aircraft in quality inspection, primarily working on theC-47 Skytrain. Throughout the war, he continued to regularly publish fiction.[6]
Thereafter, the family returned to Chicago, where Leiber served as associate editor ofScience Digest from 1945 to 1956. During this decade (forestalled by a fallow interregnum from 1954 to 1956), his output (including the 1947Arkham House anthologyNight's Black Agents) was characterized byPoul Anderson as "a lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business". In 1958, the Leibers returned to Los Angeles. By then, he could afford to relinquish his journalistic career and support his family as a full-time fiction writer.[6]
Jonquil's death in 1969 precipitated Leiber's permanent relocation toSan Francisco and exacerbated his longstandingalcoholism after twelve years of fellowship inAlcoholics Anonymous. He gradually regained sobriety, an effort impeded by comorbidbarbiturate abuse, over the next two decades.[7] Perhaps as a result of his substance abuse[citation needed], Leiber seems to have suffered periods of penury in the 1970s;Harlan Ellison wrote of his anger at finding that the much-awarded Leiber had to write his novels on a manual typewriter propped up over the sink in his apartment.Marc Laidlaw wrote that, when visiting Leiber as a fan in 1976, he "was shocked to find him occupying one small room ofa seedy San Francisco residence hotel, its squalor relieved mainly by walls of books".[8] Other reports suggest that Leiber preferred to live simply in the city, spending his money on dining, movies, and travel. In the last years of his life, royalty checks fromTSR, Inc. (the makers ofDungeons & Dragons, who had licensed the mythos of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series) were enough in themselves to ensure that he lived comfortably.[9] In 1977, he returned to his original form with a fantasy novel set in modern-day San Francisco,Our Lady of Darkness, which is about a writer of weird tales who must deal with the death of his wife and his recovery from alcoholism.
In 1992, the last year of his life, Leiber married his second wife, Margo Skinner, a journalist and poet with whom he had been friends for years. Leiber died a few weeks after a physical collapse while traveling from a science fiction convention inLondon, Ontario, with Skinner. His cause of death was a stroke.[10]
He wrote a 100-page-plus memoir,Not Much Disorder and Not So Early Sex, which can be found inThe Ghost Light (1984).[11]
Leiber's own literary criticism, including several essays on Lovecraft, was collected in the volumeFafhrd and Me (1990).[12]
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As the child of twoShakespearean actors, Leiber was fascinated with the stage, describing itinerant Shakespearean companies in stories like "No Great Magic" and "Four Ghosts in Hamlet", and creating an actor/producer protagonist for his novelA Specter is Haunting Texas.
Although hisChange 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 isolatedspace-time the size of a theatrical stage, and with only a handful of characters.Judith Merril (in the July 1969 issue ofThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) remarks on Leiber's acting skills when the writer won a science fiction convention costume ball. 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. "The only other component," Merril writes, "was the Leiber instinct for theatre."
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Due to having the same name as his father, Leiber Jr. was incorrectly attributed to some roles which were in fact played by his father. Fritz Leiber Sr. was the evil Inquisitor in the Errol Flynn adventure filmThe Sea Hawk (1940) and many other movies from 1917 to the late 1950s. It is the elder Leiber, not the younger, who appears in Charlie Chaplin'sMonsieur Verdoux (1947)[13] and the Vincent Price vehicleThe Web (1947).[citation needed]
The younger Leiber can be seen briefly as Valentin in the 1936 film version ofCamille starringGreta Garbo. In the cult horror filmEquinox (1970) directed byDennis Muren and Jack Woods, Leiber has a cameo appearance as a geologist, Dr. Watermann.[14] In the edited second version of the movie, Leiber has no spoken dialogue but appears 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 were cut from the re-release.
He also appears as Chavez in the 1979 Schick Sunn Classics documentaryThe Bermuda Triangle, based on the book byCharles Berlitz.
Leiber was heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft,[15]Robert Graves,John Webster, andShakespeare in the first two decades of his career. Beginning in the late 1950s, he was increasingly influenced by the works ofCarl Jung, particularly by the concepts of theanima and theshadow. In the mid-1960s, he began incorporating elements of Joseph Campbell'sThe Hero with a Thousand Faces. These concepts are often mentioned in his stories, especially the anima, which becomes a method of exploring his fascination with, but estrangement from, the female.[16]
Leiber liked cats,[17] which are featured 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 novelThe Wanderer. Leiber's "Gummitch" stories feature a kitten with an I.Q. of 160, just waiting for his ritual cup of coffee so that he can become human, too.
His first stories in the 1930s and 40s were inspired by Lovecraft'sCthulhu Mythos. A notable critic and historian of the wider Mythos, S. T. Joshi, has singled out Leiber's "The Sunken Land" (Unknown Worlds, February 1942) as the most accomplished of the early stories based on Lovecraft's Mythos.[18] Leiber also later wrote several essays on Lovecraft the man, such as "A Literary Copernicus" (1949),[19] the publication of which formed a key moment in the emergence of a serious critical appreciation of Lovecraft's life and work.[20]
Leiber's first professional sale was "Two Sought Adventure" (Unknown, August 1939),[21] which introduced his most famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. In 1943, his first two novels were serialized inUnknown (the supernatural horror-orientedConjure Wife, inspired by his experiences on the faculty of Occidental College) andAstounding Science Fiction (Gather, Darkness).
1947 marked the publication of his first book,Night's Black Agents, a short story collection containing seven stories grouped as 'Modern Horrors', one as a 'Transition', and two grouped as 'Ancient Adventures': "The Sunken Land" and "Adept's Gambit", which are both stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
The science fiction novelGather, Darkness followed in 1950. 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.
In 1951, Leiber was Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention in New Orleans. Further novels followed during the 1950s, and in 1958The Big Time won theHugo Award for Best Novel.[22]
Leiber continued to publish in the 1960s. His novelThe Wanderer (1964) also won the Hugo for Best Novel.[22] In the novel, an artificial planet nicknamed the Wanderer materializes from hyperspace within earth's orbit. 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 earthquakes, tsunamis, and tidal phenomena. The multi-threaded plot follows the exploits of an ensemble cast as they struggle to survive the global disaster.
In the same period, Leiber published "Black Gondolier", a short story in which a protagonist uncovers a cosmic conspiracy in which oil from ancient fossils preys upon human beings and human civilizations.[23] Leiber received theHugo Award for Best Novella in 1970 and 1971 for "Ship of Shadows" (1969) and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970). "Gonna Roll the Bones" (1967), his contribution to Harlan Ellison'sDangerous Visions anthology, won theHugo Award for Best Novelette and theNebula Award for Best Novelette in 1968.[22]
Our Lady of Darkness (1977), originally serialized in short form inThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the title "The Pale Brown Thing" (1977), featured cities as the breeding grounds for new types ofelementals called paramentals, summonable by the dark art ofmegapolisomancy, with such activities centering on theTransamerica Pyramid. Its main characters include Franz Westen, Jaime Donaldus Byers, and the magician Thibault de Castries.Our Lady of Darkness won theWorld Fantasy Award—Novel.[22]
Leiber, a lifelong devotee ofEdgar Rice Burroughs, also wrote the 1966 novelization of theClair Huffaker screenplay ofTarzan and the Valley of Gold.[24]
Many of Leiber's most acclaimed works are short stories, especially in the horror genre, including "The Smoke Ghost", "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes", and "You're All Alone" (later expanded asThe Sinful Ones). Leiber also challenged the conventions of science fiction through reflexive narratives such as "A Bad Day For Sales" (first published inGalaxy Science Fiction, July 1953), in which the protagonist, Robie, "America’s only genuine mobile salesrobot",[25] references the title character of Isaac Asimov's idealistic robot story, "Robbie".[26] Questioning Isaac Asimov'sThree Laws of Robotics, Leiber imagines the futility of automatons in a post-apocalyptic New York City. In his later years, Leiber returned to short story horror in such works as "Horrible Imaginings", "Black Has Its Charms" and the award-winning "The Button Moulder".[27]
The shortparallel worlds story "Catch That Zeppelin!" (1975) won theHugo Award for Best Short Story and theNebula Award for Best Short Story in 1976.[22] It presents an alternate reality much better than our own, as opposed to the usual parallel universe story depicting a world worse than our own. "Belsen Express" (1975) won theWorld Fantasy Award—Short Fiction.
Leiber was named the secondGandalf Grand Master of Fantasy by participants in the 1975World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), after the posthumous inaugural award toJ. R. R. Tolkien.[22] Next year he won theWorld Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.[22] He was Guest of Honor at the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton, England (1979). TheScience Fiction Writers of America made him its fifthSFWA Grand Master in 1981;[28] theHorror Writers Association made him an inaugural winner of theBram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1988 (named in 1987);[29] and theScience Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers.[30]
Leiber was a founding member of theSwordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group ofHeroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s and led byLin Carter. Some works by SAGA members were published in Carter'sFlashing Swords! anthologies. Leiber himself is credited with inventing the termsword and sorcery for the particular subgenre of epic fantasy exemplified by his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories.[31]
In an appreciation in the July 1969 "Special Fritz Leiber Issue" ofThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,Judith Merril writes of Leiber's connection with his readers: "That this kind ofpersonal response...is shared by thousands of other readers, has been made clear on several occasions." The November 1959 issue ofFantastic, for instance: Leiber had just come out of one of his recurrent dry spells, and editorCele 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 has been consolidated by his most famous creations, theFafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, written over a span of 50 years. The first, "Two Sought Adventure", appeared inUnknown, August 1939. The stories are about an unlikely pair of heroes found in and around the city ofLankhmar. Fafhrd was based on Leiber himself and the Mouser on his friendHarry Otto Fischer, and the two characters were created in a series of letters exchanged by the two in the mid-1930s.[32] These stories were among the progenitors of many of thetropes ofsword and sorcery.
Some Fafhrd and Mouser stories were recognized by annual genre awards: "Scylla's Daughter" (1961) was "Short Story" Hugo finalist, and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970) won the "Best Novella" Hugo and Nebula Awards.[22] Leiber's last major work,The Knight and Knave of Swords (1991), closed out the series while leaving room for possible sequels. In his last year, Leiber considered allowing other writers to continue the series, but his sudden death made this more difficult. One new Fafhrd and the Mouser novel,Swords Against the Shadowland, byRobin Wayne Bailey, appeared in 1998.
The stories influenced the shaping of sword and sorcery and other works.Joanna Russ' stories about thief-assassin Alyx (collected in 1976 inThe Adventures of Alyx) were in part inspired by Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Alyx made guest appearances in two of Leiber's stories. More recently, playing off the visit of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser to our world inAdept's Gambit (set in second century B.C. Tyre),Steven Saylor's short story "Ill Seen in Tyre" takes hisRoma Sub Rosa series hero Gordianus to the city of Tyre a hundred years later, where the two visitors from Nehwon are remembered as local legends.[33]
Fischer and Leiber contributed to the original design of the 1976 wargameLankhmar fromTSR.[34]
Conjure Wife has been made into feature films four times under other titles:
"The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" was filmed under that title by Kastenbaum Films in 1995. (This film is not to be confused with the 1967 William Rotsler filmThe Girl with the Hungry Eyes which is entirely unrelated to Leiber's story).
Two Leiber stories were filmed for TV forRod Serling'sNight Gallery. These were "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" (1970) (adapted by Robert M. Young and directed by John Badham) and "The Dead Man" (adapted and directed by Douglas Heyes).
