PhilPaine.com

Fritz Leiber, over the years, wrote some of the finest fan­ta­sy fic­tion there is, and some pret­ty decent sci­ence fic­tion, as well. This col­lec­tion, enlivened by illus­tra­tions by sev­er­al artists, is a good intro­duc­tion. It con­tains some of his most famous sto­ries — “Com­ing Attrac­tions”, “Gonna Roll the Bones” and the deligh­tul “Space-Time for Springers”, but it also has the unusu­al semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal “Four Ghosts in Ham­let”, based on his expe­ri­ences in his father’s Shake­speare­an com­pa­ny. One well-known sto­ry that I’d missed until now is “Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch”, which involves the miss­ing pock­et watch of the 19th cen­tu­ry chess mas­ter, Paul Mor­phy. Sto­ries like this make you want to buy an over­stuffed arm­chair and take up pipe smoking. 

A large por­tion of the book is devot­ed to Leiber’s rather dis­or­ga­nized auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal mem­oir. I met him short­ly before he died, and his voice and face made a pro­found impres­sion on me. I could hear that voice in my head while read­ing this. But despite a lot of talk about his prob­lems with alco­hol and his sex­u­al edu­ca­tion, it does not give the impres­sion of being a real self-exam­i­na­tion. His father (a fair­ly well-known stage and film actor, in his day), looms every­where, like Don Gio­van­ni’s papa (or Leopold Mozart) in the shad­ows of the book, but his feel­ings in this area are nev­er con­front­ed. Nor is there much to explain why he wrote the things he wrote.

con­tains:

17775. (Fritz Leiber) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
17776. (Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light [sto­ry]
17777. [5] (Fritz Leiber) Com­ing Attrac­tions [sto­ry]
17778. [3] (Fritz Leiber) A Desk­ful of Girls [sto­ry]
17779. [3] (Fritz Leiber) Space-Time for Springers [sto­ry]
17780. (Fritz Leiber) Four Ghosts in Ham­let [sto­ry]
17781. [4] (Fritz Leiber) Gonna Roll the Bones [sto­ry]
17782. (Fritz Leiber) Bazaar of the Bizarre [sto­ry]
17783. (Fritz Leiber) Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch [sto­ry]
17784. (Fritz Leiber) Black Glass [sto­ry]
17785. (Fritz Leiber) Not Much Dis­or­der and Not So Ear­ly Sex: An Auto­bi­o­graph­ic Essay [arti­cle]