Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber is best known for his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, but Leiber was one of the leading speculative fiction writers of the mid to late 20th century. In his long career, Fritz Leiber wrote award-winning stories not just in the field of fantasy, but also science fiction and horror genres. Besides his literary works, Fritz Leiber was a playwright and a poet. Leiber acted in films and theatre productions. Outside the fields of entertainment and art, Fritz Leiber was also a champion fencer and chess player.
Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft
Readers of both Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber fiction might not immediately associate the two writers. Lovecraft stories tend to be eerie, psychological, and cosmic, while Leiber stories tend to be character-driven and social-based.
The two men admired each other's work and exchanged enough letters they
were compiled into a book (Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of
the Dark). H.P. Lovecraft was a literary mentor to the younger Fritz
Leiber in 1936, even as Lovecraft was dying of cancer. Though the letter
correspondence between Lovecraft and Leiber (and Leiber's wife, Jonquil)
only lasted the final six months of Lovecraft's life, they had a significant
interaction. These letters, many of Lovecraft's letters that have been
published over the years, present a touching human picture of the man.
For instance, Lovecraft mentions to the Leibers that he was surviving on around $3.00 a week (it was The Great Depression) and complained about his own frustrations in getting certain works published. Also, you learn that Lovecraft was impressed that Leiber's father, Fritz Leiber Sr., was a Shakespearean actor.
On his side, Fritz Leiber got support and advice on his own literary pursuits from an established author in the early stage of his career. This kindness not only meant Leiber would write substantial essays about Lovecraft decades later, but they also inspired Leiber to write his own treatments of Cthulhu Mythos tales. Among the best of these is "Terror from the Depths", which is a sequel to Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness", complete with the narrator of that story, Albert Wilmarth. Fritz Leiber's "Arkham to the Stars" includes several characters from earlier Cthulhu Mythos tales. In this story, several Lovecraftian protagonists sit around a table and discuss (or complain about) their horror adventures.
Fritz Leiber's Early Life
With a classical German name and such an interesting number of pursuits, one might expect Fritz Leiber was a Prussian military officer or descended from Austrian nobility. In fact, Fritz Leiber was born in Chicago in 1910 to a pair of theater actors. By 1928, Leiber was traveling with his parents while they toured and he took part in a number of Shakespearian productions himself. Throughout his literary career, Fritz Leiber often featured actors in his stories.
Fritz Leiber had a few movie roles over the decades. He appeared briefly in the 1936 Greta Garbo film Camill at the wedding feast, while appearing as Horatio in the play version of Hamlet in the 1937 film, The Great Garrick (starting Olivia de Havilland). In the 1947 film noir The Web, Fritz Leiber played Leopold Kroner, a counterfeiter. Finally, he was in the cult horror classic Equinox in 1970, playing the role of Dr. Watermann (who has no lines--but several scenes). Leiber also showed up in The Bermuda Triangle, a 1979 documentary. Fritz Leiber was multi-talented and had many interests. Fritz Leiber won the 1958 Santa Monica Open as a chess player, but he was also a sometime professor, speech instructor, and preacher, along with being a champion fencer.
Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser
The Lankhmar books, associated with Leiber's most famous characters,
Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser, remain the key to Leiber's literary reputation.
The first of these stories ("Two Sought Adventure") was published in 1939
and Leiber continues to write Lankhmar fiction until 1988--a 50 year span.
This included short story collections such as Swords in the Mist
(1968), Swords Against Wizardry (1968), Swords and Deviltry
(1970), Swords Against Death (1970), Swords and Ice Magic
(1977), and The Knight and Knave of Swords (1988). The Swords of
Lankhmar is a 1968 novel that marks the 5th publication in the tales of
Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser.
In the world of Newhon, the city of Lankhmar is found east of the River Hlal
and west of the Great Salt Marsh. Lankhmar is labyrinthine and corrupt. Like
most cities, it has its share of both squalor and decadence. The corruption
of the city is made evident by a smog so thick it usually blurs out the
stars. Inside the city, men of power include an overlord, a corrupt
nobility, and an active Thieves Guild. This guild controls most crime in the
city, except for the crime Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser perpetrate. These two
lovable rogues--one a barbarian and the other a willowy, street-smart
thief--are some of the most loved characters in the sword-and-sorcery genre.
In fact, Fritz Leiber's characters helped make sword-and-sorcery novels what
they are today.
The city of Lankhmar is full of simple, descriptive streets and landmarks. A reader doesn't have to stumble over too many unspeakable syllables in the works of Fritz Leiber, which many readers to this day appreciate. Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser walk past places like Bone Alley and down thoroughfares like Cheap Street. The ruler of Lankhmar is simple named "Overlord".
Fritz Leiber Novels
Fritz Leiber full-length novels include Conjure Wife (1943), Destiny Times Three (1945), Gather, Darkness! (1950), The Green Millennium (1953), You're All Alone (1953), The Silver Eggheads (1962), The Wanderer (1964), A Specter is Haunting Texas (1968), Our Lady of Darkness (1977), and O Tempo, o Espaco e o Cerebro (1992). Of these novels, the most enduring are Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness.
Conjure Wife
According to the Internet Science Fiction Database, Conjure Wife is the 28th-best fantasy novel of all time. The story involves a small-town professor who discovers one day that his wife (and presumably many women) practice witchcraft. I won't spoil the ending, of course, but Conjure Wife has won significant praise and several awards.
Our Lady of Darkness
Our Lady of Darkness explores a new kind of occult science, "megapolisomancy, the magic of the big cities, where a person can predict and even manipulate the future through the existence of large modern cities. Elemental beings of inanimate forces also exist--called "paramentals". These beings, described as a cross between the collective conscious and an "atom bomb", are quite unpleasant to those people who meet them. Our Lady of Darkness is set in San Francisco, where Fritz Leiber moved (from Los Angeles) after the death of his wife in the 1970s.
Substance Abuse
A recurring theme in Fritz Leiber's long life was occasional inactivity due to substance abuse and deep melancholia. For instance, when Leiber's longtime wife died, he went on what was described as a three year bender in which he wrote very little. When he emerged, he wrote Our Lady of Darkness to explore his fascination is modern psychology and the theories of Carl Jung about the collective conscious and Jungian concepts such as the anime and the shadow. By this point in his career, Fritz Leiber had come a long way from his exploration of cosmic horror some 40 years before.
Later Life
According to Harlan Ellison and multiple other sources, Fritz Leiber (who died in 1991) died penniless, having to type stories over his kitchen sink. It's possible that legend is false, as Leiber received royalty checks from leasing the rights to Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser to TSR and Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s. He should have been able to live comfortably, if not lavishly. It's thought Fritz Leiber simply preferred a life apart from the hustle and bustle and saved his money for books, travel, and a few other pursuits. In fact, Fritz Leiber died a few weeks after traveling to Vancouver to a convention.