Snakes & Spiders: The Definitive Change War Collection

by Fritz Leiber

"Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to be bringing you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the next? Have you ever been afraid that your personality was changing because of forces beyond your knowledge or control? Have you ever felt sure that sudden death was about to jump you from nowhere? Have you ever wondered about those things you may call devils or Demons-spirits able to range through all time and space? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, you've had hints of the Change War." This collection gathers the original magazine versions of every canonical story in Fritz Leiber's iconic Change War time travel series for the first time. It includes an introduction by Kevin A. Straight, comprehensive Guide to the Change World, timeline of Fritz Leiber's life and works, and list of Change War apocrypha. Physical book editions include full index.

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was one of the more interesting of the young writers who came into HP Lovecraft's orbit, and some of his best early short fiction is horror rather than sf or fantasy. He found his mature voice early in the first of the sword-and-sorcery adventures featuring the large sensitive barbarian Fafhrd and the small street-smart-ish Gray Mouser; he returned to this series at various points in his career, using it sometimes for farce and sometimes for gloomy mood pieces--The Swords of Lankhmar is perhaps the best single volume of their adventures. Leiber's science fiction includes the planet-smashing The Wanderer in which a large cast mostly survive flood, fire, and the sexual attentions of feline aliens, and the satirical A Spectre is Haunting Texas in which a gangling, exo-skeleton-clad actor from the Moon leads a revolution and finds his true love. Leiber's late short fiction, and the fine horror novel Our Lady of Darkness, combine autobiographical issues like his struggle with depression and alcoholism with meditations on the emotional content of the fantastic genres. Leiber's capacity for endless self-reinvention and productive self-examination kept him, until his death, one of the most modern of his sf generation.

Used These Alternate Names: Maurice Breçon, Fric Lajber, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Fritz R. Leiber, Fritz Leiber Jun., Фриц Лейбер, F. Lieber, フリッツ・ライバー

Reviews

[Olik0 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably it was a great book when published and the Change War setting is exciting and original. However,...stereotypes and sexism are outdatet and there are new, exciting books that don't need to reproduce old, stale ideas and are exciting and original, eg those by NK Jemisin, Neil Gaiman, Ann Leckie aso.
Snakes&Spiders has a bigger value as historical document than as enjouyable litterature.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

short fiction here ranges from excellent to just ok. not as horny as late period heinlein but gets close sometimes

[Erin Hartshorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd read the individual stories in this collection at various times; I was very pleased to see all the Change War tales brought together in one volume. On this read through, I was annoyed by the sexism in so much of the book — even though there are female Soldiers, many of the men act as though women are good only for sex, and the very presence of ghostgirls, impressions of lives that can be brought into focus by attention that are used for basic companionship, when there are no corresponding ghostboys, shows a double standard that permeates all the work. However …

Leiber did a marvelous job of creating opposing sides that don't know all that's going on, of showing different points of view to give glimpses of a big picture without delineating it in its entirety, of displaying characters of varying complexity from fully fleshed to hinted at in the same way that the war itself is. His take on time travel is that it's actually quite difficult to make changes in the time stream, but with the right equipment, people can move back and forth, looping over themselves and bringing items forward and back at will. In all of the stories, he focuses more on how the people are changed than history around them, and it works fairly well (with the caveat about sexism mentioned above). I'm likely to reread this again sometime.