The Best of Fritz Leiber

by Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber's work bridges the gap between the pulp era of H. P. Lovecraft and the Paperback era of Philip K. Dick, and arguably, is as influential as both these authors. From a historical context, Leiber in fact knew both of the authors, and his work can be seen as a bridge connecting the many different flavors of genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
Edited by award-winning editors Jonathan Strahan and Charles Brown, this new collection of the grand master's fiction covers all facets of his work, and features an Introduction by Neil Gaiman and an Afterword by Michael Chabon.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Horror, Collections, Anthologies

301 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1974

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

[Jean-marcel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection of Leiber short stories spanning from the 1940s to the 1970s. What sets it apart from the other three or four such anthologies I have is that Leiber chose the stories himself, and at the end of the book he places an Afterword where he writes a paragraph or two about each one. leiber is one of my favourite writers, but I don't have a lot of insight into the man himself and his thoughts. I find this to be good, actually; plenty of times have I been a little put off by a writer whose work I normally enjoy but whose personal musings just kind of deflate the whole experience for me. However I must say it was pleasurable to read Leiber's thoughts on particular tales and I appreciate him putting this material at the very back of the book, too.

I'm going to do what Leiber himself did then and write a bit about my impressions of some of the stories. It's been a long time since I read some of them but there are a few that are so good I've read them again and again.

"Gonna Roll the Bones"--
A great story that benefits from a second reading once you figure out what's going on. It's told in a subtle, almost laid back style that belies the heavy occult content of the story. It's like horror without the horror, basically, and so comes down as a kind of fantasy. Someone else here said "magical realism". I'm not 100% confident using that term in general but I suppose it sort of fits here. I was reminded a little of some of Stephen King's better work and I am not at all surprised to learn that he is a big fan of leiber.

"Wanted--An Enemy"--
Reminds me of a 1980s episode of The Twilight Zone (one of the better ones). Certainly very informed by the Cold War. Hit'sa bit playful and has a sucker-punch ending. Very cool.

"The Man who Never Grew Young"--
Well, they can't all be winners; not too into this one. Reminds of Lray Bradbury, whom I have to confess I'm not the biggest fan of either, although he does have a few strong stories.

"Coming Attraction" --
This story was often anthologised, and I'm pretty sure I read it before I had a clue about Leiber's work. It's awesome and I can see why it won awards. It's kind of "future noire", written from a 1950 perspective. Fritz was obviously very cynical about what was happening in American society at the time. The ending makes you feel like shit, and I mean that in a good way.

"Poor Superman" --
Another kind of grim future story, possibly meant to be set in the same millieu as "Coming Attrraction", although this one is more "fun". I didn't predict the direction this story went in and the curveball was really appreciated. This is one of many stories where leiber's love of Poe comes to the surface, and as this is a science fiction and not a horror tale, its manifestation is a pleasant surprise here, although of course Poe had some stories that bordered on SF, too.

"A Pale of Air" --
One thing I really appreciate about Leiber is his ability to see many different perspectives and to adjust his writing style according to the sort of tale he is telling. here the main character is a little girl living in a future setting where the Earth has been knocked out of orbit, and its atmosphere has liquified and fallen to the surface. there are only a few survivors, but they have learned to adjust to this strange environment. This story talks about what happens when the girl goes outside in a spacesuit to get a pale of air for her and her father...

"The Night he Cried" --
Oooh, this is so funny! In his afterword Fritz says he wrote this as a response to Mickey Spilane, because he found his attitude toward women to be regressive and stupid. this is slightly ironic I guess because Leiber himself has been criticised by people like neil Gaiman (who loves him too, by the way) for some of his attitudes toward sex and women. I personally have always found that criticism a little unfair, though I guess that could be because I'm a man, but I feel like he was really trying and there's no doubt that for someone writing in the 40s/50s he had a very open mind. Anyway, "The Night he Cried" is mocking the kind of macho Mike hammer stuff. Let's just say the beautiful bucksome blonde turns out to be a many-tentacled alien and our "hard-bitten" protagonist is not having a great day. This one's a hoot.

"Space-Time for Springers" --
Do you love cats? Fritz leiber sure did. they feature prominently in so many of his stories, and this is maybe the ultimate cat story of all. It's short, starts off utterly adorable, and then in the end ... turns heart-breakingly sad. Seriously, if you are a sensitive person you should have the tissues ready for this one. The protagonist is a spry and lively kitten named gummitch with intellectual aspirations, who lives in a house with his human "parents", two children and two grown cats, and and we spend the entire story inside Gummitch's head. it's anthropomorphic, in a very literal way (this will make sense when you read it), but Fritz obviously spent a lot of time observing cats and their behaviour. As a cat fan myself, this one really twisted my heart. it will also teach you to be a bit more sympathetic the next time your cat seems disturbed by its reflection in a big piece of glass.

"Try and Change the past" --
A short piece set in the same "time War" as Leiber's excellent novel The BigTime. You don't have to read that to understand this though. it basically takes an interesting time travel concept and brings it to its logical extreme. Might seem a bit old hat now considering how many stories have been written dealing with a similar concept since, but Leiber was one of the first, and this little piece is pretty damn cool.

"A Deskful of Girls" --
Walks the line between being humorous and horrific with remarkable aplomb. I think some of the psychological theories described here might be a little academically unsound, but that's really ok to me. Very nice vengeance sort of ending that reads like something from Tales from the Crypt or somesuch..

"Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee " --
Another slightly disturbing and simultaneously fun story. With a name like that you know there has to be a vein of lightheartedness running throughout, and there is. leiber is good at telling these sorts of personal, low key stories with heavier, more unsettling implications.

"The Man who made Friends with Electricity" --
I loved this. the narrator goes to interview this seemingly harmless old coot who believes that electricity talks to him. What's neat is that this old guy is a bit difficult, prejudiced, rants about commies and stuff, yet still ends up being strangely charming. He meets a bad end though, thanks to his less likable qualities, and instead of thinking to myself, "well the dick kind of deserved it", Leiber manages to make it a bit sad and poignant.

"The Good new Days" --
This one's really strange, and there's a lot going on. it starts off as a kind of domestic setting of the future and then goes into territory I'm used to associating with Philip K. Dick. Kind of indescribable; you just have to read it.

There are other great stories in here too, like "Little Old Miss macbeth", which I plan to reread soon. No fafhrd and grey mouser stories, and I really do think some of those are among the best stuff leiber has written, but perhaps it was thought that sword and sorcery wouldn't really fit in with this book, which seems to concentrate mostly on Leiber's particular kind of softer SF or "urban" fantasy writing. No "Catch that Zeppelin!" either, but I think that one was written later than most of the stories here. This is a fine introduction to one of the best and most versatile genre writers who ever lived. Not only are the stories of a high quality, but, and this is important, Leiber can really write. I've mentioned several other authors for comparison's sake in my review, but to be honest I think Leiber is a better writer than most of them. His prose has this relaxed, smooth air aboutit that comes across as both affable and attention-grabbing. I think the friendly tone sort of makes the existential qualities of some of his stories hit harder, but maybe that's just me. He'll make you laugh and get angry and feel horrified at the same time, and he's self-aware without being smug or superior or making you feel that he doesn't take anything seriously. When Leiber wants to talk about Shakespeare in his writing (which he often does), it's not to impress you but to make you feel that the Bard's work is amazing like he does. Although quite a few of the stories address Cold War-era concerns, there is a universal quality to them that means generations from now people should still enjoy reading them. Highly recommended to everyone.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fritz Leiber is a legendary name in science fiction and fantasy, up there among the stars with the likes of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke et al. I do not know whether the present book includes his best (since the author has endorsed it himself, it should), but it does have some fantastic stories.

Leiber calls himself a “Science Fantasy” writer in the introduction: it seems an apt term, because there is nary a hard SF story in the whole volume, and many of them are outright fantasies. The author uses the world of the future and imagined scientific advances as a prop to hang his stories on, which are mostly fantasy.

The story nearest to a hard SF story in the volume, A Pail of Air, is also my personal favourite. Earth has been “abducted” by a passing dark star, pulled into its gravitational field and taken away from the Solar System. The atmosphere has frozen in the absolute zero of space, the different constituents each freezing at a different temperature and forming layers atop the soil, with water at the bottom and oxygen at the top. A scientist and his family have managed to survive by creating an almost-hermetically-sealed-room with a fire which is never allowed to go out: they replenish the oxygen periodically scooping the frozen layer from outside and allowing it to evaporate. The story is told by the young son of the scientist, who has been born on this dismal dead planet. The story is a wonderful paean to mankind, determined to survive no matter what.

A couple of stories are surreal vignettes, disturbing in their dark intensity. Interestingly, Leiber says that both these stories “almost wrote themselves”. The Man Who Never Grew Young is the story of an eternal in a world where time flows backward: all around him, he sees people grow young and go back into their mothers’ wombs, but he is destined live for ever. In Mariana, the world of make-believe is taken to its logical conclusion – which is (terrifyingly!) ridiculous.

These stories span the period from the end of the Second World War in the nineteen forties to the cold war period of the early seventies: and many of the stories reflect the concerns of the era in their content and intent. Sanity and Wanted: An Enemy are straightforward in their concern with war and world domination. The Foxholes of Mars and The Big Trek are essentially moralizing stories about war, even with their SF setting – and I found them rather mediocre.

Leiber’s concerns about right-wing America are reflected in Coming Attraction, Poor Superman and America the Beautiful. In two of these stories, the protagonist is British, and the story is essentially a look at one’s own country through foreign eyes. Even though the Soviet Union is a thing of history and the cold war is largely forgotten, these stories remain chilling remainders of where humanity can go when bigotry and paranoia is allowed to dominate – something which is very valid almost all of the “liberal” democracies today.

Fritz Leiber is also a terrific satirist. As a person who grew up in the late sixties and early seventies, the story Rum-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee was especially hilarious for me: new age philosophy, modern art, jazz music and pop psychology are all put together in a hilarious romp of a tale and lampooned. But for all that, it is still a valid fantasy. The same is also true for The Night He Cried, where Mickey Spillane and his brand of hard-boiled detective fiction is mercilessly slaughtered.

There were also a couple of stories I could not quite “get” - Little Miss Macbeth and the multi-award-winning novella Gonna Roll the Bones. However, this is not to take away from the power of these stories: only a confession of the limitations of my aesthetic sensitivities.

***

Running across all these stories is the common theme of human existence, the sheer joy of it, even in extremely adverse conditions. This is the real courage to live, as epitomised by the scientist holding on on a destroyed earth in A Pail of Air:

Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, then he has to toss it to someone else. When it’s tossed you way, you’ve got to catch it and hold it tight – and hope there’ll be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave.

If I should choose one passage to describe Fritz Leiber’s philosophy (if there is such a thing!), this would be it.

***

Fritz Leiber says:

All I ever try to write is a good story with a good measure of strangeness in it. The supreme goddess of universe is Mystery, and being well entertained is the highest joy.

Any perceptive reader, I feel, would agree wholeheartedly with the entertainment part.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Best of Fritz Leiber was the second volume (following Stanley G. Weinbaum) in Ballantine's (before they changed their name to Del Rey) "Best of..." series, and in a way, it was the most disappointing of the lot for me. It doesn't live up to its title. It has some very good stories, a couple of great stories, a few okay stories... but in no way is it comprehensively Leiber's best. There are none of his dark fantasies or horror stories or Nehwon tales... Good book but mislabeled. There's a good Change War story, Try and Change the Past, his Hugo-winning Gonna Roll the Bones from Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, the classic A Pail of Air, and other good ones like Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee, A Deskful of Girls, Space-Time for Springers, Poor Superman, etc., but his real best was far better.

[Ira (SF Words of Wonder) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fritz has incredible range and style. He can write fantasy, horror and science fiction and blends these genres into works that truly unique. This collection of short stories were a bit hit or miss for me. Some of my favorites were, A Pail of Air, The Ship Sails at Midnight, The Enchanted Forest, and Space-Time for Springers. A few that were sort of memorable are, Wanted – An Enemy, Coming Attraction, Mariana and The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity. I didn’t really care for the rest, one of his most popular short stories from Dangerous Visions, Gonna Roll the Bones I’ve never really cared for, it has style but that’s about it.

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some classic SF short stories. "Gonna Roll the Bones" is roughly The Seventh Seal with craps instead of chess... an effective piece of magical realism that won him a Nebula. But my favorite is "A Pail of Air", a kind of "Little House in Near Interstellar Space". The Earth has somehow been pulled out of its orbit, and the outdoor temperature has dropped to a few degrees Kelvin. All the atmosphere has frozen and is lying on the ground, layered according to the condensation points of its different constituents with a thin slick of liquid helium on top. Laura goes out in her space-suit to get a pail of air...

[Dee Eisel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate writing this review, because it makes me feel the way some other works of great literature feel: I can see why it's amazing, but it leaves me cold. And that's a shame, because I desperately want to like Fritz Leiber. He was far ahead of his time, a fantastic writer, and from all reports everywhere a good man. I just can't get into him.

The Best of Fritz Leiber has a number of stories that on paper, I should like. The plots read as fun plots, the characterization is clear and the writing crisp. This volume doesn't contain any of his Nehwon Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, which is as well for me. I appreciate the fact they were supposed to be funny and their value as a foundation of the swashbuckling hero. I just can't get into the woman-lolling-on-the-arm-of-the-barbarian stuff. (I can't get into Conan either.)

There is some good work here. "Spacetime for Springers," for one, really stretches the boundaries of SF and fantasy. Nowadays books written from the point of view of animals are more common, but this tale is one of the best. I recommend reading it. "The Man Who Never Grew Young" is beautifully sad. And, for what it's worth, the introduction by Poul Anderson is hilarious in its pomposity.

I wish this worked better for me. Leiber seems to be like Joyce: I can see all of the reasons to read him, but they just never gel into something I can enjoy. I highly recommend other people give him a try!

Four of Five Stars, because it IS classic and IS well-written and someone else might love it!

[Serdar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rates as highly as it does for the sake of three stories in it.

The first is "The Man Who Never Grew Young," encountered by me at some tender young age in "The Arbor House Treasury Of Modern Science Fiction." That story alone would have guaranteed Leiber some slice of immortality pie. (What do you say when Ray Bradbury wishes he'd written it?)

The second is "Gonna Roll The Bones", a verbally pyrotechnic fantasy of the highest order that showed up in Harlan Ellison's "Dangerous Visions".

Third is "The Ship Sails At Midnight." The premise isn't groundbreaking, but the execution, and the implications of the combination of the two, are what make it stand out. If I imagined anyone else wishing they'd written this, it would probably be Theodore Sturgeon.

The rest are okay-to-very good -- some topically dated, but all with a certain zing and sting that are worth studying.

[Steve Merrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fritz Leiber is long gone now, but the language and writing style are as mind blowing as some of the subjects and concepts he was playing with. The stories in this compilation literally cut across his entire career from 1944 through to 1970. Using words like enjoyable or engrossing really don't cut it for a review of this book. It's intoxicating, It's addictive, and like much of his other work its in a class of its own.

Trust me and read it.


Note; Just saw that it has no author written in the box above. Hmmm I think it was all written by none other than Fritz Leiber! ;-)

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some great stories in this compilation, but there are just as many that fall flat with nebulous and/or complex ideas condensed into the short story format. Maybe it would have been stronger as a whole had it not been hand-curated by the author.

[Ray Savarda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a good read. Kept my interest all the way thru, the stories for the most part have held up well over the years. Recommended.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last summer I found a whole stack of vintage science fiction paperbacks in a yard sale type situation, and ever since I've been slowly reading through them, alternating them with other books and for the most part thoroughly enjoying even the bad stuff as windows into a vanished world. This selection of short stories was an intriguing mix - some gems that have aged quite well, and some oddball lumps of coal that don't quite work anymore.

Fritz Lieber was a towering titan of genre fiction, casting a nearly Tolkien-sized shadow over pulp fantasy, having coined the term "sword and sorcery" to describe his adventure tales of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. I've still never read any of those, as they don't make an appearance here, but Lieber's talents also ranged over science fiction, horror, and the theater, so no one collection could fully encompass his oeuvre. Even here, in a group of ostensibly science-fiction focused tales, we have a wide range of approaches. Again, some are pretty great, while others are somewhat clunky.

These stories can be pictured on a continuum: at one end, the classic sort of rockets-and-rayguns story you might expect from Asimov or Clarke. These straightforward narratives (such as "Wanted - An Enemy" and "Coming Attraction") hinge on predictions about future society and the the perils of high technology, and they are where I find Leiber at his weakest. There's nothing wrong with these stories, but they pale in comparison to the stuff at the other end of the spectrum.

On the opposite end are the lyrical, dreamlike, weird tales, like the standout first story, "Gonna Roll The Bones", which reads like a feverish fable of bayou black magic. Even a story like "The Big Trek", which starts with the trappings of conventional space opera (a lost astronaut on a barren world), soon disintegrates into gonzo poetry (an endless conga line of marching alien animals, headed for a giant hole in the sky). These stories don't resolve nicely, don't come with pre-supplied lessons or morals, and are by far the best of the bunch. They recall the short fiction of PK Dick or JG Ballard; unsettling sketches of weird worlds that aren't exactly supposed to be our own future, but might be parables, fantasies, warnings, or some uneasy mixture of these. There are strong elements of myth and magical realism that elevate these stories beyond what you might expect from pulp magazine fiction.

While there was a lot of high-quality "hard" science fiction in the 1960s and 70s, I'm finding it more interesting to read examples of authors messing around at the boundaries of genre, where the latent elements of horror and fantasy underpinning science fiction start to bleed to the surface. Here you can really see science fiction as a medium changing and mutating in the psychedelic melting pot of the late 60s, reflecting the tumultuous cultural shifts already underway. It was a more hopeful time in some ways, although the anxieties depicted in these stories point clearly toward the incomprehensible future that we are even now trying to grapple with.

It is perhaps an irony that those writers at the semi-fantastical end of the science fiction pool ended up being far more prescient than their more "realistic" counterparts, but maybe that's always the way - the future can't be apprehended in terms of our present rational concepts, but comes to light in the lurid, flashing images of our more unsettling dreams.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A 1974 collection of short stories, edited by Angus Wells with a foreword by Leiber. The stories span from 1940-1970, but the majority are from the 50s, with a handful from the 40s and 60s. 

Standout stories:

**WANTED - AN ENEMY** (1945)

A man from Earth with the ability to travel freely through space visits Mars and attempts to persuade the telepathic, ant-like creatures living there to affect an invasion of Earth so humanity can unite, and so end all wars. This is, of course, a naïve outlook, but regardless, he fails to persuade the Martians - even with the promise of loot and knowledge an invasion would bring them. In anger, the Earthling taunts the ants that by leaving humanity to continue warring and thus advance their weaponry, they open themselves up to an invasion of Mars in the future. The ants then decide to invade Earth for real and destroy humanity to end the threat before it materialises, leaving the Earth man to despair at what he's just done. The end portents that, in his effort to end war, the Earth man has inadvertently caused even more.

I also appreciated what I suspected was a reference to the radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, the broadcast of which was so realistic it convinced listeners that the Earth was truly under attack.


**THE SHIP SAILS AT MIDNIGHT** (1950)

A group of four young intellectual types meet a mysterious woman working at a diner, who ignites their passions and enhances the results of their creative pursuits. It is revealed however that, unknown to the rest, each of the group has had romantic relations with the woman and the group's possessive and jealous side is revealed. 

This is set against a backdrop - established in the opening lines - of UFOs dotting the skies above their town. It was pretty obvious that the woman had come from one of these craft, but when one of the woman's companions arrives to bring her home, she is reluctant. ‘The Stranger’, as he is referred to, questions why she would want to stay on Earth with these ‘barbarians’, an insult that shortly after comes to ring true when one of the group shoots and kills the woman out of anger at her deception.

It was in this story which I thought was some of Leiber's more beautiful writing, and it's also one that I thought had the most potential of being a full novel, or perhaps a film adaptation.

A fair few of the stories were odd, bewildering, or with which I simply did not resonate. However, short story collections are by their nature hit and miss, it's just a matter of whether there are enough hits - and I think my experience with this one was hampered by my reading through it too fast, though that was partially a result of me being eager to get to a story I enjoyed as much as the above-mentioned. Many stories in this collection are concerned with first contact of some sort, one theme I could identify as being overarching. Leiber is more celebrated for his fantasy though, so maybe that is where he shines more.

[Joseph Carrabis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a fan of Fritz Leiber per se, although I do enjoy some of his work. This collection contains A Pail of Air and Gonna Roll The Bones (which took me at least five reads to figure out). Some of these stories are standouts, some are so-so.
Two things struck me in this reading. One, you can tell when a story was written because someone asked for a story versus Leiber had something to say. The energy is completely different. Read his notes after you've read the stories and that difference in voice and tone is borne out. Two, I read a few of these stories simultaneously with my study of Truman Capote's work and it fascinated me to see similar descriptive techniques and methods used by both authors. This fascination is indicative of my prejudice more than much else; they came from the same era, probably had similar education, so their references would be similar. Still, to see it in such completely different authors revealed much to me.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is only the second book by Leiber I've read, but he is quickly becoming one of my very favorite SFF authors alongside Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler. Here Leiber curates a collection of his own best stories (with rather tongue-in-cheek author notes at the end of the volume recounting some slim details or inspiration and what others had to say about his effort). The work here is uniformly excellent. There really wasn't a bad story here, which is almost statistically impossible with a fiction collection, but I was onboard for everything. Even though a couple of the stories are pure entertainment, they are written so effectively and with such originality that I enjoyed them as much as the weightier pieces. The best bit of insight Leiber provides into his writing technique is the central focus on the visual, what can be seen. Thinking back on his stories after reading that, I can easily recall vivid imaginings of all his stories due to his attention to visual detail. It's hard to fathom why more of his work hasn't been adapted for the screen. After Ted Chiang, Fritz Leiber is the sci-fi/fantasy author I would most want to emulate in my own fiction. This is must read.

[Carlo Fontecedro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nella maggior parte dei racconti, scritti e tradotti magnificamente , Leiber prova a dimostrare di essere il più intelligente della stanza, perdendo il divertimento che caratterizza le storie dei suoi personaggi più celebri (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser). Peccato .

[JM · Rating 2 out of 5]

L

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful collection of Leiber's best work. A Science Fiction Book Club selection.

[Des · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't find these nearly as readable as his classic fantasy stories. Had trouble getting into most of the tales.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of these stories are more slice of life than narrative.

These are a grave reflection of the pessimism of some people during the times Leiber wrote. In one story there was a hint of optimism when, even in the wake of a Third World War, we still managed to have regular trips to Mars, but that hope was quickly dashed. The most optimistic is probably “A Pail of Air” for its portrayal of the resilience of the human spirit.

A Third World War ushers in a priesthood of intellectuals, ruling mankind with trickery.

For unknown reasons, mankind has petered out so that every survivor has their own city and everyone is happy with the solitude.

On the other hand the final story does have a Dallas-London rocket by the year 2000. It also has an extraordinarily puritanical Britisher who sees Puritanism everywhere but home.

The best stories are the oddest as well. The man who never grew young; A pail of air; Space-time for springers; and Mariana.

The biggest flaw is that the characters have a tendency to pontificate too much. Leiber is too good a writer to use his characters as mouthpieces—they are far too flawed and often satirically ridiculous to believe—but too much pontificating is still skim-worthy.

[Ketan Shah]

A good collection of Fritz Leiber's short stories from 1944 to 1970.He easily skips between the fantasy,SF and horror genres with some standout stories. Marianna is like a proto Philip K Dick story,while the Man who Never Grew Youngreads like vintage Ray Bradbury.My personal favourite is the whimsical yet sad Space Time for Springers,which makes Leiber the only writer I know,other than Cordwainer Smith,to incorporate cats and SF into surprisingly compelling stories.My other favourite is Coming Attraction,which reads like alternate reality noir fiction.The Ship sails at Midnight seems like a product of the 60's or the 70's rather than it's 1950 publication date,and it makes a great point about the possessiveness of human nature.Some of the stories are of a distinctly throwaway variety ,but all in all this is still a worthwhile collection as Leiber hasn't been anthologised as much as some other wiriters of his era.If you enjoyed this,you'd probably enjoy the short fiction of Robert Silverberg,Frederik Pohl,and definitely Theodore Sturgeon.Philip K Dick's earlier short stories might also appeal.

[Raj · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've not read much Leiber before but I'm really glad I picked up this volume (another of the many that I got from Jonathan). It presents Leiber's pick of his short stories from when he started writing in the '40s to the book's publication in the '70s, with the bulk of the selection being from the '50s.

Some of the writing reminded me heavily (and in a good way) of Ray Bradbury. He has the same fun with language and the stories tend to linger in the mind. His dystopian visions of future America's are both insightful and disturbing, while his more playful stories are fun, even when you do figure out the twist beforehand. Particular gems are 'The Ship Sails at Midnight', 'A Pail of Air' (which I've read anthologised several times), 'Space-Time for Springers', 'Little Old Miss Macbeth', and 'Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee'.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leiber is quite the writer. The three-star rating really does his writing no justice, but the content itself, a bit uneven is what drives me to rate it so. It started at a nice trot with an interesting take on gambling in a fantasy-land, but some stories sauntered while others galloped. "A Pail of Air" and "The Man Who Never Grew Young" are stand-outs in particular, a fresh perspective on science fiction and fantasy that is rarely seen in this sort of anthology. Others, however, seemed a bit showy in places and were clearly 'written.' For the most part, I enjoyed it and want to read more of Leiber's work. Perhaps I had some high expectations given the recommendations and overall I wasn't disappointed, but anthologies lend themselves to unevenness, and this book is no exception.

[Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally didn't dislike any of the stories in this collection, but they didn't all astound me like I was hoping. Some of that is probably because these were primarily Lieber's more science fiction (or science fantasy, as he calls them in the afterword) works instead of his ghost stories or dark fantasies like the Fafrd and the Grey Mouser stories. There were a few, like The Long Walk, that I really liked though, and Poor Superman I decided I especially liked after I found out it was based on L. Ron Hubbard, who Lieber refers to as the author of "that damnable book Dianetics" in the afterword.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lieber is another SF author with whom I am/was woefully under-acquainted.
I'd read "Roll the Bones" in Dangerous Visions some time ago, and "Pail of Air" in some school anthology many moons ago & a couple of other stories seemed vaguely familiar. Good, dark stories with the occasional twist. Reminded me a bit of Sturgeon, for the most part. Definitely someone I'll have to explore further.

[Gregory K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is a set of stories from the golden age of science fiction. If you enjoy science fiction with a definite 1960s flavor to it then I recommend this book. All of the stories in it are unique and interesting as well as wonderfully entertaining. I would recommend borrowing this book though rather than buying a copy since most of the stories are built around mysterious elements that, once revealed, lower the re-read value of those stories.

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

(FIRST READING: * * * * *)

My favorites here: "The Man Who Never Grew Young," "The Ship Sails At Midnight" (very intriguing indeed, although I didn't recall it from my previous reading), "Coming Attraction" (of course), "A Pail of Air" and "Mariana." A coupla duds too ("The Enchanted Forest" and "The Foxholes of Mars"). Fortunately they didn't include any of that Grey Mouser stuff. Rather goofy and blathering intro by Poul Anderson.

[David Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't read any Leiber, making the excellence of this story collection all the sweeter. Neat ideas, deft prose. I liked almost every story here, and a few of them -- "The Man Who Never Grew Young," with its backward history; "Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee," a satire on modern art; and "Space-Time for Springers," told from a cat's point of view -- are astonishing.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

[from my book lover's journal; presumably written months after reading it]
I took this one back to the library too soon, but i liked at least one of the stories enough to recall its title & plot: "A Pail Full of Air" (or is it "Bucket"?). I also remembered one about the magic inkspot/phrase/beat.

[Kevin Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have not liked Leiber's award winning SF: The Wanderer was awful and The Big Time mediocre. This collection of short stories was more enjoyable, and gave me hope for Fafhrd and Gray Mouser (what I have heard is his best).

[Lili · Rating 2 out of 5]

Favorite stories: Gonna Roll the Bones, The Man Who Never Grew Young, The Ship Sails at Midnight, A Pail of Air, Poor Superman, Space-Time for Springers and perhaps The Man Who Made Friends With Electricity.