Ships to the Stars

by Fritz Leiber

This volume assembled six of Leiber's classic works: "Dr. Kometevsky's Day," "The Big Trek," "The Enchanted Forest," "Deadly Moon," "The Snowbank Orbit," and "The Ship Sails at Midnight."

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction

158 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

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

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ships to the Stars is a collection of six stories that was first published by Ace in 1964 as half of one of their Double books. (The Million Year Hunt, a novel by Kenneth Bulmer, was on the flip side.) The stories were all reprinted from science fiction magazines from 1950 - '62; there's one each from Fantastic Stories, Galaxy, F & SF, Astounding, Fantastic Adventures, and If, which strikes me as kind of unusual. They're good and entertaining work, but none that I'd rank as his very best. My favorites here are The Enchanted Forest and The Ship Sails at Midnight.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six stories, longer than many short stories of this era. All are worth reading, but the last of the collection, The Ship Sails at Midnight, has an unusually hefty emotional punch.

[Viktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small collection of Lieber's -- 6 stories in all. Three of them are also in "The Best of FL".
What was interesting to me was "Deadly Moon" because it's an obvious precursor to his novel "The Wanderer".

I'd recently read several FL ss collections prior to this one, and this one came up a bit lacking. But in hindsight, it's pretty darned good. With a FL collection, maybe each story isn't a 5* -- some stories kinda klunk along, some are very Overtaken By Events, many are full of telepathy and pseudo-science -- but the overall impression is that of a helluva fine story-teller. Even though "Dead Moon" isn't all that good -- ok, it sucks -- I found it to still be fun knowing that "The Wanderer" was on FL's horizon.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of six short science fiction stories from the 50's and early 60's.
In "Dr Kometevsky's Day", the citizens of a future earth find out more about their solar system than imagined. In "The Big Trek", a man finds himself among a group of unknown aliens on a desolated earth, but cannot remember why.
"The Enchanted Forest" gives us Elven, a fugitive who crash landed on a rustic, surreal planet. "The Deadly Moon" tells of moon phobias, and possible reasons why. In "The Snowbank Orbit", spacemen run into some truly alien aliens. And, in "The Ship
Sails at Midnight", a small group of intellectuals meet an extraordinary woman, who seemed to come from nowhere.
The collection is a quick nostalgic read into a wild, trippy future that cannot be found in any film or Tv show.

[colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read 05.02.84