Nominations for Group Read

[Dan]

Our first group read will be in Summer 2019, which starts June 21, 2019 and goes through September 23 this year. What novel or story collection should we read together as our first group read of Fritz Leiber's fiction?

I'll not put any restrictions on length, date published, or anything like that, but just leave it wide open. All I'll say is that I think as we become more active we'll probably pick up more members over the coming months. Fritz Leiber, if the number of retro Hugos he keeps winning is any standard, is a surprisingly popular author today, especially given how many years he has been deceased. Let's go with a work that really helps new readers best access Fritz Leiber.

Since there are so few of us currently, let's limit things to one nomination per member. Please use the add book/author feature when making your nominations to save me some work. I anticipate from June 3-June 13 taking nominations, and from June 14-19 running the poll. We'll have a winner at 12:01 a.m. EST on June 21.

[[deleted user]]

I certainly have my favorites, but I do not want to influence the voting, so I will sit back and see what nominations come in.

Charles

[[deleted user]]

Hi David,
It is great to see you here. I think your reasoning is spot on. I too, believe that Swords Against Death is the best collection to start Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with. Dan, this short story collection has all the qualities you wanted for a first read.

[[deleted user]]

Hi Scott,
It is great to make your acquaintance. I have to say though, you, my friend, are a rarity among F&GM readers. :) Welcome to the group.

[Dan]

Welcome, David. Glad you joined us. Your nomination of Swords Against Death is noted.

[[deleted user]]

Hey, Dan. David actually nominated Swords Against Death. I would have linked it in here, but I could not figure out how to do that with the mobile app.

[Dan]

Okay, Charles and David, thanks. I edited message 8 to correct the entry.

[Dan]

Charles wrote: "I certainly have my favorites, but I do not want to influence the voting, so I will sit back and see what nominations come in.

Charles"

I think it perfectly okay to make nominations as moderator and will make mine soon. I have found that people vote for the book they most want to read, not a book just because their moderator selected it. I wouldn't have it any other way! Besides, more book nominations make for more fun polls. Bottom line: I say go for it, make a nomination.

[Dan]

Fritz is a perennial favorite when it comes time to award Retro Hugos. These are awarded for years ago (50, 75, or 100) before the Hugo awards existed. Leiber has had eight works (so far!) nominated for Retro Hugos: Destiny Times Three (4th place), "Coming Attraction" (2nd place), The Automatic Pistol, The Bleak Shore, and "The Sunken Land" (4th place). For this year, "Thieves' House", Gather, Darkness! and Conjure Wife, all of which were published in 1943, are finalists for the retro Hugo. Voting closes July 31 after which I imagine announcements will be made.

The only thing I don't like about this turn of developments is that they are not voting on the version of Conjure Wife that appeared in the April 1943 issue of Unknown Worlds. They are voting instead on the revised and expanded version that appeared as a stand-alone novel in 1953.

I have read stories expanded into novels before: Ender's Game, Flowers for Algernon, and Hawksbill Station. Sometimes the story version is better; sometimes the novel is better. It depends on the author's skill at adding more details a reader wants to know. In this case, without having read either version, I suspect Leiber's story version (1943) of Conjure Wife is probably superior to the novel version (1953). I think this because I've read criticisms of the 1953 novel as being overly wordy and having narrative passages longer than they needed to be.

Speaking of "overly wordy," all this is prolegomena for my nomination of Conjure Wife as this Summer's group read, either or both versions. I suspect this novel is going to win outright first place this year's retro hugo award (that's just my guess) is one reason I wish to nominate it. Another is that while many of us may have read the novel version, I suspect none of us have read the novella version. So that gives us all something new we can read. Here's a link to the 1943 version, if interested: https://archive.org/details/Unknown_v...

[Dan]

To the best of my knowledge the shorter version appeared only once--in the April 1943 issue of Unknown Worlds--and was never reprinted. The only version 99% or more of humanity still alive who have read Conjure Wife is no doubt the expanded and revised version.

[Dan]

Fritz in a 1992 interview mentioned The Big Time as one of the works he's proudest of.

[[deleted user]]

These are all great nominations so far! Stephen King has said that "without Conjure Wife there is no Rosemary's Baby or The Stepford Wives." It is that much of a groundbreaking classic. I absolutely love The Big Time. I did not get all the layers on the first read. Of course, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is what Leiber is best known for, and Swords Against Death is the best compilation to introduce new readers to Leiber and the twain. Probably not this round, but Our Lady of Darkness will absolutely have to be one of our reads before we are done. It is one of his best but can wait until we get to the advanced reading. :) Gather Darkness! will have to be a future choice as well. There are dozens of gems in his short story cannon which I cannot wait until we get to. Stories like "Yesterday House," "Midnight by the Morphy Watch," "Diary in the Snow," "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes," "A Deskful of Girls," "Gonna Roll the Bones," and "Black Glass." Perhaps this is the true reason I am staying out of the nominations so far . . . I can't decide!

[[deleted user]]

Scott wrote: "I just acquired Our Lady of Darkness for another group's read, but I'll save it for this one."

It will be worth it. ;)

[Dan]

If you choose to read the 1943 version of Conjure Wife, you don't have to make it 100 pages in. It's over after exactly 70.

[Robert]

I would also nominate Swords Against Death if Lankhmar stories are the desired read. Although it doesn't contain the twain's first adventure, it contains the one first written by Fritz (Jewels in the Forest), and, apart from Ill Met in Lankhmar, is the best introduction to the adventures, in my opinion. Otherwise, I would perhaps recommend a series of stories, like the Change War stories collection. Some of my favorite stories are barely available to the public, such as Black Glass and The Button Moulder. As long as everyone has read all of the Lankhmar stories, I would recommend the paperback collection, Heroes and Horrors, one of the best collections of Leiber's works (but the two Lankhmar stories, which are two of his best later ones, contain a spoiler for someone that hasn't read all the stories). Available for about $5.50 used on Amazon. HEROES:

"Sea Magic" [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story, first published in The Dragon Magazine, December 1977]
"The Mer She" [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser original story]

HORRORS

"A Bit of the Dark World" (1962)
"Belsen Express" (1975)
"Midnight in the Mirror World" (1964)
"Richmond, Late September, 1849" (1969)
"Midnight by the Morphy Watch" (1974)
"The Terror from the Depths" (1976)
"Dark Wings" (1976)

[[deleted user]]

Robert wrote: "I would also nominate Swords Against Death if Lankhmar stories are the desired read. Although it doesn't contain the twain's first adventure, it contains the one first written by Fritz (Jewels in t..."

That is a great collection to recommend, Robert. My only concern, as you say, is that the two F&GM stories that it contains are from the last chapter of their adventures. Otherwise, that is a choice collection of supernatural horror stories. Perhaps, if it makes this round or a future round that occurs before the F&GM collections, we could recommend just reading the "Horrors" and skipping the "Heroes" for the time?

I have "Black Glass" in his Ghost Light collection. I really enjoy his relaxed later period and this is an intriguing story. Its plot structure reminds me of an H. P. Lovecraft story. I believe it was "He"? If I remember correctly, both have the protagonist following a strange person whose geomantic meanderings lead him not just through the space of the city but to a different time. I really fancy the concept of time travel through geomancy. If you trace just the right path, the next step will lead you into the 1905 grand opening of the subway station! Stuff like that is just fun!

[Dan]

"The Jewels in the Forest" also known later as "Two Sought Adventure" was not only Leiber's first published F&GM story, it was his first published story in the genre of speculative fiction. I found it available for free in the magazine it originally appeared in, the August 1939 issue of Unknown here (you have to click the hyperlink below the magazine rather than the magazine cover itself): http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/

[Richard]

Is it appropriate to nominate the Hugo prize winning novel "The Wanderer"?

I have read a French translation of "Conjure wife" when I was much, much younger, teens or early 20s and I absolutely loved it! I don't know this author much though but I am trying to read all Hugo awards anyways, so...

Anybody read "The Night of the Long Knives"? Is it any good?

[Dan]

Richard wrote: "Is it appropriate to nominate the Hugo prize winning novel "The Wanderer"?"

Nomination The Wanderer noted. If it's written at least in part by Fritz, and it's a novel or story collection, it's appropriate here. Welcome, Richard.

[[deleted user]]

David wrote: "I have a confession to make, in re: both Conjure Wife and The Big Time, which may prove me to be unfit as a member of this group, or at least unworthy to bear the mantle of "Fritz Leiber fan" :-)....."

Don't feel bad, David. I consider myself a super-fan of Leiber and yet there are books of his that I have abandoned. I could not make it through The Wanderer, The Green Millennium, nor A Specter is Haunting Texas. I stopped short on each of them. I just could not get into them.

Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:

The fact is, Leiber was constantly pushing the boundaries, trying new things, and experimenting. This is part of why he was so great. He was never satisfied to repeat what others had done or what he had done. Modern authors such as Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, and Neil Gaiman have all pointed out how much they and other authors owe to Leiber's trailblazing. On the flip side, sometimes that experimentation flopped, or at the very least is so variable as to be unpalatable at times.

We all know that Leiber wrote fantasy, science fiction, and horror, and he won major awards in all three genres. He was also a bit of a stylistic chameleon. In the introduction to The Best of Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson implores us to figure "out how Leiber managed to convey the flavor of his model while avoiding all its crudities, outdoing Burroughs in every way that counts," when Leiber wrote Tarzan and the City of Gold. In The Big Time, Leiber tries out a very stylized first-person narrative to break out of a dry period. So you may be reacting to that very different style than what you are used to. In The Wanderer, Leiber interweaves fifteen different plots in sequential order (Ted Gioia). This might be what put me off of that one. :) But you have to admire his chutzpah to tackle such a challenge.

With experimentation, there are going to be duds, but when he succeeds, oh how does he succeed!

[[deleted user]]

David wrote: "I don't feel like reading them in internal chronological order is all that important..."

Yeah, on second thought, I believe you are right. All the F&GM stories are pretty well self-contained and spoilers are not really much of a problem with them. Both are good yarns to boot. So let's make it official and have Heroes and Horrors officially nominated.

Charles

[Dan]

Instead of, or in addition to Swords Against Death?

[[deleted user]]

In addition. David nominated Swords Against Death and Robert suggested Heroes and Horrors. If he didn't nominate it, I will.