Fritz
Leiber was one of the genre’s most versatile writers. Writing literary fiction at times, and pulp
epic fantasy at others to keep the bills paid, he was also fully capable of
writing horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Capitalizing on the most recognized of his output, in
1979 Gollancz published a sampler of the author’s award-winning work. Ship of
Shadows brings together short stories, a novelette, novellas and a short
novel that won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, or Locus awards—some more
than one. Featuring atypical horror, the
Weird, supernatural, alternate history, a deal with the devil, literary science
fiction, sword and sorcery (a Fafhrd and
Gray Mouser story, to be exact), the following is a review of the six
selections.
Ship of Shadows opens with the
eponymous novella. Though technically
horror, it remains a highly original, Weird text with a science fiction motif. The story of the poor-sighted
janitor named Spar who works at a space station bar, his life is anything by
normal. Drunk half the time and having
few friends who respect him, his daily tasks put him in contact with a wide
variety of characters on the gravity-less station, including a talking
cat. Strange events occurring with
increasing rapidity around the supplicant, old man, Spar soon finds himself in
the thick of danger—whether he wants it or not.
Leiber escalating the story wonderfully, what begins as obtuse threads
waving disparately in the breeze are slowly braided into a yarn that has the
reader in pure wonder as to what will happen next. (See here for a longer review of the story on
this blog.)
“Catch
that Zeppelin!” is one man’s account of a bizarre experience he has walking the
bustling streets of NYC one day. Going back in time to 1937, an alternate
history scenario wherein the narrator morphs into Adolf Hitler becomes the new
reality. A restaurant discussion with
his son (Dolfy) about the situations that could have been were events in
history to have passed differently (e.g. Marie Curie, instead of the story’s
Edison, gasoline powered cars instead of electric, the allies allowing
armistice at the end of WWI instead of forcing unconditional surrender, etc.)
ensuing, Leiber bursts the doors of possibility wide open. Though innumerable ideas exist in parallel,
getting one through the door of reality remains the difference, allowing Leiber
to interrogate technical advances through the lenses of real and alternate
history to strong effect.
Deal-with-the-devil
stories are a sub-genre of literature as a whole, and “Gonna Roll the Bones”, the
story of the poor miner Joe Slattermill and his trip to the local casino one
night, is Leiber’s addition. The
hostesses and barmaids, dealers and other gamblers evoking an evil circus
atmosphere, Slattermill seems not to notice as he settles himself into the
first craps table. Considering himself
an expert shooter, he works his way from a handful of coins to a pile. But then he meets the best. Black holes for eyes, the Big Gambler settles
in to take his shots, and Slattermill is forced to ante up. From visuals to sub-text, structure to prose
“Gonna Roll the Bones” is a delicious bit of storytelling, and one of the best
deal-with-the-devil stories ever told.
An account
of their first meeting, Ill Met in
Lankhmar is chronologically the first story in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories though published much later than
when the duo first appeared in print.
Sword and sorcery adventure through and through, Leiber writes in a
‘high fantasy’ style that intentionally purples the warrior and thief’s first
heist, as well as the foggy, gloomy midnight streets of the titular city. Light fantasy fare, the novella serves not
only to introduce the two to each other, but the reader to Leiber’s take on
S&S. Popular amongst many readers, the duo’s adventures also serve as a
balance (including financially) to Leiber’s literary pursuits with genre. (See here for a longer review of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories on this
blog.)
Leiber
fascinated and horrified by the fascism and Nazism of his ancestral Germany,
“Belsen Express” is the Gothic-esque story of the haunted commuter, George
Simister, for whom the Nazi atrocities have a particularly painful
resonance. Historical and political
commentary, Leiber escalates the story one day at time in Simister’s a fine
sense of moody darkness. Evil lurking just off the page but never realized,
sometimes what’s inside is as scary as the outside.
Closing
out the collection is one of Leiber’s most well known novels, The Big Time. Technically a novella, the 100 page story
encompasses the past, present, and future in one place: an R&R station
outside the bounds of time where soldiers fighting in the great Change War come
to take a break from the action. Greta
Forzane one of the hostesses tasked with serving the soldiers, in the opening
pages three come in needing to relax: a Roman legionnaire, a Nazi SS, and a
British jack-of-all-trades. A ticking
nuclear bomb brought in soon thereafter, all manner of discussion on history,
culture, socio-politics, and war unravel as the group tries to defuse it. The Change War an uber-premise of far-reach,
Leiber handles it with relevancy, and for that, penned one of the greatest
sci-fi novels of the 1950s. (See here
for a longer review of the novel on this blog.)
In the
end, Ship of Shadows serves as a
superb introduction to the variety of genres and sub-genres Fritz Leiber wrote
within through the lens of the various awards he had won as of 1979. Wonderfully versatile, he was able to bring
differing styles to whatever he wrote, and in the process carve out a unique
place in the field. This place, unfortunately for Leiber, is more recognized as time goes on compared to when he was in his prime due to this inability to pigeonhole his writings. Thus, modern readers looking to
delve into Leiber’s fiction could do no better than to find this volume and
experience the quality of the writer for themselves.
Published
individually between 1958 and 1975, the following is the table of contents of Ship of Shadows:
“Catch
That Zeppelin!”
“Gonna
Roll the Bones”
“Belsen
Express”
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