Review of The Mind Spider and Other Stories by Fritz Leiber

More than once on this blog I have compared writers' efforts to artists. Working from a central concept, sketches and ideas are played out in various forms, testing the proverbial waters, as it were, of the concept. Many older readers of science fiction are familiar with Fritz Leiber's The Big Time. It's central concept is the Change War, an eternal war between the Snakes and Spiders that takes place in and out of time and space. Rays shooting off in multiple directions from this concept are the stories in the collection The Mind Spider and Other Stories (1961).

The collection kicks off with “Haunted Future”, which is in fact a series of vignettes that act as commentary on the degree and speed of change that technology’s evolution has brought to humanity, particularly its utopian drive. While this would perhaps be a more powerful story when unpacked to novella length, what exists effectively pushes and recognizes the human side of said change. Nicely understated. A story more obviously set in the world of The Big Time, “Damnation Morning” begins with a man awakening from a hangover to discover a woman, seeming from another time and place beckoning. He goes with her, and their learns about the Change War dimension. Curious how it relates to his real world, she shows him, and a deeper reality comes available, literally and figuratively. Given Leiber’s personal issues, one can’t help but feel strong autobiographical elements.

In “The Oldest Soldier”, the bravura in a bar among a group of soldiers spills over into a manly test to prove who is right. Dark horror if anything else, the soldier proven wrong may have wished it another way. Another soldier in the Change War taking center stage, “Try and Change the Past”, this one decides to use time travel as a means of reversing what got him into the war to begin with. Switching points on the railroad track of time proves not as easy as he thinks, however.

The most digressive story in the collection, in “The Number of the Beast” Leiber attempts to use the Change War setting to tell a locked room mystery—of sorts. It’s primary substance more based on the device than thought provoking, this is the collection's most forgettable story. And telepathy, uggh... But wait, there's more in the title story, “The Mind Spider”. Not doing the Change War concept justice, it tells of a family of telepaths who they think they are the only such people on earth. They are the only people, but there is also an alien, a phlegmatic one at that. Not exactly a fireworks show to cap the collection...

As stated in the intro, The Mind Spider and Other Stories is essentially multiple different angles on the The Big Time concept. Perhaps more precisely stated, it's as if Leiber tired to combine the Change War with various other modes and devices: telepathy, alien encounter, military fiction, mystery. Some are more successful than others, depending on readers' expectations, resulting in a mix. Readers coming from The Big Time may not appreciate the simpler conceits, whereas readers coming in wet behind the ears may like that precise subset of stories.

The following are the six stories collected in The Mind Spider and Other Stories:

Haunted Future

Damnation Morning

The Oldest Soldier

Try and Change the Past

The Number of the Beast

The Mind Spider