Fritz Leiber 1910-92: A Profile
Science Fiction Writers of America's 5th Grand Master
J.K. Rowling's sold more books; Stephen King and Ray Bradbury have literary respectability; Isaac Asimov wrote SF, but is Fritz Leiber the greatest writer of them all?
It could be argued that Fritz Reuter Leiber, jnr is the greatest writer of the fantastic of them all.
Isaac Asimov has popularized science, J.K. Rowling has sold more books than any other writer, Stephen King and Ray Bradbury have achieved literary quasi-respectability. But they have all specialized in either SF, fantasy or horror, or a combination of two of the three sub-genres. None have covered the whole breadth of the fantastic. And none have so effectively reflected the anxieties of their times; the barely-sublimated sexual anxiety and backlash against women's liberation of the post-war 1940s, the McCarthy-ite witch-hunts of the 1950s; the heady optimism and subsequent slide into disillusionment of the 1960s and 70s. Leiber pinpointed all of these.
Fritz Leiber, jnr.Fritz Leiber, jnr was born to parents who were Shakespearean actors. Despite his comparatively bohemian early life, the adolescent and young-adult Leiber was crippled by repression. He wrote in an autobiographical essay in Ghost Light, "the most difficult aspect to write about...was sex." (p.254)
That repression was to ooze out in some of the most powerfully sexual stories of the 1950s -- amongst them the classic 'Coming Attraction' and 'A Deskful of Girls.'
Leiber admitted than he met his wife Jonquil, "we were both on the rebound...both so busy sympathizing and being gentle with each other that there was no time to be huffy or scared" (p.335)
The Big Time
By the time Leiber debuted in Unknown Worlds magazine in 1939, he was a newly-wed. In a field dominated by akward adolescents with minimal knowledge of the opposite sex, the urbane Leiber wrote sublime stories of domesticity such as the acclaimed Conjure Wife, which was to be filmed no less than three times between 1944 and 1980. That success continued with Gather Darkness in Astounding Science Fiction in August 1943, and other novels such as The Green Millenium.
By the time Leiber won his first Hugo in 1958 for The Big Time, he was acclaimed as one of the very best SF writers. Despite his personal life being less happy, he continued to write superb stories, including the Hugo-winning novel The Wanderer, and short fiction such as 'Gonna Roll The Bones' and 'Catch That Zeppelin!' Despite domestic stresses, Jonquil was his muse for thirty-plus years, the model for many of the women in his stories, and her early death in 1969 cut short the embryonic 'Ship of Shadows,' which in its truncated form won him another Hugo Award in 1970, and precipitated a three-year alcaholic binge.
In 1982, Leiber was voted the fifth SFWA Grand Master by his peers, the Science Fiction Writers of America. Five years earlier he had written his last great novel, Our Lady of Darkness, and his last decade was spent living simply and writing intermittently, including what was to be the final novel in the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series, 'The Knight and Knave of Swords.'
Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser
It's arguable that the Lankhmar series of fantasy stories, featuring barbarian-swordman Fafhrd and his thieving accomplice The Grey Mouser are Leiber's most enduring legacy. The characters were based on Leiber and his long-time friend Harry Otto Fischer, and filled seven books, influencing a whole sub-genre --sword and sorcery-- amongst them writers such as Michael Moorcock and Terry Pratchett. They are still in print, and as popular today as when first written.
It is this vast range, and the quality of his stories that underpin Leiber's claim to be the greatest writer of the fantastic of them all.
