(December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having coined the term. ==Life== Fritz Leiber was born December 24, 1910, in Chicago, Illinois, to the actors Fritz Leiber and Virginia Bronson Leiber.
roles which were in fact played by his father, Fritz Leiber Sr., who was the evil Inquisitor in the Errol Flynn adventure film The Sea Hawk (1940) and had played in many other movies from 1917 onwards until the late 1950s.
He spent 1928 touring with his parents' Shakespeare company (Fritz Leiber & Co.) before entering the University of Chicago, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received an undergraduate Ph.B.
of 160, just waiting for his ritual cup of coffee so that he can become human, too. His first stories in the 1930s and 40s were inspired by Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
degree in psychology and physiology or biology with honors in 1932.
Contains a wealth of critical essays on Leiber's work, together with three poems by Leiber: "Challenge", "Ghosts" and "The Grey Mouser". A bibliography of Leiber's work is Fritz Leiber: A Bibliography 1934–1979 by Chris Morgan (Birmingham, UK: Morgenstern, 1979).
He also appeared alongside his father in uncredited parts in several films, including George Cukor's Camille (1936), James Whale's The Great Garrick (1937) and William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). In 1936, he initiated a brief yet intense correspondence with H.
Campbell. Leiber married Jonquil Stephens on January 16, 1936; their only child, the philosopher and science fiction writer Justin Leiber, was born in 1938.
It is the elder Leiber, not the younger, who appears in the Vincent Price vehicle The Web (1947) and in Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947). The younger Leiber can be seen briefly, as Valentin, in the 1936 film version of Camille starring Greta Garbo, probably his most widely-seen film performance.
Lovecraftian novella written in 1936 and lost for decades Dark Ladies (NY: Tor Books, 1999).
Lovecraft, who "encouraged and influenced [Leiber's] literary development" before Lovecraft succumbed to small intestine cancer and malnutrition in March 1937.
From 1937 to 1941, he was employed by Consolidated Book Publishing as a staff writer for the Standard American Encyclopedia.
Campbell. Leiber married Jonquil Stephens on January 16, 1936; their only child, the philosopher and science fiction writer Justin Leiber, was born in 1938.
Leiber introduced Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in "Two Sought Adventure", his first professionally published short story in the August 1939 edition of Unknown, edited by John W.
Leiber also later wrote several essays on Lovecraft the man, such as "A Literary Copernicus" (1949), the publication of which formed a key moment in the emergence of a serious critical appreciation of Lovecraft's life and work. Leiber's first professional sale was "Two Sought Adventure" (Unknown, August 1939), which introduced his most famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
The first of them, "Two Sought Adventure", appeared in Unknown, August 1939.
A standalone edition of a short story originally published in the 1940s fanzine The Acolyte. The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich (1997) — H.
From 1937 to 1941, he was employed by Consolidated Book Publishing as a staff writer for the Standard American Encyclopedia.
In 1941, the family moved to California, where Leiber served as a speech and drama instructor at Occidental College during the 1941–1942 academic year. Unable to conceal his disdain for academic politics as the United States entered World War II, he decided that the struggle against fascism was more important than his long-held pacifist convictions.
Joshi, has singled out Leiber's "The Sunken Land" (Unknown Worlds, February 1942) as perhaps the most accomplished of the early stories based on Lovecraft's Mythos.
He accepted a position with Douglas Aircraft in quality inspection, primarily working on the C-47 Skytrain; throughout the war, he continued to regularly publish fiction in a variety of periodicals. Thereafter, the family returned to Chicago, where Leiber served as associate editor of Science Digest from 1945 to 1956.
During this decade (forestalled by a fallow interregnum from 1954 to 1956), his output (including the 1947 Arkham House anthology Night's Black Agents) was characterized by Poul Anderson as "a lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business".
Omnibus edition of Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness ===Collections=== Night's Black Agents (Arkham House, 1947).
roles which were in fact played by his father, Fritz Leiber Sr., who was the evil Inquisitor in the Errol Flynn adventure film The Sea Hawk (1940) and had played in many other movies from 1917 onwards until the late 1950s.
Beginning in the late 1950s, he was increasingly influenced by the works of Carl Jung, particularly by the concepts of the anima and the shadow.
Further novels followed during the 1950s, and in 1958 The Big Time won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Leiber published further books in the 1960s.
It deals with a futuristic world that follows the Second Atomic Age which is ruled by scientists, until in the throes of a new Dark Age, the witches revolt. In 1951, Leiber was Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention in New Orleans.
Leiber also challenged the conventions of science fiction through reflexive narratives such as "A Bad Day For Sales" (first published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1953), in which the protagonist, Robie, "America’s only genuine mobile salesrobot", references the title character of Isaac Asimov's idealistic robot story, "Robbie".
During this decade (forestalled by a fallow interregnum from 1954 to 1956), his output (including the 1947 Arkham House anthology Night's Black Agents) was characterized by Poul Anderson as "a lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business".
He accepted a position with Douglas Aircraft in quality inspection, primarily working on the C-47 Skytrain; throughout the war, he continued to regularly publish fiction in a variety of periodicals. Thereafter, the family returned to Chicago, where Leiber served as associate editor of Science Digest from 1945 to 1956.
During this decade (forestalled by a fallow interregnum from 1954 to 1956), his output (including the 1947 Arkham House anthology Night's Black Agents) was characterized by Poul Anderson as "a lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business".
In 1958, the Leibers returned to Los Angeles.
Further novels followed during the 1950s, and in 1958 The Big Time won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Leiber published further books in the 1960s.
Young and directed by John Badham); and "The Dead Man" (adapted and directed by Douglas Heyes). ==See also== International Fortean Organisation ==Notes== ==References== == Further reading == Fantastic, November 1959 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1969 The Silver Eel (1978).
Further novels followed during the 1950s, and in 1958 The Big Time won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Leiber published further books in the 1960s.
Expanded from "Scylla's Daughter" in Fantastic, 1963. Swords and Ice Magic (1977).
Our Lady of Darkness won the World Fantasy Award—Novel. Leiber also did the 1966 novelization of the Clair Huffaker screenplay of Tarzan and the Valley of Gold. Many of Leiber's most-acclaimed works are short stories, especially in the horror genre.
(This film is not to be confused with the 1967 William Rotsler film The Girl with the Hungry Eyes which is entirely unrelated to Leiber's story). Two Leiber stories were filmed for TV for Rod Serling's Night Gallery.
By this juncture, he was able to relinquish his journalistic career and support his family as a full-time fiction writer. Jonquil's death in 1969 precipitated Leiber's permanent relocation to San Francisco and exacerbated his longstanding alcoholism after twelve years of fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous; however, he would gradually regain relative sobriety (an effort impeded by comorbid barbiturate abuse) over the next two decades.
Judith Merril (in the July 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) remarks on Leiber's acting skills when the writer won a science fiction convention costume ball.
Squires, 1969). Sonnets to Jonquil and All (Glendale, CA: Roy A.
Young and directed by John Badham); and "The Dead Man" (adapted and directed by Douglas Heyes). ==See also== International Fortean Organisation ==Notes== ==References== == Further reading == Fantastic, November 1959 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1969 The Silver Eel (1978).
Perhaps as a result of his substance abuse, Leiber seems to have suffered periods of penury in the 1970s; Harlan Ellison wrote of his anger at finding that the much-awarded Leiber had to write his novels on a manual typewriter that was propped up over the sink in his apartment, and Marc Laidlaw wrote that, when visiting Leiber as a fan in 1976, he "was shocked to find him occupying one small room of a seedy San Francisco residence hotel, its squalor relieved mainly by walls of books".
Leiber received the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1970 and 1971 for "Ship of Shadows" (1969) and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970).
Leiber received the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1970 and 1971 for "Ship of Shadows" (1969) and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970).
Both stories reflect Leiber's uneasy fascination with Nazism, an uneasiness compounded by his mixed feelings about his German ancestry and his philosophical pacifism during World War II. Leiber was named the second Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy by participants in the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), after the posthumous inaugural award to J.
Perhaps as a result of his substance abuse, Leiber seems to have suffered periods of penury in the 1970s; Harlan Ellison wrote of his anger at finding that the much-awarded Leiber had to write his novels on a manual typewriter that was propped up over the sink in his apartment, and Marc Laidlaw wrote that, when visiting Leiber as a fan in 1976, he "was shocked to find him occupying one small room of a seedy San Francisco residence hotel, its squalor relieved mainly by walls of books".
In his later years, Leiber returned to short story horror in such works as "Horrible Imaginings", "Black Has Its Charms" and the award-winning "The Button Moulder". The short parallel worlds story "Catch That Zeppelin!" (1975) received the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1976.
Joanna Russ' stories about thief-assassin Alyx (collected in 1976 in The Adventures of Alyx) were in part inspired by Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Alyx in fact made guest appearances in two of Leiber's stories.
Tyre), Steven Saylor's short story "Ill Seen in Tyre" takes his Roma Sub Rosa series hero Gordianus to the city of Tyre a hundred years later, where the two visitors from Nehwon are remembered as local legends. Fischer and Leiber contributed to the original game design of the wargame Lankhmar—published in 1976 by TSR. ==Selected works== ===Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series=== Two Sought Adventure (1958).
In 1977, he returned to his original form with a fantasy novel set in modern-day San Francisco, Our Lady of Darkness, which is about a writer of weird tales who must deal with the death of his wife and his recovery from alcoholism. In 1992, the last year of his life, Leiber married his second wife, Margo Skinner, a journalist and poet with whom he had been friends for many years.
Reprinted by Berkley, 1978 with the addition of two stories – "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes" and "A Bit of the Dark World".
Squires, 1978). ===Screen adaptations=== Conjure Wife has been made into feature films four times under other titles: Weird Woman (1944) starring Lon Chaney Jr..
The original version of the movie has a longer appearance by Leiber recounting the ancient book and a brief speaking role, all of which was cut from the re-release of the film. He also appears in the 1979 Schick Sunn Classics documentary The Bermuda Triangle, based on the book by Charles Berlitz, as Chavez. == Writing career == Leiber was heavily influenced by H.
He was Guest of Honor at the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton, England (1979).
Contains a wealth of critical essays on Leiber's work, together with three poems by Leiber: "Challenge", "Ghosts" and "The Grey Mouser". A bibliography of Leiber's work is Fritz Leiber: A Bibliography 1934–1979 by Chris Morgan (Birmingham, UK: Morgenstern, 1979).
Lovecraft and others. Rime Isle (1977) (somewhere between a novella and a two-novelette collection, composed of "The Frost Monstreme" and "Rime Isle" offered as a unitary volume) Ervool (Cheap Street, 1980—limited ed of 200 numbered copies).
Fritz Leiber (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House/Borgo Press, 1980) was the first full-length monograph on Leiber's life and literary work. Tom Staicar.
Montgolfier Press, 1982, with Introduction by his son Justin Leiber.
(Newcastle, VA: Cheap Street, 1983).
Fritz Leiber(NY: Fredrick Ungar Publishing Co, 1983). Bruce Byfield.
(December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
In 1977, he returned to his original form with a fantasy novel set in modern-day San Francisco, Our Lady of Darkness, which is about a writer of weird tales who must deal with the death of his wife and his recovery from alcoholism. In 1992, the last year of his life, Leiber married his second wife, Margo Skinner, a journalist and poet with whom he had been friends for many years.
One new Fafhrd and the Mouser novel, Swords Against the Shadowland, by Robin Wayne Bailey, did appear in 1998. The stories were influential in shaping the genre and were influential on other works.
Lovecraftian novella written in 1936 and lost for decades Dark Ladies (NY: Tor Books, 1999).
Collection of 48 unpublished and uncollected works (drafts, fragments, poems, essays, and a play). Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories (Night Shade Books, 2010).
(Reprinted in Strange Wonders, 2010). ===Essays=== The Mystery of the Japanese Clock.
(Reprinted in Strange Wonders, 2010). ===Poetry=== Demons of the Upper Air (Glendale, CA: Roy A.
Staffordshire UK: Alchemy Press, 2014. John Howard.
Staffordshire UK: Alchemy Press, 2014. An essay examining Leiber's literary relationship with H.
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