"Fritz Leiber - Best of Fritz Leiber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business. Eventually he moved from Chicago to southern
California and started writing full time. Since his wifeтАЩs death (everybody who knew her misses Jonquil)
he has lived hi San Francisco.

тАШ So now Fritz Leiber is hi his sixties, an age when most artists have either retired or are sterilely
repeating themselves. The years show on him a bitтАФbut not too much, and only physically. Inside,
while possessing all the wisdom of a lifetime, heтАЩs younger than the average man of thirty. To give a
small personal illustration: not long ago, in his rambles around his newly adopted city, he discovered a
walking tour that will take you to every place where action occurs in Dashiell HammettтАЩs The Maltese
Falcon. OrтАж recently my wife gave an elaborate dinner to honor the memory of E. R. Eddison, upon the
date of LessinghamтАЩs translation into Zimiamvia. Only those who would understand what that means
were invited, and they were expected to come hi costume. Fritz graced the party as the oldest, most
sharply humorous, and best-dressed man present.

If anything, he keeps growing younger, more actively creative. His past unproductive periods seem to
have been times during which, consciously or unconsciously, he was preparing himself to strike out hi a
different direction. The results were always surprising and consequential. Though ever aware of and
sensitive to the great issues of the real world around him, he has never been a merely тАЬrelevantтАЭ writer.
Instead, he has always been in the forefront in both themes and treatment. In these past several years we
have been witnessing a new burst of pioneering, which looks as if it will continue while he lives. That
makes especially appropriate the book, both retrospective and contemporary, which you are holding.
And it brings up our real subject, Fritz LeiberтАЩs achievement.

I do not propose to offer you a critique. For one thing, while mildly disagreeing with a few of her
judgments, I couldnтАЩt better the one by Judith Merril.* Besides, I lay no claim to being a critic, simply a
working writer.

To be sure, that distinction is far from absolute. Thus Merril published excellent fiction in earlier days,
while Leiber has done a certain amount of criticism. The question to consider is where the emphasis of a
lifeтАФin this case LeiberтАЩsтАФhas lainтАФor, at least, what an essayist is trying to do. IтАЩll say little about the
stories hi this volume. They speak for themselves; moreover, you have the authorтАЩs own notes. Rather,
IтАЩd like to consider in a very informal fashion, and from the viewpoint of a fellow practitioner, some of
those items which are not on hand. You who already know them may enjoy a revival of memories. You
who donтАЩt may get a better idea of LeiberтАЩs accomplishment and, I hope, will be led to read further.


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 best of fritz leiber


ItтАЩs too bad that we have no tale of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser here. Not only did that charming pair of
roguesтАФthe tall Northern barbarian and the small city-bred tricksterтАФlaunch the authorтАЩs career; they
are still going strong, to the joy of everybody who appreciates a rattling good fantasy adventure. But by
no means are these stories conventional тАЬsword and sorcery.тАЭ The world of Nehwon is made real in
wondrously imaginative detail, its human aspects as true as in any conscientious job of reporting. To
visit the city of Lankhmar is to learn what decadence in fact means; to roam with our vulnerable
vagabonds is to experience pity and terror as well as suspense, wry humor, and uproarious hilarity. Here
Leiber hi his wayтАФlike the late J. R. R. Tolkien in his, and not vastly differentтАФhas done, and is doing,
for the heroic fantasy what Robert Louis Stevenson did for the pirate yarn: by originality and sheer
writing genius, he revived an ossified genre and started it off on a fresh path.