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

тАЬTigerishka,тАЭ Paul wondered with a sleepy puzzlement, тАЬI started to write that sonnet years ago, but I
could get only three lines. Did youтАФтАЭ

тАЬNo,тАЭ she said softly, тАЬyou finished it by yourself. I found it, lying there in the dark behind your eyes,
tossed in a corner. Rest now, Paul. RestтАжтАЭ

To be thus aware of mortality, and of the ancient deeps within us while we live, is not morbid but
mature. Leiber can even laugh with themтАФnot at them, which is an evasion, but with them. He does so in

A Specter Is Haunting Texas. The satire there is more stark than in The Silver Eggheads, more
reminiscent of Huxley or Heine though with a strong dash ofтАж shall we say Buster Keaton? The hero,
born and reared on the Moon, has in its low gravity grown up excessively tall and thin. Forced to visit
Earth, he must wear a skeleton-like supportive framework which, with his black garb, makes him Death
discarnate to the inhabitants of a crazy-quilt of nations formed after a nuclear war. One of his loves is
equally a Death figure, the other Flesh itself. Needless to say, the author never puts it this crudely or
obviously, and the overtones are infinite. Perhaps no other modern writers except James Branch Cabell
and Vladimir Nabokov have gotten such fun out of the human tragicomedy; and they, for all their wit,
have never had LeiberтАЩs uninhibited gusto.

Let us hope for much more from this man, in whatever vein he may next select. Meanwhile, the volume
in your hands gives a good overview. If you are already familiar with Fritz Leiber, you know you have a
treat hi store. If it will be your first encounter with him, I envy you.


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 best of fritz leiber


тАФPOUL ANDERSON




Gonna Roll The Bones

SUDDENLY Joe Slattermill knew for sure heтАЩd have to get out quick or else blow his top and knock out
with the shrapnel of his skull the props and patches holding up his decaying home, that was like a house
of big wooden and plaster and wallpaper cards except for the huge fireplace and ovens and chimney
across the kitchen from him.

Those were stone-solid enough, though. The fireplace was chin-high, at least twice that long, and filled
from end to end with roaring flames. Above were the square doors of the ovens in a rowтАФhis Wife
baked for part of their living. Above the ovens was the wall-long mantelpiece, too high for his Mother to
reach or Mr. Guts to jump any more, set with all sorts of ancestral curios, but any of them that werenтАЩt
stone or glass or china had been so dried and darkened by decades of heat that they looked like nothing
but shrunken human heads and black golf balls. At one end were clustered his WifeтАЩs square gin bottles.
Above the mantelpiece hung one old chromo, so high and so darkened by soot and grease that you
couldnтАЩt tell whether the swirls and fat cigar shape were a whaleback steamer ploughing through a
hurricane or a spaceship plunging through a storm of light-driven dust motes.