Читать онлайн «The Best of Fritz Leiber»

WHEN I was first asked to write an introduction to a volume of Fritz Leiber stories—the most important of such collections at that—my reaction was inappropriately inelegant: “Huh?” I still think it had a fundamental tightness. How can anybody properly comment on the work of one who is not only his senior in the profession by a good many years, but is universally acknowledged to be among its three or four all-time titans?

Yet this was an honor I could not decline. It was like being in a physics department back around 1935 and invited to introduce a series of guest lectures by Einstein. A person hi that position realizes the audience hasn’t come to hear, or read, him. But he’ll try to avoid boring platitudes. If he’s lucky, he’ll even convey a slight extra insight, which will help that audience appreciate the visitor and what he’ll say a little bit more than they might otherwise have done. Maybe I’ll luck out.

Let’s first make a few remarks about the man himself, before going on to his writing. They will be only a few—despite the keyhole school of criticism, the facts of a creator’s life are not required for an understanding of his or her work; or if they are, then that person has to that extent failed as an artist.

Fritz Leiber does employ a certain amount of autobiography hi his work, perhaps more than any other maker of science fiction or fantasy. But he’s far too skillful for you to need to know what the personal element is.

And I can’t claim deep knowledge of him in any event. We have been friends for a long time, guests in each other’s homes, and so on; but until recently, geographical separation prevented frequent encounters, and we never happened to strike up one of his extended correspondences which have delighted a number of people. Therefore, a mere scattering of reminiscences and data:

I first met Fritz Leiber at the 1949 world science fiction convention in Cincinnati. The author of such cornerstone tales as Gather, Darkness! and Conjure Wife seemed even more awe-inspiring In person, towering, classically handsome, altogether theatrical. The last of these qualities was not deliberate— rather, he was conventionally clad and soft-spoken—but he couldn’t help it; personality will come through. He talked to me, a beginner with half a dozen stories in print, as graciously as he did to the biggest-name writer or editor present, or the humblest fan. Here “graciously” is used in an exact sense which is best defined by an example.