The best stories by Fritz Leiber
The best stories by Fritz Leiber (English original title: The Best of Fritz Leiber ) is a collection of science fiction short stories by the German -born American author Fritz Leiber from 1974. The individual stories are from 1944 to 1967, most of them in the early 1950s, and originally appeared in various magazines and short story collections. The German translation was done by Eva Malsch, published in 1980 (in stores in early 1981) by Moewig Verlag as part of the Playboy Science Fiction series . With I must once again roll is with both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award represented twice winning story. The book received the Locus Award for best anthology of the year in 1975 .
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Preface (The Wizard of Nehwon) by Poul Anderson , pp. 7-20
The science fiction author Anderson says little about the stories that are actually printed, rather he uses the opportunity to go into the works that are not included. He overwrites his foreword in the original with The Wizard of Nehwon, alluding to Leiber's fantasy series about Fafhrd and Gray Mouser . He regrets that no example was included in the selection. He would also have liked to have recorded a horror story , he could even have imagined one of the chess stories in it. Finally, he gives a longer overview of Fritz Leiber's novels .
Clear Mind (Sanity), pp. 21–44
In a society, a world community, in which neuroses have become the norm , the sensible and therefore unworldly president must be deposed.
Wanted - an Enemy, pp. 45–66
A pacifist tries to move the disinterested Martians to a fictitious earth invasion in order to unite humanity. His portrayal of destructive humans convinced the Martians more than intended, because they now sense danger for themselves. They decide to carry out a real destruction. In desperation, the involuntary incites warmongers the Venus - creatures to resume an old feud with the Martians.
The Man Who Never Grew Young, pp. 67–78
The narrator is invariably old and therefore immortal. However, the time in which he continues as an observer does not run forwards, but backwards, as it has been reversed, disgusted by renewed preparations for war, as soon as the Second World War has ended. Hardy Kettlitz and Christian Hoffmann interpret this as a “subjective sense of time, oriented in the opposite direction to that of the rest of the people”, that is, as an implausible narrative perspective .
The ship departs at midnight (The Ship Sails at Midnight), pp. 79–109
A loving and inspiring visitor from space becomes a bone of contention and a victim of small-town and small-minded intellectuals . Their claims to possession and jealousy destroy the common happiness, just as the alien has decided to stay with humans.
The Enchanted Forest, pp. 111-138
One of the last members of his species hunted by his enemy makes an emergency landing on a distant planet that is a huge genetic test field in which clone groups with minimal genetic deviations live in a forest of thorns isolated from one another but in identical surroundings. The refugee thinks he is coming to the same place again and again and meeting the same people, who, however, always behave differently according to their respective manipulated emotions than their counterparts from the previously visited community, which leads him to madness - and into the hands of the Persecutor - drives.
A new attraction (Coming Attraction), pp. 139–159
A Briton saves in in parts atomically contaminated New York after the Third World War, a young woman to the dictates of fashion which face masks (hiding the face is in place of the chest covering depressed) has submitted, before hooligans . Asks her to England to be taken, but it has also another tormentor, a damn to losing wrestler , masochistic subject. The subtext is about suppressed and perverted sexuality.
Poor Superman, pp. 161-200
American society is traumatized after a limited nuclear war . In the high-tech era, she nourishes her optimism with spectacular progress , which, however, is only faked by a team of advisors called "thinkers" for politicians and the population. Both in their own ranks and within their rival scientific team, there are different views as to how things should proceed with regard to the sham successes.
A Pail of Air, pp. 201-223
The earth was torn from the solar system , the air froze. A married couple survived and started a family in improvised housing. A search party from a larger group surviving from nuclear power finds them.
The Big Holidays, pp. 225–236
All people on earth (and Mars ) celebrate a happy festival in their cities on the occasion of the Great Holidays , which has deliberately got rid of any commercialization , symbolized by means of a banishment ceremony of allegorically disguised citizens.
The Night He Cried, pp. 237–246
On behalf of the “Galaxiezentrum”, a tentacle woman brings a brutal sex man to his senses - and howls. However, she also fell in love with him.
An Attempt to Change the Past (Try and Change the Past), pp. 247-257
A short story set in Leiber's Changewar universe. During an understaffing in the control center of the eternal and time-jumping "war of change" of the "spiders" against the "snakes", to which doomed people from all epochs of world history and regions of the universe are being recruited , suddenly someone just hired stands around unattended. He uses the opportunity and the instruments to move at the time of his murder and tries to prevent the predetermined . He repeats this several times, because the changed situation keeps adjusting itself, whereby the ways and means become increasingly improbable, even absurd, that the space-time continuum uses to establish the planned state on the fixed time axis . - An antithesis to the butterfly effect .
A Deskful of Girls, pp. 259-301
An actress forcibly retrieves her ectoplasm personality prints, secreted in a trance, from the blackmailing psychoanalyst . - Abundant constructed satire on the psychiatrist mode.
Little Old Miss Macbeth, pp. 303-310
After the "destruction" (oversized fluorescent worms suggest nuclear war), a quirky old woman lives all alone in Pittsburg . She maintains contact with her friend in Louisville via carrier pigeon . The senior citizens live spartanly and are really only concerned about their peace and quiet, which can be disturbed by a leaky faucet several blocks away, which leads to considerations to move to another deserted city.
Mariana (Mariana), pp. 311-318
When Mariana fiddled with a hidden control panel in her villa , something else vanished into thin air with every push of a button. After her surroundings have completely disappeared, she finds herself in a psychiatric ward , where wish-fulfillment illusions are treated. Since she still holds the safety edge in her hands, she eliminates the doctor and ultimately herself.
I have to roll the dice again (Gonna Roll the Bones), pp. 319–352
While his wife, who is giving the schnapps, is once again baking bread in the dilapidated home in the miners' settlement in order to earn something, the violent landlord is hungry for fun and thrills in the den of iniquity , which always cost him all his cash. After an existential dice duel and a subsequent spectacular scuffle with death, the aggressive wage worker, frustrated by life, eats the tokens as well as the skulls made of fresh-smelling bread and is soothed, downright euphoric . Leiber can guess the reader that the experience was faked by his wife, who was concerned about the household money: “Then he understood the magic, the magic that she had exercised to give him a little freedom and to make him feel like half a man to be […]. ”However, the“ very flowery, metaphorical style ”prevents an all-encompassing interpretation and leads to superficial descriptions like in SF- Who's Who , which says that the story is“ a very macabre gambling tale ”. Reclam's science fiction guide calls it a "British New Wave- inspired narrative".
First publications
The science fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction published the four stories In Clear Mind (April 1944), Wanted - an Enemy (February 1945), The Enchanted Forest (October 1950) and An Attempt to Change the Past (March 1958). In Galaxy appeared A new attraction (November, 1950), Poor Superman (July 1951) and A bucket air (December, 1951). Three stories were also first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction : The Big Vacation (January 1953), A Desk Full of Girls (April 1958) and Little Old Miss Macbeth (December 1959). In Fantastic Adventures , the September 1950 issue of The Ship Launches at midnight and in the February 1960 issue of Fantastic, Mariana, which can be found in many later anthologies .
Im from Frederic Pohl issued anthology Star Science Fiction Stories No. 1 had The Night He Cried Premiere. For Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions (1967) falling out of line, "brave stories" should be submitted. Leiber's I have to throw the dice again was then awarded prizes. And finally: The Man Who Never Was Young is part of Leiber's first book Night's Black Agents at Arkham House from 1947.
Seven stories, such as The Foxholes of Mars , The Big Trek , Space-Time for Springers , Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee , and The Man Who Made , were not taken from the original American edition of Best Stories (1974) Friends with Electricity , The Good New Days, and America the Beautiful .
literature
- Fritz Leiber: The best stories by Fritz Leiber (= Playboy Science Fiction . Band 6709 ). Moewig Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-8118-6709-1 (American English: The Best of Fritz Leiber . Translated by Eva Malsch).
Individual evidence
- ^ Hardy Kettlitz, Christian Hoffmann: Fritz Leiber . Creator of dark lands and inglorious heroes (= SF Personality . Band 18 ). Shayol Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-926126-87-0 , pp. 29 .
- ^ Hardy Kettlitz, Christian Hoffmann: Fritz Leiber . Creator of dark lands and inglorious heroes (= SF Personality . Band 18 ). Shayol Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-926126-87-0 , pp. 40 .
- ^ Hardy Kettlitz, Christian Hoffmann: Fritz Leiber . Creator of dark lands and inglorious heroes (= SF Personality . Band 18 ). Shayol Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-926126-87-0 , pp. 54-55 .
- ^ Fritz Leiber: The best stories by Fritz Leiber (= Playboy Science Fiction . Band 6709 ). Moewig Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-8118-6709-1 , p. 351 (American English: The Best of Fritz Leiber . Translated by Eva Malsch).
- ↑ Hardy Kettlitz: Hugo. Science Fiction Achievement Award. The year 1968 . In: Alien Contact. The magazine for science fiction and fantasy . No. 58 , February 19, 2004 ( epilog.de [accessed January 30, 2014]). epilog.de ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Nicholas Whyte: Review , accessed January 30, 2014.
- ^ Brian Ash: Who's Who in Science Fiction . Taplinger Pub., New York 1976, ISBN 0-8008-8274-1 , pp. 134 (American English).
- ↑ Hans Joachim Alpers, Werner Fuchs, Ronald Hahn (ed.): Reclam's Science Fiction Guide . Reclam, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-15-010312-6 , pp. 255 .
- ^ A b Hardy Kettlitz, Christian Hoffmann: Fritz Leiber . Creator of dark lands and inglorious heroes (= SF Personality . Band 18 ). Shayol Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-926126-87-0 , pp. 118 .
- ^ Hardy Kettlitz, Christian Hoffmann: Fritz Leiber . Creator of dark lands and inglorious heroes (= SF Personality . Band 18 ). Shayol Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-926126-87-0 , pp. 95 .
