|
|
|
|
|
|
odd million living black faces among us. Not any more. We can conquer our fear the same way we can conquer our guilt. Our young people know this, and Leiber learned it in 1942when he went from Conjure Wife to Gather, Darkness! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The hero of A Specter Is Haunting Texas is an animated skeleton (literally) known as El Muerte to the people of Texas (a country extending from Alaska to Acapulco, and from the Pacific Black Republic to the Black Florida Whosit). He is in love with two women: the pale Lady Death, and an earthly vital brunette; in the end he refuses to leave either one behind. And the lining of his hooded black cloak is a brilliant scarlet. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Judith Merril, "Fritz Leiber," Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 37, No. 1 (July 1969): 5961 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leiber's second novel to receive the Hugo award for best novel was The Wanderer, a disaster story that, in some ways, became a formula for other writers to follow. What makes this book so much more satisfying than such later efforts as Larry Niven and Jerry Pourelle's Lucifer's Hammer is the added breadth of imagination and insight that carries it beyond the simple formula. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In most disaster novels, a prevalent sub-genre within science fiction, a natural cataclysm destroys most of civilization. The author frequently begins the story with the approach of the disasterwhether it be impending comet, flood, plague, or windand skips back and forth among a number of characters. After the cataclysm, the characters are drawn together in the struggle for survival, and the human element of interaction is used as a plot device. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In The Wanderer another level is added through Leiber's fertile imagination. It is also Leiber's first lengthy piece of what is commonly called "hard" science fiction, the type of story that requires a great deal of scientific research and extrapolation. (. . .) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Wanderer appears suddenly in the night sky, immediately following an eclipse of the moon. When first seen, it is a purple and gold yin-yang disc in the sky. As it rotates on its axis and revolves around Earth, the shape continues to change, stimulating any number of interpretations in the minds of the people who see it. Few of them accept immediately that what has appeared is indeed another planet ("planet" derives from the |
|
|
|
|
|