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and the witch who had foresworn witchcraft was out in a kind of no man's land- |
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For the realistic mind, there could be only one answer. Namely that the enemy had discovered a weapon more potent than battleships or aircraft, and was planning to ask for a peace that would turn out to be a trap. The only thing would be to strike instantly and hard, before the secret weapon could be brought into play. |
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Leiber develops the theme with the utmost dexterity, piling up alternate layers of the mundane and outré, until at the story's real climax, the shocker at the end of Chapter 14, I am not ashamed to say that I jumped an inch out of my seat. From that point onward the story is anticlimax, but anticlimax so skillfully managed that I am not really certain I touched the slip-cover again until after the last page. Leiber has never written anything better . . . which, perhaps, is all that needed to be said. |
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Damon Knight, "Campbell and His Decade," In Search of Wonder (Chicago: Advent, 1956), pp. 31, 33 |
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One way or another, Leiber keeps sorting out the elements of his many "lives," using Shakespeare, sex, chess, science and the supernatural, politics and pacifism, alcohol, Hollywood, Academe, Church, Stage, and the publishing world, to cultivate his cunningly fashioned demons and daemons of the world of today, using them in new modes when he can, in old ones when he must. And in both veins, the young as well as the old continue to listen, with pleasure. (. . .) |
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In 1940, Leiber's story, "The Automatic Pistol," began: |
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"Inky Kozacs never let anyone but himself handle his automatic pistol, or even touch it. It was inky-black . . ." And the last spoken line in it is: "Two aces, Inky's little gun didn't protect him, you know. He didn't have a chance to use it. Clubs and spades. Black bullets. I win." After which the black gun inside the black suitcase fires at Inky's murderer and kills him. |
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There has been much learned discussion recently (and especially in reference to Vietnam) about the American refusal to acknowledge death. Well, death has come home to us now, and our young people, at least, understand fully that we can only live with death by looking on its face and recognizing it. We cannot turn from this black face any more than from the twenty- |
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