Some
memories by J. D. Crayne
One of the
first professional writers that I met, as a nineteen-year-old science fiction
fan, was Fritz Leiber, and he remains one of the few writers that I have known who looked like a character out
of his own books. Well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, a rather gaunt
face, and a shock of iron-gray hair, Fritz was the perfect model of an action
hero, fitting for a man who is best known for his sword and sorcery novels.
I met Fritz in
1961 at a party hosted by Forrest J Ackerman, who was then living in a
pistachio-green stucco house on Sherbourne Drive in Los Angeles. Forry frequently held parties for out-of-town
writers and actors, and many of the local writers and some fans were also
invited, to meet the guest of honor.
I don't
remember who the guest of honor was on that occasion, but I still remember
meeting Fritz Leiber. I had recently
read his science fiction novel, The Green
Millenium, which impressed me greatly and, somewhat wide-eyed and flustered
over actually meeting the author, I told him how much I enjoyed it. He thanked me gravely and courteously, in a
wonderfully deep, resonate voice that thrilled me to the tips of my neo-fan
toes.
He was
always courteous, kind, and gently-spoken, and had a deep appreciation and
regard for his readers. He also had
remarkable presence, perhaps an
inheritance from his father, who was an actor on the stage and was noted for
his Shakespearean portrayals, especial of King Lear. Fritz owned a plaster bust from a sculpture
of his father in that role, and I remember an artist of our acquaintance
tinting the while plaster for him with judicious applications of paint and brown
shoe polish. The same artist and her husband provided him with a quiet working
space when his home life became a little too hectic. One of his best-loved fantasy
novels was written at their dining room table.
Besides
being tall and imposing, he was also remarkably strong in the wrist. My father, an amateur metal worker, made an
iron sword as a prop for a friend's Fafhrd
costume. It was about three feet long, with a 4" ball pommel and wire-wrapped grip. Seeing it at a local
masquerade, Fritz remarked that it was a "hand and a half" sword,
lifted it in one hand, and swung it around in arcs as easily as if it had been
a light-weight fencing foil.
As a writer,
he was remarkably versatile. Besides his fantasy stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, for which he is probably best known , he also wrote
science fiction and horror. His Conjure Wife is a remarkably chilling
tale of what happens when a college professor discovers that his wife is using
magic to protect him – and forces her to abandon the practice – while The Green Millennium is a cheerfully
eccentric tale centered on a green cat-like alien that makes people happy. The
Wanderer is more of a traditional science fiction story about a new planet
in the solar system, similar in some ways to Ehrlich's The Big Eye and Wylie's and Balmer's When Worlds Collide.
The
attraction in his fantasy tales is that he created protagonists which real
people can identify with. Prior to his innovations,
fantasy heroes were unbelievably brave, bold, and bloodthirsty. Robert E. Howard's Conan and Bran Mak Morn are muscular hunks with little
in their minds beyond knowing how to swing a sword. (and Howard describes their sword play in
scenes that go on for pages). Fritz's Fafhrd, although a massive barbarian,
has the angst of any average man up against situations and antagonists that he
does not understand. His partner, the Gray Mouser, is an undersized confidence
trickster, not precisely amoral, but definitely looking for the main chance and
the best benefit to himself. These are
people that the armchair adventurer can identify and sympathize with. When the Mouser
is shrunk to rat size in one novel and forced to walk on the balls of his feet
to avoid leaving human footprints, we applaud his ingenuity. Fafhrd
hopes that his patron, the non-human sorcerer Ningauble, will come to his aid, and in his prayers we recognize
the pleas of someone who has hope, but knows that the gods follow their own
whims. Although sword and sorcery novels
were primarily written for men, Fritz Leiber created characters that won the
sympathy and understanding of women as well.
His genius
was in knowing how much to say and how much to keep hidden from the reader.
There is a sense of mystery in his stories that leaves us wondering what is
real, in the story's context, and what is illusion. In one of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales his two protagonists are taken to an
undersea palace by two water nymphs, for amorous purposes. But on their return to the surface, neither
man is willing to reveal to the other exactly what his nymph was like. Certainly not out of gentlemanly reticence;
perhaps from experiences each would rather the other did not know about. Ningauble
and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face (the
mysterious patrons of Fafhrd and the Mouser) are never fully described. It is
up to the reader to imagine them.
One year I
went to a science fiction convention on the east coast and wore a costume
depicting Ningauble of the Seven Eyes to
the masquerade. I was rather
free-wheeling with my interpretation, wearing a belly-dancer's skirt and a full
head mask with six stalk-eyes made from latex over papier-mâché. The seventh "eye" was a large
imitation diamond glued in my navel.
Fritz was delighted. He was
accompanying a blind friend, and asked me to kneel down next to her chair so
that she could run her fingers over the mask and "see" it. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if that was
the reality?" he murmured to me, a moment I shall always treasure.
-- end --
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