Selected Stories

Locus Award for Best Collection 2011.

"I learned how to play the game of literature – a game of power and precision and elegance – from reading Fritz Leiber, but it was a lesson I learned in fits, chasing his stories across scattershot anthologies. What a blessing and a pleasure that we can all now be schooled, easily and everlastingly, by this marvelous collection." – Michael Chabon

"He was one of the giants of genre literature and it is hard to imagine the world of tales we read today being the same without him.... Fritz Leiber's better short stories do the thing a fine whisky does... they leave aftertastes in memory, an emotional residue and resonance that remains long after the final page has been turned." – Neil Gaiman

"For anyone who loves great literature, Fritz Leiber walked on water." – Harlan Ellison

Known in his lifetime primarily to readers of science fiction and fantasy, Fritz Leiber is now recognized as one of the finest writers of popular fiction of the twentieth century. An intimate of H. P. Lovecraft, Leiber crafted the twentieth century's first great stories of urban horror, created the sword and sorcery tale almost single-handedly, and wrote strong, resonant science fiction. Nothing less than a visionary American author, Leiber is considered by critics and fans alike to be one of our most original and versatile storytellers.

The seventeen tales selected for this volume showcase Leiber's virtuoso range and unforgettable characters: from the fabled, decadent streets of god-haunted Lankhmar to the eerie underworld of a Martian gambling hall; from a sunless, frozen Earth to the shattered, bombed, and violent wreckage of a post-atomic New York, and beyond. Edited by master anthologist Jonathan Strahan and Locus magazine founder Charles N. Brown, Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories presents a wide sampling of his best short fiction so that a new generation of twenty-first century readers can continue to discover and enjoy his groundbreaking and memorable fiction.

Contents:

• Introduction by Neil Gaiman
• Smoke Ghost
• The Girl with the Hungry Eyes
• Coming Attraction
• A Pail of Air
• A Deskful of Girls
• Space Time for Springers
• Ill Met in Lankhmar
• Four Ghosts in Hamlet
• Gonna Roll the Bones
• The Inner Circles (aka The Winter Flies)
• America the Beautiful
• Bazaar of the Bizarre
• Midnight by the Morphy Watch
• Belsen Express
• Catch That Zeppelin!
• Horrible Imaginings
• The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars