Horrible Imaginings
Fritz Leiber
Originally published by Midnight House in a limited edition hardcover of 520 copies, of which 500 were offered for sale
Currently available in ebook from Open Road Media, $4.99
I originally intended to read and review only one or two stories from this collection, but I ended up reading them all. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop.
This book is a mix of early and late horror stories from Leiber’s career. Midnight House published four collections of Leiber’s work before shutting its doors. The Open Road edition contains the original introduction where Pelan mentions his plans to publish an alternate version of “Adept’s Gambit” as a Lovecraftian tale, one that (AFAIK still) has never seen print.
The stories here are not arranged chronologically, which makes sense. Early Leiber and late Leiber aren’t the same. Mixing them avoids a jarring change in tone, as there are very few selections from the 1950s. Personally, I prefer early Leiber. The prose is more lean, and the voice is more distinctive.
For example, “The Ghost Light” is a long tale from 1984 about a man who has been estranged from his father since his teenage years reconciling and visiting with his wife, young son, and wife’s younger sister. There is a supernatural element and a ghost, but the ghost isn’t emphasized as much as I expected. To my mind, there was too little payoff for the investment the story required.
The original edition of Horrible Imaginings
The title story, “Horrible Imaginings” suffered from the same problem, the resolution just doesn’t live up to the buildup. The other turnoff about this story is it opens with a detailed and graphic visit to an adult theater in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Not my flagon of ale. Nor was the dream the main character kept having. And while Leiber did try to tie the visit in thematically, I thought the whole section was unnecessary.
My favorite story was one of the earliest, “The Automatic Pistol”. I’d read it once before, I think the summer before I started high school. It held up to my memory. First published in Weird Tales, it’s the story of some minor league bootleggers. One of them has a very unusual firearm that turns out to be more than a simple gun.
Other stories that stood out to me were the often-anthologized “The Girl With the Hungry Eyes”, “The Hound”, “Alice and the Allergy”, “Answering Service”, and “The Glove”. The latter being an example of a later period Leiber story I quite enjoyed.
It seemed to me the earlier stories had more compelling voices. Some of this had to do with the first person narration in some of them. They were also written for the pulps, meaning they were probably written quickly and were subject to less revision.
One story of particular interest to Robert E. Howard fans would be “While Set Fled”. This brief story first appeared in the fanzine Amra in 1961. Its appearance in Horrible Imaginings is the only time it’s been reprinted. Set in Howard’s Hyborian Age, it’s the tale of a sorcerer during an invasion of Stygia and the last thing he attempts to do with his magic. It’s one of the best written things I’ve read by Leiber, and it’s a close second to “The Automatic Pistol” for my favorite story.
It’s been a while since I’d read an entire Leiber collection. This one focused on his horror. Understandable since Midnight House was primarily a horror and dark fantasy publisher. It was certainly worth reading, even if a couple of the stories weren’t really my thing. I’m going to try to read more of Leiber’s work during 2019.
Not to long ago, I reread “Smoke Ghost” and “The Hound” by Leiber. I keep meaning t reread “Lean Times in Lankhmar” too.
Hi Keith – I read this a while ago and had a similar reaction to yours. I have a very love-hate relationship with Leiber; mostly it depends on whether it is early or later work. Some F&GM stuff is fantastic, but even some of that is…well…not so great. His Changewar stuff is pretty damn good, especially the concept, but somehow just ends up missing the mark.
Best of luck for 2019 generally and in reading more Leiber.
I love a lot of Leiber’s work, but he is really uneven in quality. As you said some of his F&GM stories are great but some of the later are not. Our Lady of Darkness was a great book except for the ending.
Thanks. I agree with you on F&GM. I’ve only read a few of the Changewar stories, and those were when I was a teenager. I’m hoping to work those in later in the year.
Thanks for the review! I haven’t read this collection.
BTW, Miskatonic Press published ADEPT’S GAMBIT a few years ago.
Here’s my take on Leiber’s horror and SF tales:
https://dmrbooks.com/test-blog/2018/12/25/the-sf-and-horror-fiction-of-fritz-leiber
Hi Deuce – [threadjack] DMR books should really talk to Toby Smith of Space Captain Smith fame about real book publishing his Up to the Throne fantasy novel. [\threadjack]
I also read Leiber young, based on Appendix N. First was actually The Swords of Lankhmar, the only “novel” (actually a fix-up) of F&GM. I always say that I love half of that book and don’t mind the rest, but I can never remember which half is which.
I didn’t know that about Miskatonic. I’ll have to look it up.
I read that post the other day, Deuce. I’m curious about one thing. You said you thought The Leiber Chronicles was the best representative collection of Leiber’s work. Have you seen the two volume Masters of the Weird Tale series on Leiber and the Masters of Science Fiction volume on him, both from Centipede Press? If so, what did you think of them?
I’ve wanted a copy of the Leiber chronicles for a number of years but haven’t really been willing to shell out the $$ considering I have copies of pretty much everything in it.
Manly: I did a Google search and couldn’t even find the novel you’re talking about.
Keith: Considering that you’ve got a fairly widespread and varied collection of Leiber, I’d just use ISFDB to pick out the Leiber collection with the most stories you DON’T have and go from there. As I noted in my post, there are quite a few perfectly good and CHEAP collections out there.