Isaac Asimov Panel 2- February 2024

Science Fiction Book Club

Interview with Frank White and Robert Godwin February 2024

Frank White is best known for his writing of the 1987 book The Overview Effect — Space Exploration and Human Evolution, in which he coined the term “the Overview Effect.” The book has now gone through four editions. He has appeared on The Space Show hosted by Dr. David Livingston, and has given numerous speeches at space events. He also co-authored "Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?" and "March of the Millennia," with Isaac Asimov.

Robert Godwin is also a super-fan of Asimov. He owns over 400 of his books. He owns every single SF book he wrote, including first editions of Foundation and Nightfall which Asimov signed for him many years ago. He also has almost all of his early Pulp appearances back to the 1940s. Sadly, when Asimov died, Godwin's letter of condolence was the very first one published in Asimov's SF Magazine. He has edited over 200 books, mainly on space exploration. He is the author of Manned Lunar Landing & Return, and the Lunar Exploration Scrapbook and is co-author of Outpost in Orbit (a history of ISS) and 2001: The Heritage & Legacy of the Space Odyssey.

Bill Rogers: Frank and Robert, did Asimov ever claim inspiration from his time in the Futurians and if so, did he specify of what sort? Thank you!

Robert Godwin: I am unaware of him claiming any “direct” inspiration from his relationship with the Futurians. I’m sure purely by hanging around with that group he must have had some new thoughts, but it is my understanding that although he was the group’s secretary he operated on the periphery because he was less political than most of its members.  My guess is that more of his inspiration came from the stories they were all reading at the time. Oddly the first time he went to a meeting, where he met Cyril Kornbluth, Donald Wollheim and Fred Pohl for the first time, he had to ask permission from his mother to be able to attend! Evidently, he enjoyed the seriousness of the group and the parliamentary procedures, but he equally remembered the trip to the ice cream shop afterwards. At the second meeting he said there was much debate followed by ping pong. At that early stage the Futurians were like countless other small science fiction clubs around the US and the UK, mostly instigated by the efforts of Gernsback and his staff at his publications. The Futurians were far more politically motivated than similar groups (e.g. the SFA branches in the UK where Arthur Clarke and Eric Frank Russell convened were almost purely concerned with getting SF stories to read). By Asimov’s third Futurian meeting there was a long political debate that led to him leaving early. Unknown to him, when he first showed up the group had already had a schism with some of its members and split in two. It is my understanding that he tried to stay well out of the fight. The entire story of the Futurians can be gleaned from the book by Fred Pohl; another by Sam Moskowitz called “The Immortal Storm” (if you can find it) and Asimov’s own autobiographies. I have read all three but teasing out of memory (mine is not Yet Green) the details of anything other than the political machinations of the group is a real challenge.

Kevin Cheek: Did he ever talk about how he developed the alien characters in “The Gods Themselves”? In his fiction featured very few aliens, yet this is one of the most well realized alien races in SF.

Frank White: I never talked with him about that. However, as I recall, he told me that his editor wanted aliens who were in conflict with humans, and he didn’t want to write about that, so he began to develop the robots.

Robert Godwin: At the time he wrote The Gods Themselves he was taking some heat for having no aliens in his main fictional universe (i.e. Foundation Robots etc). Of course, that had been a conscious decision because he wanted to sell stories to John Campbell in the 40s and 50s and Campbell was notoriously against including aliens. In typical fashion Isaac decided to deliberately grasp the nettle and tried to create a truly alien species for The Gods Themselves. He was aware that getting inside the mind and purpose of an alien would be almost impossible; nevertheless, he tried. As you point out he succeeded beyond most expectations and won all the big awards for the book. Amazingly he said it was the first time in over a dozen years he had felt excited about writing science fiction, and it was all because of a dare from Robert Silverberg. He had originally planned a short story about an impossible isotope, but it got out of hand and ended up four times as long as he intended. It was then going to be in an anthology but when he handed it to the editor he was asked to turn it into a novel. He didn’t want to do that so almost jokingly he said the only way he could do that is if he told the same story again from the perspective of another universe. He then created his aliens, one of which he later stated was “the most interesting and sympathetic character” he had ever created. (Critics note, she was female.) That was also almost done on a dare. Apparently, the editor had shown the part he wrote first (about the isotope) to a publisher who asked if there would be any sex in the story! Evidently his editor, presumably to defend his honour, replied “No”. At which point Asimov took that as a challenge, so the entire second part of the book would be about the sex lives of some completely and utterly alien creatures.

Brad Snurr: Is Asimov the originator of the Laws of Robotics?

Frank White: Yes.

Robert Godwin: Asimov gets all the credit for the Three Laws, famously making the comparison to medieval sword makers who he said were smart enough to put a hilt on the blade “so the fingers didn’t slide down and fall off” thus contending that the robot makers would surely be just as smart.  However, he acknowledged that they came out of his conversations with his editor John W. Campbell. Some of the concepts in the laws had also appeared in works by Otto and Eando Binder, but ultimately Asimov could be said to have created an anti-Frankenstein when his artificial life didn’t turn against its maker because that was against its inbuilt nature.

Damo Mac Choiligh: ‘Unto the Fourth Generation’ is the only story I can think of by Asimov with anything like a Jewish theme and my understanding is that Asimov was an atheist. Is that all there is to it? Did his Jewish background influence him at all? I’m thinking for example of the strong Jewish-American tradition of involvement in the civil rights movement and other liberal causes.

Robert Godwin: This is a tough one for me because you really need to get into his head. I’m not Jewish, and I’m not from either Russia or New York! Understanding how those cultural motifs affected his thinking is incredibly hard for me to convey in any meaningful way. I know that he wrote often about his family’s Jewish heritage and his atheism. Here is the best I’ve got; in his own words, “On January 2 1933 I had turned thirteen. Even unbelieving Jews often saw to it that their sons went through a bar mitzvah—the occasion on which a young man accepts Judaism independently, rather than having it thrust on him by his parents. I did not undergo the rite. Nor have I ever felt any guilt over this, nor any urge to make up the lack. I have never felt anything but comfortable over my lack of religion. However, Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not a religious persecution, but one against anyone who could be defined as a Jew by those who were professional Jew-haters. Under those conditions, I qualified perfectly and the world grew a distinctly more dangerous place each year for me and for all Jews. It made me more than ever a liberal and a New Dealer, for liberals were openly anti-Hitler and conservatives seemed to me to be rather complacent about the Hitler phenomenon and to be interested in other things.”

That seems to be pretty profound, and I don’t see how this couldn’t have affected his storytelling.

Steven Heggie: I am a huge fan, but have always wondered how he rationalized his fear of flying?

Frank White: I don’t think you can rationalize it. Phobias are deeply rooted fears in the psyche and can become a challenge for anyone, regardless of status, educational attainment, or background. I think his fears went beyond that. I believe he was actually agoraphobic. I seem to have read somewhere that his situation was in part the inspiration for “Caves of Steel.”

Robert Godwin: I don’t think he ever did. As a young man he hardly ventured out of the six boroughs of New York. Vacations rarely ever went beyond the Catskills although he did go to Canada. He was also not entirely happy being on boats, but he did make it the Canary Island in 1973 and back to Europe in 1974 (both by boat). I suspect the only commercial mode he was really happy with was trains, which in New York would have been a necessity.

John Grayshaw: What makes Asimov interesting from a critical perspective? What first drew you to his work?

Frank White: I believe Asimov was the first science fiction writer I ever read, at about the age of 10. What drew me to him was his imagining something I had never really considered. He opened up my mind at a young age. Also, he was prescient. His ideas about psychohistory and robots seem highly relevant today.

Robert Godwin: There are mixed schools of thought on this. Critics by their very nature are looking for weaknesses or ways to improve on what they are criticizing. Many of today’s critics try and apply modern rectitude to things written 80 years ago. i.e. why so few female characters, or very little character development? To me this is a pointless exercise, you might as well criticize Shakespeare for not having machine guns in Henry V. Then there are critics who are genuinely fascinated by Asimov’s success and longevity, despite any shortcomings. They tend to focus on his strengths, which are many, not least his very deliberate clarity of thought and application of logic, combined with his ability to articulate those thoughts economically.

I was first drawn to him as a kid, mainly because the book shop at my school stocked up on SF. The first book I read was I Robot and it was the cover picture that drew me in. Whoever stocked that shop was pretty sneaky because they started racking his non-fiction side by side. Once I had been caught by Robots and Foundation I grabbed his “Understanding Physics” trilogy. I was immediately amazed at how clearly he explained all of the topics that my teachers were somehow managing to make boring. I drove my teachers nuts after that, constantly jumping ahead or second guessing their attempts to dumb down stuff.

John Grayshaw: What do you feel are Asimov’s most significant works? Do you have personal favorites of his work? And why?

Frank White: Everything about robots. I found his ideas about AI and robots were far-reaching and are now becoming real. It seemed to me that his robots were actually better than the humans they served, for the most part. I also marveled at how much literary mileage he got out of the simple “Three Laws of Robotics.”

Robert Godwin: Clearly his most successful works are his Robot/Foundation series. However, I would argue that Nightfall made his reputation (so it was significant to him). The Gods Themselves and Foundation’s Edge cemented his reputation to a new generation (therefore also significant.) On the non-fiction side most of his works on chemistry are incredibly informative and useful (chemistry was his forté.) One of my favorites is “The World of Carbon.”

John Grayshaw: What are some of Asimov’s works that you feel should be better known than they are?

Frank White: I can’t think of any, offhand, but his non-fiction has not been given enough attention.

Robert Godwin: The World of Carbon and, on the fiction side, “The End of Eternity”. The underlying concept behind time travel expressed in the latter is now seriously considered by many futurists to be the reason we may have never met a time traveler.

John Grayshaw: In a 1988 interview (with Bill Moyers) Asimov said, “I used to worry about that. I said, “I’m gradually managing to cram more and more things into my mind. I’ve got this beautiful mind, and it’s going to die, and it’ll all be gone.” And then I thought, “No, not in my case. Every idea I’ve ever had I’ve written down, and it’s all there on paper. I won’t be gone. It’ll be there.”

How much of Asimov’s many works are still read today? I believe that his fiction will still be read into the future, but I worry that his non-fiction will become outdated and forgotten?

Frank White: That is a good question. It is certainly difficult to find the two nonfiction books I co-authored with him.

Robert Godwin: I have the same concern. At the moment there is yet another renaissance for his fiction because of things like Foundation on TV. If you can still find a bookshop you can see that there is a healthy shelf of those novels back in print; but his non-fiction has not only disappeared it is veering into the realms of “collectibles” which is a terrible shame. Inevitably most of his scientific non-fiction has been dated by up to half a century of new discoveries, but given the opportunity to add a new foreword to those works, explaining when they were written, and perhaps adding footnotes pointing about new discoveries, or when his predictions proved to be correct, I believe that those books, as a library, could be viewed as a very cohesive snapshot of what “we” knew in the middle to late 20^th century.  Even if they are never printed again, it is my hopeful wish that they be perceived that way in the future. His calm logic is needed more than ever today.

John Grayshaw: Asimov said, “You can’t take a human being and put him to work at a job that underuses the brain and keep him working at it for decades and decades, and then say, “Well, that job isn’t there, go do something more creative.” You have beaten the creativity out of him. But if from the start children are educated into appreciating their own creativity, then probably almost all of us can be creative.”

Would Asimov think that we are taught to appreciate our creativity in today’s schools? How would he improve our schools?

Frank White: I suppose it depends on the school. My son went to an alternative school that depended almost entirely on the kids’ creativity in order to function. From what I know of public schools, they do not teach or support creativity. I believe Asimov would strongly advocate the use of computers and AI to help kid be creative and learn from experience.

Robert Godwin: Wow. Tough question. I think there are some instances where educators are taking great strides and making great efforts to bolster creativity, but we are becoming so immersed in technology it is becoming difficult to even pinpoint what is creative and what is just an algorithm doing the work for you.  I can’t begin to get inside his mind to suggest what he would propose if he was still with us. He was WAY smarter than I will ever be! My guess is that he would be disappointed with the abuse of technology, but he would still advocate its benefits and urge educators to apply them to solving the big issues that he voiced concerns about when he was alive. i.e. over-population, lack of resources, pollution, polarization, over-spending on weapons etc. I suspect he would have still been very concerned about the constant trend to impose religious beliefs into secular concerns.

John Grayshaw: Asimov said “That’s another trouble with education as we now have it. People think of education as something that they can finish. And what’s more, when they finish, it’s a rite of passage. You’re finished with school. You’re no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school — reading books, having ideas, asking questions — that’s kid’s stuff. Now you’re an adult, you don’t do that sort of thing anymore.” Then later in the interview he said, “People don’t stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don’t stop playing tennis just because they’ve turned forty. They don’t stop with sex just because they’ve turned forty. They keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it, and learning will be the same thing. The trouble with learning is that most people don’t enjoy it because of the circumstances. Make it possible for them to enjoy learning, and they’ll keep it up.”

So how does Asimov suggest that more of today’s adults become lifelong learners? And/or how do we change society’s view of education as something you finish?

Frank White: I teach in Harvard Extension School and Boston University’s Metropolitan College. These are places that attract and engage lifelong learners. Harvard and BU have similar programs for elders who want to keep learning. I think we have made a lot of progress in the direction Isaac was advocating.

Robert Godwin: One of the things I admired about his philosophy, which I took to heart, was that you should never stop learning new things. He very obviously was like a sponge, absorbing and remembering everything that interested him. To me he was the ultimate polymath. However, he was blessed with the innate ability to share what he had learned through his writing. Just as importantly he did that when everyday people on the street were still willing to pay for knowledge and expertise. Sadly, I have personally witnessed how people with completely unique knowledge are no longer able to capitalize on sharing that knowledge, which they may have taken a lifetime to accrue. It seems to me that this is one of the biggest downfalls of the internet era. The so-called democratizing of knowledge has left many of those people behind. Why bother writing it all down and sharing it, if it is going to take months or years to do, and then you get no compensation for doing the work? As a writer, publisher, historian, and archivist, I could share many, many anecdotes about knowledge being lost forever.  It seems to me that most people are concerned about tenure at their jobs. Knowing how to do a job is one thing, knowing how to improve the work is something that only comes from expanding knowledge. If everyone adopted his attitude of looking forward instead of living in the moment, or worse, looking back; it would improve society immeasurably.  

John Grayshaw: Who were some of the writers Asimov grew up reading?

Robert Godwin: He would have us believe that it was the SF pulps that came into his father’s candy store that first captured his attention. The content in those early Gernsback magazines was surprisingly expansive. They would include Verne and Wells, but also things like Cornell astronomer Garrett Serviss, and many short stories by the early members of the American Interplanetary Society like Nat Schachner and David Lasser. I believe the first story Isaac read was by Harl Vincent called Barton’s Island. I can only imagine that he must have also had an eye for sifting the wheat from the chaff when plumbing the depths of Gernsback’s publishing empire.  Obviously, he must have read practically every book in New York’s reference library later in life!

John Grayshaw: Who are some writers that were Asimov’s contemporaries that he enjoyed/admired?

Robert Godwin: It seems that he was good friends with many of the golden age writers. The ones he wrote about most often were Fred Pohl, Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke. He knew Pohl since he was a teenager. I believe he was involved with Heinlein from the 1940s, both through their shared writing and their time working for the Navy. I don’t think he met Clarke until much later, sometime probably in the late 1950s or early 60s. It is interesting to me that his politics seemed to be far from Heinlein’s but he didn’t seem to let that get in the way. He shared a sense of humour with Clarke which bonded them for the rest of his life. Asimov was also a regular at the big science fiction conventions, so he often spent time with many of his other contemporaries at those events. His writing on this subject usually seems to be of fond memories.

John Grayshaw: Did Asimov have favorites of his own works?

Frank White: I think he loved the two he co-authored with me (LOL, just kidding).

Robert Godwin: It is so tempting to say that he liked all of them! I do recall that he rarely left any “unwanted children” behind. Even when people like Campbell refused a story, Asimov would frequently sell it to someone else. Of course, this was in the early days when it was out of necessity to pay the bills. I know that he was surprised and very happy when The Gods Themselves won the two big SF awards. He had said that he was concerned that he was being left behind by the New Wave of SF.

John Grayshaw: Who are some of the science fiction writers he had correspondence/friendships with?

Robert Godwin: Well, obviously Heinlein and Clarke. Also, Bradbury, Ellison, Silverberg, Pournelle, Bova, Del Rey, Roddenberry, Pohl. Probably dozens if not hundreds of others, not least through his monthly magazine. When it came to writing he wasn’t shy! He even replied to me!

John Grayshaw: Are there stories about Asimov at conventions or otherwise corresponding/meeting with fans?

Robert Godwin: Countless. My favourite, of course, was when he went to England in the summer of 1974 (I’m a Brit.) Somehow, he was persuaded to get aboard the SS France and cross the Atlantic (again). Inevitably he was feted everywhere he went. He spoke at Arthur Clarke’s alma mater (King’s College), he appeared on Parkinson which at the time was a hugely popular British TV talk show. He did book signings in London and Birmingham. But for me the highlight was his lecture to the British Mensa society, which thankfully was recorded and made available to the plebs like me outside. Arthur Clarke introduced him for almost 20 minutes! It was such a brilliant talk that he gave. Incredibly insightful and funny. Many years later I got permission from both estates to air it at an SF convention in Toronto. I put together a slide show to go with it. It was fascinating to see how many people showed up to hear him “speak” long after he was gone.

John Grayshaw: What are some of the most interesting things you’ve found in your research of Asimov?

Frank White: He was always writing. He had three typewriters, with different books going on each one. When he got tired of one, he turned to another draft on another typewriter. He was invited to watch the Apollo 17 launch, and he was out on a boat with other people to watch it. But he was in his stateroom just before the launch and they had to drag him out to take it all in. I am a lot like him, in that I am always writing, and I usually work on more than one book at a time. However, I would not have needed any encouragement to watch the launch!

Robert Godwin: Many of his interests became my interests. I have gone down so many rabbit holes because of him. My basic understanding of the universe is built on what he taught me. If he hadn’t been such a fun communicator I would never have learned as much as I did as a kid. I think one of the interesting things I’ve realized is how few videos there are of him speaking at conventions. There are quite a few TV interviews with him, but those off the cuff things in front of “his people” seem to be pretty thin on the ground. Of course, there were no cell phone cameras around while he was still with us, but I had a video camera in the early 1980s and I would love to know if anyone else out there shot convention video of him.  

John Grayshaw Asimov said, “Science doesn’t purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism, a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. This works not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life.”

What would Asimov have thought of our technological and scientific advancement in the years since his death. Which advancement would have interested him the most? For example would he have been excited about the rise of the internet and cell phones, or the talk of mining asteroids, or the discovery of so many Trans-Neptunian objects?

Frank White: I would say he’d be most impressed by AI. It would fit closely with his vision of intelligent robots.

Robert Godwin: All of the above and undoubtedly other things that you and I have never heard of! Oddly, he never really immersed himself in the technology that might have made his own life easier. He ended up being supplied with an early Word Processor by Radio Shack in 1981. He took it very begrudgingly and apparently let it sit in the box for months until the Radio Shack people returned and set it up for him. Even then he STILL resisted using it. In the end he did some magazine commercials for Radio Shack, but he remained steadfastly loyal to his typewriter until the very end, using it for letters and shorter stories. As a so-called “futurist” most of the tech we now all use every day would have all been inevitable to him. He spent as much time studying the past as thinking about the future. I think everything was a process to him. It seems to me that if you know the history of things, it makes it a lot easier to understand the motivations to make things better. Not just with technology but also sociologically. Hand communicators (like our cell phones) were in the Dick Tracy comic strip when Asimov was only 11 years old. Mining asteroids was proposed as early as 1861 by William Leitch, who also suggested that the outer gas giants probably had dozens of moons when only three or four were known. Asimov could tap into that kind of historical knowledge, as well as understand how these things might be accomplished. I doubt he would have been surprised by much that has happened since he left us.

John Grayshaw: Asimov said, “Now science fiction uses a different method. It works up an artificial society, one which doesn’t exist, or one that may possibly exist in the future, but not necessarily. And it portrays events against the background of this society in the hope that you will be able to see yourself in relation to the present society… That’s why I write science fiction — because it’s a way of writing fiction in a style that enables me to make points I can’t make otherwise.”

This is one of the best definitions I’ve seen of Science Fiction. Was Asimov successful in making points with his science fiction. What were some of his messages?

Frank White: He was successful, indeed. I think he had a lot of messages about “otherness” that are relevant today.

Robert Godwin: It is a very succinct definition. I’m not sure how didactic he meant to be with his early material. Obviously the three laws were a clever mechanism which he subsequently used to make some points about the rights of any sentient creature. I suspect that we have not seen the last of this. Obviously, his notion of psychohistory is a fascinating concept which has planted seeds in quite a few attempts to create predictive models of society. I have no doubt that with modern computing we are able to get a better idea of how large systems work. Will AGI be able to apply that to people? With the advent of large language models, trained on the written works of history, we will almost certainly see some of his logic taking root. If we ever get to true AGI we should all hope that his books are part of that training input.

John Grayshaw: Asimov said, “Society is always changing, but the rate of change has been accelerating all through history for a variety of reasons. One, the change is cumulative. The very changes you make now make it easier to make further changes. Until the Industrial Revolution came along, people weren’t aware of change or a future. They assumed the future would be exactly like it had always been, just with different people… It was only with the coming of the Industrial Revolution that the rate of change became fast enough to be visible in a single lifetime. People were suddenly aware that not only were things changing, but that they would continue to change after they died. That was when science fiction came into being as opposed to fantasy and adventure tales. Because people knew that they would die before they could see the changes that would happen in the next century, they thought it would be nice to imagine what they might be.

As time goes on and the rate of change still continues to accelerate, it becomes more and more important to adjust what you do today to the fact of change in the future. It’s ridiculous to make your plans now on the assumption that things will continue as they are now. You have to assume that if something you’re doing is going to reach fruition in ten years, that in those ten years changes will take place, and perhaps what you’re doing will have no meaning then… Science fiction is important because it fights the natural notion that there’s something permanent about things the way they are right now.”

I’ve never heard this notion that societal change will continue to accelerate but I think that makes sense as you see more resistance to social change today because society is changing too quickly for some people. Would Asimov have any advice on how to make society more comfortable with the increasing rate of change?

Frank White: Yes, the change is exponential, and that is the acceleration. I think he would recommend that people read a lot of science fiction and educate themselves about STEM.  He would strongly recommend lifelong learning. In that way, they might be ready for the change that is coming.

Robert Godwin: Most of what you have quoted above was in his talk to the Mensa society in 1974 (which gives you some idea of how far ahead of us he was.) He made some amusing anecdotal points to reinforce this idea as it might have been perceived in medieval times compared to the 19^th century when (ostensibly) modern science fiction appeared. It seems to me that Isaac was fundamentally optimistic about how technology could be a force for good. He was obviously worried about the backwash (pollution nukes etc) but mostly he seems to have hoped for the best. His novels and stories of the 50s and 60s assumed that we might eventually be a multi-planet species. Once a society can reach that level of development, we must assume that resources (especially energy) would be ubiquitous and we could have societies like the “Spacers” who have nothing much to do but live calm tranquil lives being artistic or otherwise being creative. It’s a utopian vision for some and a very dystopian vision for others. I see no reason to think that Isaac would not have continued to pursue his same attitudes about society, i.e. that we need to live within our means (until we CAN get off planet), that we need to stop territorializing everything, and to acknowledge that we are all fundamentally the same if we shed the superstitions and posturing. Somehow, I think he would have been equally fascinated and appalled that an LLM might take his job away!

John Grayshaw: And relating this back to science fiction. Since advances in science are happening more rapidly, does that make writing science fiction easier or harder?

Frank White: I think it might be easier because people expect to hear about things that might have seemed impossible or outlandish in the past.

Robert Godwin: I think it might make it harder to apply the science to the fiction, but it shouldn’t make it harder to write a good story. Most SF writers claim that they aren’t trying to make predictions. So, applying current tech to a good yarn should be easy enough. It’s when you try to be like Jules Verne and make believable extrapolations that it is now much harder because there is just so much going on. No one person can possibly be well read on all of the interconnectedness that is happening.

John Grayshaw: Asimov said, “My objection to fundamentalism is not that they are fundamentalists but that essentially, they want me to be a fundamentalist, too.” Then later in the interview he said, “It’s perhaps not important that every human being think so. But how about the leaders and opinion-makers thinking so? Ordinary people might follow them. It would help if we didn’t have leaders who were thinking in exactly the opposite way, if we didn’t have people who were shouting hatred and suspicion of foreigners, if we didn’t have people who were shouting that it’s more important to be unfriendly than to be friendly, if we didn’t have people shouting that the people inside the country. who don’t look exactly the way the rest of us look have something wrong with them. It’s almost not necessary for us to do good; it’s only necessary for us to stop doing evil, for goodness’ sake.”

I hate to bring up modern politics, but it sounds like Asimov might have said these things yesterday instead of in 1988. What would Asimov have thought of the state of today’s politics? 

Frank White: He would have been appalled, but not surprised. He was a student of history as well as of the future. (One of the books I co-authored with him was about history, told in 1,000-year chunks.) He was well aware that modern Homo sapiens did not invent “man’s inhumanity to man,” as the saying goes.

Robert Godwin: I love this quote. It certainly beats by a mile the one that goes, “I really, really, really, really HATE extremists!” Isaac was always incredibly thoughtful about his choice of words, especially when committed to paper. When he was interviewed, he also never made any extremist proclamations. He always couched his replies clearly as his opinion, never as a declaration. It was a fundamentally liberal approach that left opportunity for discussion. It was a scientist’s approach. i.e. nothing is truly settled; everything is in a constant state of entropy and we can only try and navigate our problems in the moment. However, with science (and science fiction) we can try to get a glimpse of consequences. I think if he was alive today and he had a website or a blog, he would have been one of the only people online anywhere who posted his thoughts and then never rewrote them or changed them if they became inconvenient.  He would probably post a follow up saying something like “Hey I just realized that I might have been wrong about that and here’s why.” Until the internet arrived if you wrote something, you owned it. Now everything is ephemeral and about to become more so. Facts are only facts to someone if they trust the source. That’s why we need people like Isaac; someone who listens and is respectful of others, but that only works if it’s a dialogue. Fundamentalism is a profoundly disruptive problem for society, but I don’t REALLY hate it!

John Grayshaw: We know all about the current “Foundation” TV series, are any of Asimov’s other works currently under option for movies or TV?

Robert Godwin: Not that I am aware of. Frankly it’s a great shame. So many of the previous attempts have been…let’s say…difficult.

John Grayshaw: Did Asimov have any particular writing habits or routines he stuck with?

Frank White: As I mentioned before, he wrote constantly and worked on several books at a time.

Robert Godwin: Apparently, he got up in the morning and wrote assiduously until meal times. He worked every day. Clearly, he had a lot to say. As mentioned, he stuck with his typewriter. He rarely rewrote anything, often sending first drafts to publishers. He frequently stated that he was never happy to be away from his desk.

John Grayshaw: Asimov said, “The only thing about myself that I consider to be severe enough to warrant psychoanalytic treatment is my compulsion to write…That means that my idea of a pleasant time is to go up to my attic, sit at my electric typewriter (as I am doing right now), and bang away, watching the words take shape like magic before my eyes.” And he also said, “All I do is write. I do practically nothing else, except eat, sleep and talk to my wife.”

Is this an exaggeration? Did Asimov have other hobbies and interests other than writing?

Frank White: I think it is accurate. He must have done a lot of reading, to get the information for his books. He didn’t have Internet, of course. Again, I can relate to his statement. I once said to another writer, as we waited to be interviewed on the radio, “Writing is a terminal illness.” It is true, too. If you are a writer, you live to write, and the only thing that can stop it is the end of life.

Robert Godwin: Well, he did enjoy being in the company of his many fans. At conventions he could hold court. I suspect he also enjoyed being courted in turn…as an expert on countless things. People would frequently have him as a guest on talk shows, although I can’t say whether he liked that aspect. I think he probably loved sparring with his intellectual equals (who were few). People like Arthur Clarke or Robert Heinlein.

John Grayshaw: What is Asimov’s legacy? Why was his work significant at the time? And why is it still important today?

Frank White: Part of his legacy is the number of kids he inspired to become astronauts, rocket engineers, and writers.

For example, the late Astronaut Janice E. Voss said the following when I interviewed her for my book:

White: What did you take along to read while you were in orbit?

Voss: I took Asimov's Foundation. Except when I was exercising, I really didn't have time until flight day nine to read it. I curled up and read Asimov by Earthlight. It was an amazing feeling, floating there and reading science fiction in orbit. Since it was really science fiction that got me started, it was just a great experience.

And Astronaut Sandy Magnus said this when I interviewed her:

White: Could you talk about what influenced you to become an astronaut?

Magnus: The great science fiction writers, like Asimov, the Dune books, and similar works, played a significant role. The Foundation books really stick in my mind. In fact, I read so many of them that it’s hard to remember all of them.

With his science fiction, he showed us a future that seemed fascinating, but plausible, and he was right in that assessment. He was also not afraid to go into other people’s fields of study, like history and rummage around and write about things that were interesting to him. He was himself trained as a scientist, so he felt very comfortable writing about science. He was inspired by his work and he shared that inspiration with the world. I will always value the honor I had of getting to know him and of working with him. He selflessly helped my career (he did not have to have me listed as a co-author, but he did) and I have made every effort to do the same for others. In that sense, he is a role model for me.

Robert Godwin: It seems to me that when he wrote many of these stories the world was in a pretty dark place but then we emerged out of the darkness and there was a sense of optimism. I think that optimism was manifested in his work, and it inspired a couple of generations of people who then took us into space and built many of the marvels we see around us every day. I suppose every writer would give their right arm to create something that lasts after they are gone. His “invention” of the laws of robotics has certainly done that. His notion of humanity spanning a galactic empire is a fascinating dream that has been copied countless times in movies and books over the last 80+ years. I don’t see that going away. His words on artificial intelligence encompassed by his many robot books will likely be remembered. Let’s hope they aren’t remembered as a red light that humanity roared past.

 

 

 

Interview about Fritz Leiber

 

Science Fiction Book Club

Interview with David Read (Jan. 2024)

Our expert is David Read who created and runs LANKHMAR The Fritz Leiber Home Page http://lankhmar.co.uk/

David Hipschman: Any background on how his story I think it was called “Gonna Roll Dem Bones” came about? It was about playing craps with the devil or god. I came across it about 50 years ago or more.

 

Leiber began to write this story in the early sixties before revising it for Ellison’s Dangerous Visions.  He was not the best place in his life, both he and Jonquil (his wife) were drinking and using barbiturates and were living with his ageing mother. The three of them, monstrously distorted, were the prototypes for Joe, his wife and his mother.

Fritz was well aware he was dicing with death given the mixture of sleeping tablets and alcohol he was consuming. The phrase ‘Gonna roll the bones with death’ was something that used to rattle around inside his skull (as the dice rattle in the skull in the story).

It’s a story Fritz was very happy with, and it’s worth looking on YouTube where you can hear a recording of Fritz reading the story, which was released on vinyl. It was well received and got him a Nebula and Hugo award.

Fritz never played craps, but the story gave him a love for dice in the form of backgammon.

 

Tom Portegys: A couple of years ago I ran across a quirky movie called "The Hill and the Hole", made in 2019. I was surprised later to find that it was based on a Leiber story from 1942 published in Unknown Worlds. Co-directed and co-written by Bill Darmon. So weird to have a movie pop up more than half a century later than the story. Do you know anything about that?

I’ve not seen the film, it seems to be a very low budget film, and knowing the story well, it would have to be stretched somewhat to fit 80 mins, though it obviously shares the starting point of the surveyor.

The story itself is a cracker, one of his earlier tales, did indeed appear in Unknown Worlds and his first collection, Night’s Black Agents.  It very much fits into his early period of horror stories, in that it used a modern setting, albeit a farm as opposed to a city.  I wonder if Fritz had read of gravity hills, where cars appear to roll uphill as a seed for the story.

Michael Compton: His father, Fritz Leiber, Sr, was a great actor of stage and film. Fritz, Jr, also did some acting. Wondering how his theatrical background influenced his writing.

Shakespeare was hugely influential on his writing, most obvious in stories like The Big Time, No Great Magic and Four Ghosts in Hamlet, where theatre, and Shakesperean theatre itself, takes center stage.  The Big Time is essentially a play. A Spectre is Haunting Texas‘ title character is an actor from the moon. The Snow Women sees a theatrical troupe arrived at Fafhrd’s cold waste.

As Fritz Points out in ‘The Stage in My Stories’, later stories such as the Secret Songs, 237 Talking Statues, are written as plays, with stage directions.
 
Leiber himself cites Shakespeare as one of his main influences. He also writes about Shakespeare in the form of essays, such as a great article on King Lear in The Book of Fritz Leiber, which has the great line on Lear “…A victim of exhaustion, grief, and too much character development too late in life.”

 

I think it does influence his writing more generally, I can’t help thinking his sublime tale Lean Times in Lankhmar, feels like a Shakespearean morality tale, full of humour and large characters.

He writes with affection on growing up the son of actors, the backstage excitement, born into “A world where he could watch fantasy being created… where the need for make believe is never questioned” ¹

Fritz only worked and toured with his parents company for a short while (as Francis Lathrop) but enjoyed the backstage camaraderie and the chance to travel and see new places.

His flirtation with Hollywood (Camille and The Great Garrick) was less rewarding, and Bazaar of the Bizarre  (one of the more famous Fafhrd and Mouser stories, where a shop vendor sells trash to the hoodwinked citizens of Lankhmar) was written with his dislike of Hollywood in mind .”The Shittier the Junk, the Higher the Price…” ¹

 

Also of importance was the effect of a successful, competitive, and somewhat egotistical father had on Fritz. He grew in in a house increasingly surrounded by sculptures and painting of his father, by his father.

Upon Fritz learning chess, his father proceeded to learn it and beat him, which also happened with golf and tennis. His father literally built the house they lived in by hand. When Fritz started to be published, his father began to write stories too “I shudder to think how I would have felt if he had sold one” ¹

By the fifties and sixties Fritz became increasingly experimental and weaved Jungian elements into his fiction.  The effect of his relationship with his father, his animus, is amusingly, and poignantly skewered in ‘237 Talking Statues etc. published in 1963.

 

Gerald Greg Lutkenhaus: Was he a chess player? I enjoyed the “64 Square Madhouse” and “Midnight by the Morphy Watch”. As a chess player myself, he seems to know the game pretty well!

 

Fritz took chess very seriously and effectively stopped playing it early in his life, so it didn’t interfere with his writing.  Only later, when he had recovered from a bout of alcoholism did he allow himself to really start playing, studying, and entering tournaments.

Fritz became a very good chess player, winning the Santa Monica open in 1958, and his USCF mark was over 2000, rating him as expert, or in the top 3 or 4% of the USA.  He played for most of his life, only really stopping in the late sixties. In January 1961, Samuel Reshevsky the USA Grandmaster, gave a simultaneous exhibition against 44 opponents at the Santa Monica Bay Chess Club. Reshevsky won 33, drew 10, and only lost one game — to Fritz Leiber.

Chess appearances in his tales are too numerous to mention, but he did write several stories where chess was a central theme.

 

The 64 Square Madhouse (1962) sees the introduction of a chess machine, but is it just a Mechanical Turk, or something genuine?  This story would have been relevant to Fritz as in 1957 IBM introduced a chess computer. The story is both amusing and still relevant as it shows the tics and idiosyncrasies of chess players.

The Moriarty Gambit sees a young Sherlock take on his nemesis as at chess tournament in London

Knight to Move, is one of his Changewar stories, but uses a chess tournament as it’s setting.

Worth seeking out is The Dreams of Albert Moreland, a more horror, or cosmic horror themed tale about a chess player in New York who simply HAS to play chess…

You mentioned Midnight by The Morphy Watch, which is a great story, weaving fact and fiction into an irresistible mixture.  He also has fun with the name, Stirf Ritter. This could be seen as a version of his own name Fritz Reuter (Leiber), but he makes it more fun when one realises Ritter is Knight in German.

Fritz had stopped playing chess by the late sixties, as he fell into alcoholism again (for the last time) following the death of his wife Jonquil. He had moved to San Francisco when he entered his last tournament, which he refers to as a rather slapdash affair.  It took place at Paoli’s on Commercial Street, and many of the characters in Midnight by the Morphy Watch are taken from this tournament. He didn’t win it! The obsession of chess which began to take over Fritz again gave us this great story though.

One other obvious point of the importance of chess is that the cover of Night’s Black Agents is a Knight…

 

John Grayshaw: Michael Swanwick said, “Leiber was one of those Olympians whose work I admired, studied, and assiduously tried to emulate.” Who are some other writers that credit him as an influence? Is Leiber as widely read today as he used to be, and why?

Fritz was influential, I suspect his influence on writers is larger than his popularity with readers, almost like a cult pop band all the other bands admire.

Amongst the Lovercraft circle, his first introduction to writing, he was very highly rated, Lovecraft thought Leiber was a very good writer indeed.

I had a lovely email from Michael Moorcock many years ago saying how important Fritz had been, and one from Terry Pratchett saying how he included Bravd and the Weasel in the Colour of Magic as a nod to Leiber, as Lankhmar was an obvious progenitor for Ankh-Morpork.

Neil Gaiman has written wonderful introductions to the Lankhmar tales, his introduction in particular for Swords of Lankhmar shows the joy and esteem in which he held him.

Michael Chabon is fulsome in his praise, and authors such as C.J. Cherryh, Tanith Lee, George R.R. Martin and Roger Zelazny mention him as an influence.  Looking at much modern fantasy, I feel a lot have more to do with Leiber and Vance than the more vaunted Tolkien despite their over arching

epic fantasy themes.

 

If you read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre from 1981, King asks Harlan Ellison “who are the important writers in the fantasy field” and he responds Fritz Leiber.

Ellison mentioned Leiber in several of his forewards and maintains if he was struggling, he would read some of Our Lady of Darkness to remind him how to write well.

“Fritz was the shining light toward which one strode” Harlan Ellison ²

In the horror field he was hugely influential, and Ramsey Campbell (influenced by Leiber himself) always champions stories like Smoke Ghost as being seminal in the evolution of the ghost story in the 20^th century.

 

“Fritz was most crucial in showing me where I wanted to take the field – into areas where urban psychology and the spectral meet and merge.” ³

 

John Grayshaw: Was Leiber ahead of his time as far as his portrayal of women? Michael Swanwick said “I’d have to mention the strong and convincing women of Conjure Wife, written at a time when men by and large wrote women who were neither.”

 

Fritz was largely brought up by women, his two Aunts, as his parents were travelling with their theatre company. The women Fritz did come to know, often other writers, were clearly women of considerable intelligence (as was his wife Jonquil).

More generally Fritz was a liberal, his politics were by US standards, left, and in his own way, Fritz grappled with the place women have in men’s lives, and the emergence of feminism.

I think one key point people can see in Leiber’s fiction is how happy he is to undercut masculinity and male superiority, and while he is happy to eroticise the female in novels and short stories, he is also happy to poke fun at the shallowness of these attitudes.

His classic a Deskfull of Girls is well worth reading, as is Dr. Adams Garden of Evil which both follow this line in different ways.

His two bedhopping heroes Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser are put through the wringer by all their ex-lovers in ‘Under the Thumbs of the Gods’, a very funny story (much like Lean Time in Lankhmar, I cannot imagine happening to any other established fantasy heroes).

Strong female characters always appeared in his Lankhmar tales stories. Hisvet dominates much of Swords of Lankhmar, and Ahura is a key character in Adepts Gambit, by the time we reach Rime Ilse, Fafhrd and the Mouser settle down with partners.

The strongly feminist Joanna Russ obviously found Leiber palatable, as Fafhrd appears as one of Alyx’s lovers in ‘Bluestocking’, whilst Alyx appears in Fritz’s The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar (surprise.. it’s not Fafhrd and the Mouser) and the afore mentioned ‘Thumbs’.

The Big Time and No Great Magic feature a strong female central character in Greta Forzane (apparently inspired by Judith Merrill), as does The Green Millenium.

Conjure Wife is endlessly interesting from a feminist point of view, and I should add I am not really qualified to comment on this, the summary of Conjure Wife, as ‘Man discovers his wife and all women are witches’ hugely over simplifies the novel.

Our hero Norman Saylor is invariably undercut and shown to be in error at numerous points throughout the novel.  Only when he shakes off the arrogance, that only he alone could have risen to the position he has, can he finally accept the influence his wife has had on his career and life and more importantly her own intrinsic value and importance.

John Grayshaw: Michael Swanwick said, “He (Leiber) may or may not be as someone has claimed, the man who brought the reality of urban landscapes to three genres. And his NY Times obituary said “The most interesting side of Leiber’s fiction is his pre-occupation with the threat of modern urban horror, city life and its web of terrors gradually corrupting the psyche.” Why did Leiber see cities this way and why did it often feature in his writing?

I think it is widely regarded that Fritz was crucial in the development of urban horror.  Fritz was obviously influenced by Lovecraft (though he never wrote in the Cthulhu Mythos til much later in life, for a while he was unimpressed with Derleth and the rigid description of the mythos), he also read Machen, Blackwood and James, so was well aware of the structure of a good ghost story.

I think the key difference is that whereas writers before tended to have an intrusion from some other force (the elder gods, the past or nature) for Leiber it was the very environment we lived in, the city (in his seminal Smoke Ghost and Out Lady of Darkness, or even oil, in The Black Gondolier). It is difficult to put oneself in the mind of a 1941 reader, but I suspect Smoke Ghost would have had the charge of William Gibson in 1984.  The gothic trappings are gone, as are the somewhat scholarly wrappings of James and Lovecraft in their different ways. Leiber gives us a grey, grimy modern Chicago, that is very much our own, even today the journey the character takes on the overground train looking over the rooftops is remarkably effective due it’s very relatability.

After a long absence Fritz went back to his own brand of quiet horror when he moved to San Fransisco, giving us Our Lady of Darkness, which in some ways allows Fritz’s manifestations from the city join into a structure with more than a hint of James about it.

 Later, stories included more self-analysis and more autobiography, The Ghost Light, The Button Moulder and strange terrifying tales akin to a David Lynch film like Horrible Imaginings which really communicates the horror of being alone, and old and vulnerable, in an increasingly noisy and busy city.

 

John Grayshaw: David Hartwell said about Leiber, “Early on he chose the fantasy fiction field as his home, and proceeded to transform it by creating, first, a new form of sword and sorcery fiction; second, by assisting in creating contemporary urban horror fiction; and third, by writing pivotal science fiction stories in the sf revolution in the early 50s.” Did Leiber prefer one genre over the others? What did he like about each of them?

I think overall, like many writers following the trends of pulp magazines, he wrote what he could get published.  His horror output dried up for many years and he submitted mostly speculative fiction and fantasy only arriving back in horror in the seventies, when the market had returned.

I think Fritz mainly loved writing, and he loved his science fiction, fantasy, and horror.  It is probably one of his problems that he didn’t stick to a genre or style, it probably would have helped his career if he had!

 

John Grayshaw: Leiber said in a 1973 interview “My sf stories have tended to be of the warning, prophetic, ‘If this goes on…’ variety, rather than the problem-solving sort. My Change-War stories, such as ‘The Big Time’ and ‘No Great Magic’ are essentially pessimistic since they picture an apparently pointless cosmic war.” Why did Leiber tell these kinds of stories? 

 

Well Fritz was a lifelong pacifist and was also deeply cynical about the way our countries are run and the way we are advertised at and consume! I always felt Fritz liked people and places, and this comes over in his stories, but was far more pessimistic about the forces around them. He also tended to write in some way as an outsider, or at least an observer who sees things from a counter view. The protagonist of Our Lady of Darkness sees the world too clearly as he reconnects following alcoholism, America the Beautiful is just seen by a visitor, a British one at that. In You’re All Alone, being outside the norm has possibilities that are wonderful, but invariably it is that darker side that is seeming to dominate.

A Spectre is Haunting Texas, despite its satire and humour, is pretty grim towards the end, and paints a dark picture of Texan toxic masculinity and racism. The Silver Eggheads, whilst much lighter in tone, speaks of the standardization, and from that intellectual deadening of people through the wordmills.

The Green Millenium I find a rich novel, it clearly starts from a place of McCarthyism but inverts male and female stereotypes and really has a dig at the culture that abounded in fifties America.

Much of his fiction through the fifties and sixties was speculative fiction, he drifted at times into more traditional SF (and Fantasy of course) but mostly he speculated on people and society and where they might go. With the views he had, which I always felt were firmly on the side of counterculture (see Bread Overhead or The Beat Generation) it is not surprising many of his stories ended up with a less than optimistic view of the future.

That said, The Wanderer, despite its cataclysmic events and deaths, is an optimistic novel. It positively breezes along, maybe it took the near destruction of Earth for Fritz to see what he loved about it!

I remember saying to Fritz’s son that his Father’s last story (Thrice the Brinded Cat) seemed very melancholy, and Justin told me he remembered speaking to his Father on the phone just as he had finished the tale, and how excited and happy he was!

So whatever demons Fritz had fluttering around, maybe writing was his exorcism!

John Grayshaw: Leiber’s obituary in the Independent said, “The friendship of the gullible Nordic Fafhrd with the trickster like Mouser provided the field with a convincing model of [friendship] and their adventures, hilarious and secular and sly, influenced generations of imitators.” Another place talked about how the heroes were allowed to grow as characters, get married, and grow older. What made Leiber return to the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series so often?

I think he really loved the characters, and of course they started with his friend Harry Fischer at university, so they really were a lifelong companion.  Fritz had enjoyed Fantasy, Dunsany, Cabell and Eddison, and of course R.E Howard, hence his allocation of the words Swords and Sorcery.

“Howardian fantasy-adventure is … a field which I feel more certain that ever should be called the sword-and-sorcery story. This accurately describes the points of culture-level and supernatural element and also immediately distinguishes it from the cloak-and-sword (historical adventure) story — and (quite incidentally) from the cloak-and-dagger (international espionage) story, too! The word sorcery implies something more and other than historical human witchcraft, so even the element of an alien-yet-human world background is hinted at. … At any rate, I’ll use sword-and-sorcery as a good popular catchphrase for the field” ⁴

There was some commercial reason at work here, as Fritz emerged from a bout of alcoholism, he had a great opportunity as Michael Moorcock explains:

Cele Goldsmith (later Lalli) is one of the great editors of science fantasy and, with Judith Merril, godmother to the American sf New Wave of the 1960s. She published all the Young Turks, most of them for the first time, in the magazines she edited … Lalli had a liking for what one of her contributors had christened ‘Sword and Sorcery’ and she commissioned a young John Jakes to write her a series of Conan-like adventures, Brak the Barabarian. She published an early fantasy of mine called ‘Earl Aubec and the Golem’, which she retitled ‘Master of Chaos’. She published the first Roger Zelazny story — and published many more. She published Thomas M. Disch and J. G. Ballard and Samuel R. Delany and all the exciting talents which helped create that wonderful sea-change of the 1960s. She also liked Philip K. Dick and Keith Laumer, but I think her favourite writer, whose talent stood so far above the majority of his more financially successful peers, was Fritz Leiber. ⁵

The stories proved popular, and Fritz was then offered the chance by Ace books to consolidate and expand he stories into the Swords collections we know.

As in his other work, Fritz was able to use all of his styles in these stories, with the stories often combining adventure, horror and humour.  He also got to enjoy world building in the form of Nehwon, in particular it’s various gods and guilds were a huge influence on fantasy gaming, and on Pratchett’s Small Gods!

The other real pleasure is the stories evolve, from the very pulpy style of rich adventure such as The Jewels in the Forest and Thieves’ House, through to more humourous and complex tales Fritz took hold of the world and give Nehwon a real sense of being.

As you mentioned the marriage, Fritz was able to use the characters themselves to slyly comment on the genre and age, which in these stories, catches up with everyone!

 

John Grayshaw: “Gather Darkness” charted the social and political events in a theocracy in which the state uses science to instill fear in a peasant like populace and thus control them. I consider it a classic dystopian work on the level of “1984” and “Brave New World.” Why isn’t this novel better known?

I suspect the same reason so much of Fritz’s work is relatively unknown, as I mentioned earlier his wide spread of writing probably didn’t help.  I think it is probably a bit too early in the genesis of SF too and isn’t really marketed as such. It predates Harrison’s Captive Universe and Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky which mine some of the ideas Fritz uses here.

Fritz of course had a brief period training as an Episcopal Priest, which certainly would have given him pause to think about organized religion.  Fritz of course was concerned that his lack of belief in God may present a handicap, but was told ‘Think of it as a social service’ ¹

I do agree that it’s surprising it is not better known, it is very readable, it still has the rich weird tales flavour of his early writing whilst raising and discussing some serious issues.

There is also the other level to the story that the people pulling the strings are not religious fundamentalists.. but nominally rational scientists.

John Grayshaw: “The Big Time” follows the idea of the spiders and the snakes battling across time (the Changewar) trying to subvert the future for their own ends. Was this the first example of a time war? Is this Leiber’s best-known work? And why?

 

I would suggest by some distance the Swords series is his best-known work, but I agree The Big Time often appears when Fritz is discussed.  One somewhat sad reason for its appearance, is it is often flagged up in the kind of ‘How on earth did this get as Hugo’ type discussions.

It is so far outside the norm of SF, and with its play structure, it is easy to dismiss compare to other weighty tomes.

I have always loved the book, I like Greta, I think the idea of time that Fritz explores (and continued to explore in several stories, including a favourite of mine, When the Change Winds Blow)  is very interesting.  I love the place, which let’s be honest, or more honest than Fritz could be in 1958, is a brothel.  It’s bawdy, it’s loud, it’s soaked in alcohol. The characters may be writ large, but running through it are so many subtleties.  When the place is cut off from the world, cut off from time, and more importantly cut off from the ongoing war, in which people seem unsure which side they are on, then people come alive and the action starts.  The change winds may blow and blow away your life, but then so may a bomb. As I said earlier, Fritz was an avowed pacifist, so for his contemplation on war, and the moral weariness that comes with it, he created this strange, wonderful little novel.  Like any good play, at the end, perceptions have changed, truths have been told, but the stage remains the same.

I genuinely understand why people don’t like it, it’s very unusual and doesn’t really fit any normal novel type, but it’s a shame to dismiss it.

But lastly, as with all his work, it is the language. He just knows how to draw you in!

“Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn’t seem to be bringing you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the next? Have you ever been afraid that your personality was changing because of forces beyond your knowledge or control? Have you ever felt sure that sudden death was about to jump you from nowhere? Have you ever been scared of Ghosts—not the story-book kind, but the billions of beings who were once so real and strong it’s hard to believe they’ll just sleep harmlessly forever? Have you ever wondered about those things you may call devils or Demons—spirits able to range through all time and space, through the hot hearts of stars and the cold skeleton of space between the galaxies? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, you’ve had hints of the Change War.”

I should also add its coda so to speak, No Great Magic is a more traditional tale, but a very thoughtful one at that.

John Grayshaw: In “The Wanderer,” an artificial planet materializes from hyperspace within earth's orbit, its gravitational field captures the moon and shatters it. Meanwhile, on Earth, the Wanderer's gravity well triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and tidal phenomena. This novel won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1964 and yet I don’t often hear about it today. How was it received at the time and why isn’t it better remembered today?

The Wanderer (with the caveat that it has cats, and alien cat sex) is a very straightforward read, featuring some great characters. It also prefigures the disaster films of the 1970s with it’s multiple viewpoints and narratives stretching over the novel.

These days, like The Big Time, it is a sadly maligned award winner. It is probably about as straight as Fritz did SF, it bubbles with ideas, language, dialogue and very enjoyable characters. That said, as someone who has read so much of his work, perhaps I am akin to Rasputin and immune to finding his stories and style unusual! I suspect for a lot of people expecting something akin to a Niven / Pournelle Footfall or Lucifer’s Hammer would be very disappointed!

John Grayshaw: What makes Leiber interesting from a critical perspective? What first drew you to his work?

My discovery I tend to think of it as an accident, but I suspect it was an accident waiting to happen.  As a young teen I was reading the genre fiction of the time, Larry Niven, Stephen King, David Eddings, Stephen Donaldson, Harry Harrison etc.  Whatever I could find in the bookshop on the market.

For some reason, on our bookshelf at home, was a copy of Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘Lost Worlds Vol II’ with its stunning Bruce Pennington cover. It was electric for me, exotic language and places suddenly flooded into my mind, truth be told, the other tales I had read, seemed so normal in comparison.

There were various writers on the book saying how good the book was, so I eagerly sought out Ray Bradbury, H P Lovecraft and, Fritz Leiber.

Bradbury was easy to find, as was Lovecraft, and I devoured their work, but Leiber, he was a little trickier.

To be fair I grew up in a provincial town, and Leiber was always a little rarer in the UK, but I eventually found a battered copy of the original red Ace Swords Against Death, and I was hooked.  As I slowly discovered more and more of Fritz’ s writing, the more I came to enjoy his work. Fritz is a lovely writer, and reading a lot of his work can make other writing seem very vanilla at times. He is also so very varied.  Like many people, especially as one grows older, you get less Catholic about your reading. I still love horror, SF and fantasy, but also crime, spy, humour and what might be called literature.  But reading Fritz, you never quite know where you will be taken.  His Lankhmar tales, his most approachable and popular works can still take you to strange places you would not expect to find in the genre.

It is a passion which has never faltered, and one of my proudest moments was supplying some rarer stories for John Pelan to include in a couple of the lovely collections he produced for Midnight House. Having my name in the credits of a Fritz Leiber book was all I could ever hope for!

On the question of what makes Leiber interesting critically, I am not best placed to answer, but Tom Staircar, and in particular Bruce Byfield and Benjamin Szumskyj have written fascinating observations on Leiber, as has Ramsey Campbell. What I would say is that his impact on fantasy and horror in particular are huge, SF, probably less so, as he wrote what in the old days might be called science fantasy, and the space bound SF that came to dominate was not a place where Fritz ventured.

 

John Grayshaw: What do you feel are Leiber’s most significant works? Do you have personal favorites of his work? And why?

For me, I think one has to look to Smoke Ghost, such a great horror story and easily sits alongside Lovecraft and James as a key story in 20^th century horror development, to that I would also add Conjure Wife and his later Our Lady of Darkness. Those things alone make him a seminal horror writer.

The influence of his Swords series is difficult to underestimate and its impact on the world of roleplaying and Dungeons and Dragons cannot be overstated.

The much maligned Big Time is a great tale, and as Aldiss notes in Trillion Year Spree, it prefigures the New Wave in its approach to SF, and Fritz continued to be championed by New Wave writers who dismissed my of Leiber’s contemporaries who made their name with more traditional space operas.

A personal favourite is You’re All Alone / The Sinful Ones.

It kind of bridges his work as he moves from pulps to his later more self-analytical style, but the underlying premise, which he examined in the Big Engine, and some of the strange unsettling imagery and suggestions in it are so memorable and engaging.  Think of it akin to The Adjustment Bureau, but a 1000 times better.

 

John Grayshaw: What are some of Leiber’s works that you feel should be better known than they are?

Obviously the answer is all of it!  I am saddened that Leiber’s fantasy tales have been crowded out by Lord of the Rings and it’s lingering influence on epic fantasy, here I agree with Moorcock

“J. R. R. Tolkien was ‘an obscure academic’ who ‘published a peculiar trilogy with a William Morris/Anglo-Saxon ring to it [that] became the core of a somewhat unhealthy cult’, Leiber was, simply, ‘the best living Fantasy writer’.”

It is well worth reading Moorcock’s essay “Epic Pooh”. One has to have some sympathy with Moorcock’s world view, which I have, but I think it is difficult to argue about the inherent conservatism and lack of women in Lord of the Rings.  I read the Hobbit as a young teen and thoroughly enjoyed it, but never LOTR. In all honesty, after reading Leiber’s Swords series, which being a series of unconnected tales might seem slight, Lord of the Rings seemed stodgy, slow and strangely unable to articulate the true horrors it was grappling with. But I realise here I am the outlier, it has outsold and out influenced Fritz a thousand times over, but it still strikes me as odd!  At the very least his tales of Lankhmar are just such great fun and easy to read (on the whole).

John Grayshaw: Who were some of the writers Leiber grew up reading? 

Fritz himself always cites Shakespeare and Lovecraft, but he was clearly influenced by Robert Graves (Adepts Gambit was originally set in Rome, as were the fragments that became Swords of Lankhmar) and Thomas Mann, who he went to visit.  Cabell and Eddison were a clear influence on his Lankhmar tales, and Leiber also sites Ibsen.

He was well read in horror, from Poe, through Machen, Blackwood and James and he devoured the pulps, reading Doc Smith, van Vogt and of course Lovecraft and particular Clark Ashton Smith who eventually took a ‘pilgrimage’ to meet.

 

John Grayshaw: H.P. Lovecraft was an early mentor and role model for Leiber. How did this mentorship, and Lovecraft’s writing in general, influence Leiber?

Luckily, we can see the influence in Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark which came out in 2005 and 2014’s Adepts Gambit, the Original Version. Lovecraft gave so much time and advice to his aspiring acolyte and it was advice Fritz largely took.  Their correspondence was intense, if sadly curtailed by Lovecraft’s death.  I think it is difficult to underestimate how much these interactions helped Fritz in focusing on becoming a professional writer. Lovecraft picks apart any inconsistencies, but he is also fulsome in his praise, which for a young writer who only recently had been excitedly reading Mountain of Madness at university, must have been a huge boost to his confidence.  That said, Fritz never really went down the Lovecraft Mythos route, the only real exception being The Terror from the Depths, which having abandoned it in 1937 after Lovecraft’s death, he wrote in 1975. There is also To Arkham and the Stars, which is not really a mythos story, so much as a gentle look at its origins when someone visits Arkham.

John Grayshaw: Who are some writers that were Leiber’s contemporaries that he enjoyed/admired?

 

“Heinlein is my Favorite SF writer by several lengths, with real goodies like Wells, [Oswald] Herbert Best, Joanna Russ, Stapledon, Sturgeon, and Kornbluth trailing. At least, judging by the number of times I reread books, Heinlein is way in the lead. I even found ‘I Will Fear No Evil’ better than practically everyone else in SF-though it is surely his poorest book. ”  ⁷

Fritz wrote SF reviews for various publications and it is the one area I would like to look at more as it is a rich vein to mine as Fritz wrote so very many words on other authors.

He clearly didn’t rate L Ron Hubbard (Fritz being present at ‘The monstrous birth of Dianetics’ ⁶) and as early as 1951 was having a pop at him with Poor Superman.

John Grayshaw: Did Leiber have favorites of his own works?

Fritz would comment on a favourite story here and there, but Fritz was always very critical of his own work, and happy to play up the value of others.  He would always champion Harry Fischer as the originator of the Lankhmar tales, but the stories are all Fritz’s creation.  Reading his thoughts on his writing it is much more about why and how he wrote it, rather than it’s final value, or not.

He was though, very disappointed with Destiny Times Three, which he had to gut to guarantee a pulp serialisation, this was something that always disappointed him.

 

John Grayshaw: Who are some of the science fiction writers he had correspondence/friendships with?

He corresponded with Bloch, DeCamp and Anderson, Sheckley and Russ. What Fritz does mention was attending a convention for the first time in the late 40s was important as he suddenly found a connection to this whole group of other likeminded writers and a number of friendships were formed.

 

John Grayshaw: L Sprague de Camp told a story that at Discon II in 1974 he and Leiber, pretended to quarrel furiously, and fought a make-believe duel with sabers. Are there other stories about Leiber at conventions or otherwise corresponding/meeting with fans?

From all the articles and commentary I have read over the years, mainly that Fritz was a kind and generous guest, who entertained and indeed tolerated the strangeness of SF fandom with great joy and charm.

 

John Grayshaw: What are some of the most interesting things you’ve found in your research of Leiber?

I cannot really claim to have done academic research on Leiber, and whilst I have expressed my opinion in these answers, I fear I am only standing on the shoulder of giants, and I mention these in a few notes at the end!

 

John Grayshaw: Are any of Leiber’s works under option for movies or TV?

I have no real idea, Lankhmar adaptations were dangled under Fritz’s nose, but they finally went nowhere, though of all his work, it’s episodic nature would make them the most likely adaption.

Conjure Wife was filmed twice and a couple of his short stories were adapted for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, but given the theatricality of his work it has always surprised me we never saw any adaptations on film or TV.

 

John Grayshaw: Did Leiber have any particular writing habits or routines he stuck with?

Fritz worked very hard to develop a routine, with daybooks full of notes and ideas and routine that saw him to try to write at least 500 words every day.  Most of all, he always wanted to improve, and I believe he worked hard to develop an outline before he started any writing.

 

John Grayshaw: What were some of Leiber’s hobbies other than writing?

I think it’s safe to say, writing dominated his life.  He did at times try acting, he could fence and of course at times dedicated a great deal of time to chess.  Cats remain a constant, and toward the end of his life he became enthused about astronomy.  Sadly, the hobby that took over his life was alcohol.

 

John Grayshaw: I heard that in the 70s Leiber lived in a very tiny apartment in a bad neighborhood. Was money an issue for him at this time? How did this influence his writing at the time?

That is a tricky one to answer, Fritz was not well off, but he would have had money. His room in Geary Street where he recovered and wrote after Jonquil’s death was certainly, from my reading, pretty grim. He had to write sitting on the bed, with his typewriter propped on a chair. The neighbourhood was not great and his friends were worried about him, and did intervene. The intervention included Harlan Ellison, who in a three-way conversation with Leiber and Clarke at a convention is unusually modest about it ⁸, and in another interview is audibly unable to talk for a few seconds recalling Fritz’s life during a time in the 70s.² So eventually Fritz was moved to a better apartment.  That said, Fritz enjoyed the area, the textures and people he saw, he was never bored and the range of lives he saw worked their way into his fiction, which as he recovered from his grief became very productive and produced some of his best work.  I am of the opinion, that when he went to San Francisco to escape the grief, and on some levels, guilt of Jonquils death. He lived, for a while at least, like a drunken monk, seeing his reduced standard of life as part of his penance so to speak, and only when he fully emerged from this period was he able to reengage fully and start to look after himself again.

John Grayshaw: I’ve heard that royalty checks from TSR, Inc (the makers of Dungeons and Dragons who had licensed the mythos of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series) were enough to ensure that Leiber lived comfortably in his later years. Was this a big change from his life in that tiny apartment? 

The TSR checks, and the Ace editions of Swords certainly made Fritz final years financially comfortable, especially given that Fritz was not an extravagant man. He could work, travel, eat out and enjoy his health while it lasted. He remained productive, despite his increasingly deteriorating eyesight, til the very end of his life.  Bruce Byfield writes movingly of how when Fritz lay dying in his hospital bed (which for a strange set of reasons Bruce was witness to), during moments of coherence, Fritz said he wanted to stay to ’Write more stories…’ ⁹

 

John Grayshaw: What is Leiber’s legacy? Why was his work significant at the time? And why is it still important today?

I think in horror, whilst not having the position of James or Lovecraft, most critical studies would reference Leiber in moving horror into the more modern era.

For Fantasy, his legacy is huge, but somewhat hidden by Tolkien, who is seen as the defining fantasy author. Many of the tropes we rely on in picaresque fantasy come from the pulp introduction of fantasy, for which Fritz (along with Robert E. Howard) was critical the development of, and as I mentioned before, these tropes are even more evident in D&D which has Leiber stamped all over it.

His SF legacy is slight, partly is that the kind of speculative fiction he was critically appreciated for is not in vogue, and hasn’t been for some time, much as the short story seems to have faded from relevance.

Fritz’s significance at the time, and remember that was from 1940 to 1990, was that he never stood still, never churned out the same thing.  He was happy to comment on the state of the USA and its societal mores.  I think his interest in psychology is relevant, because in his writing it was never a lazy ‘Freudian motivation’.  Fritz was interested in what made him, and others, feel the way they did, and that gives great depth to his writing.

It is important today for the simple reason it was important then. The fact so many of today’s important writers viewed his as an inspiration, or even hero, means looking at his work, is looking at some of the best and most forward-thinking fiction being produced.

As a last comment, the reality is that without a franchise like LOTR, Dune, Blade Runner or Cthulhu, lots of important writers do not cut though.  I have no doubt if a Lankhmar series appears on Netflix there will be quite a few people suddenly talking about his ‘legacy’, and many more experts for you to choose from John!

Final Notes.

I have a few sources here incase people wish to read more. I have absorbed so much Fritz information over the years, but I have tried to check and mention where I get the thoughts and information. But it goes without saying that anyone wishing to know more about Fritz should seek out Bruce Byfield, S T Joshi, Benjamin Szumskyj or Ramsey Campbell.

1.       “Not so Much Disorder and Not so Early Sex: an Autobiographical Essay” The Ghost Light, 1984

2.       TalkCast 36 – Fritz Leiber Retrospective with Guest Harlan Ellison

3.        Weird Fiction review

4.       Ancalagon 1961

5.       ‘Introduction’, Ill Met In Lanhkmar 1995

6.       The Book of Fritz Leiber

7.        Speaking of Science Fiction: The Paul Walker Interviews 1978

8.       SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #40

9.       https://brucebyfield.com/2007/07/05/the-last-days-of-fritz/