Of all the titans of fantasy fiction I read growing up – Howard, Moorcock, Eddings, Tolkien – Fritz Leiber was not among them. I knew of his most famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, yet somehow I never got around to reading any of his books. But when I discovered earlier this year that the stories had been re-released as e-books, I scooped them up, and I’m glad I did.
If you want to know what fantasy fiction evolved from, you have to read vintage fantasy. And Fritz Leiber was one of its early architects. He even coined the phrase “sword and sorcery” that defined an entire subgenre of fantasy.
After reading his first book about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Swords and Deviltry, it’s easy to recognize his influence on the fantasy genre. His books were practically a script for what became Dungeons & Dragons, and we all know how much that early fantasy gaming influenced the fantasy writers who came into their prime in the 1970s and beyond.
Swords and Deviltry is a collection of three short novellas. The first one, titled The Snow Women, was published in 1970 and tells the origin story of Fafhrd, Leiber’s strapping, copper-haired barbarian. Leiber modeled Fafhrd and his people on historical Vikings, except here a cabal of snow witches rules the northern clans. And the queen witch happens to be Fafhrd’s mother.
The Snow Women was my favorite of the three tales, but you have to persevere to get to the meat of the story. Unfortunately, it begins with five pages of exposition. That might have worked in 1970, but not today. But if you soldier on, you’ll find a tale of a young man suddenly torn between his duties to the clan, the woman he’s to marry, and an exotic actress who arrives at the village with a traveling show. It’s a wonderful story and a great introduction to the writing of Fritz Leiber.
The second story, The Unholy Grail, first published in 1962, tells the origins of the Gray Mouser. While the Mouser is known as a short, but nimble, swashbuckling rogue, he began as the apprentice to a hedge wizard. As his master said, Mouser is “midway in his allegiance between white magic and black,” and a middling scholar who secretly favors swords over wands. However, when a magic-hating duke murders his master, the Mouser uses all the black magic he can muster in this clever tale of revenge.
Ill Met in Lankhmar, the third story, won both the Nebula Award in 1970 and the Hugo Award in 1971. The story is about the first meeting of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and it tells how they became fast friends. It also introduces the notorious Thieves’ Guild of Lankhmar. Like most of Leiber’s tales, sorcery plays a significant role, and Fafhrd and the Mouser find themselves the target of a guild wizard and his diabolical familiar. Ill Met in Lankhmar wraps up the famous duo’s origins, albeit in a bittersweet fashion, and paves the way for seven more books of sword and sorcery adventures to come.
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