Bazaar of the Bizarre - Fritz Leiber (Fantastic August 1963 by Vernon Kramer Leiber at Troynovant:
spectral stagecraft of Fritz Leiber (1910-1992);
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A monster is a symbol of the secret and powerful, the dangerous and unknown, arousing dread and curiosity, exaltation and frightened laughter. An old geographer looks at the large blank spaces of his finished map and inks in "Here Be Monsters." Perhaps his imagination is stirred and he draws a little picture of ... something. ...

A symbol of this sort has a thousand meanings and more. So a monster, symbolizing that about which we can only speculate and wonder, is a master symbol suggesting the remotest mysteries of nature and human nature, the most dimly-sensed secrets of space, time, and the hidden regions of the mind. ...

This vivid picture [in H. P.Lovecraft's "The Outsider"] of the confrontation of the conforming crowd by the "inner-directed" deviant points up one of the chief trends in fantasy writing during the last three decades: the compulsion to understand the monster.

This trend is one of the marks of the transition from the contrast between the extraterrestrial beings of Lovecraft and those of, say, Weinbaum or Heinlein or Smith, with the monsters of van Vogt somewhere in between. You can even say that one writer sets a problem by creating a monster. Then another writer may attempt to solve the problem by explaining the monster, sometimes by speculations about the physics and chemistry of alien planets and sometimes by showing us what the first writer has or may have projected into his creation from himself and the world. This process is crucial in the growth pattern and life history of monsters in the realm of art.

One of the clearest indications that the monster symbolizes the deviant individual is the frequency with which he appears in the guise of scapegoat ...

"Monsters and Monster Lovers"
Speech at Pacificon II / Westercon 17:
22nd World Science Fiction Convention
Oakland, 5 September 1964

video —
YouTube

transcripts —

Fritz Leiber
The Book of Fritz Leiber (1974)

Fritz Leiber
Fafhrd & Me (1990)


       

— works by Leiber, reviewed —
  

Bread Overhead Fritz Leiber RW Franson
Bullet With His Name Fritz Leiber RW Franson

Dreams of Albert Moreland, The Fritz Leiber RW Franson

Green Millennium, The Fritz Leiber RW Franson
Ill Met in Lankhmar Fritz Leiber RW Franson
Improper Authorities, The Fritz Leiber RW Franson

Last Letter, The Fritz Leiber RW Franson

Night Passage Fritz Leiber RW Franson

Sadness of the Executioner, The Fritz Leiber RW Franson

Snow Women, The Fritz Leiber RW Franson
Space-Time for Springers Fritz Leiber WH Stoddard

Thieves' House Fritz Leiber RW Franson
To Arkham and the Stars Fritz Leiber RW Franson
Trapped in the Sea of Stars Fritz Leiber RW Franson
  

  

— essays; and works about Leiber, reviewed —
  

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series
  Fritz Leiber
RW Franson
  

  

— discussion or mention of Leiber —
  

Confined Choices
  Door, Corridor, & Maze Stories
RW Franson
Demigoddess of the Mind
  James H. Schmitz's heroine
  Telzey Amberdon
RW Franson
Game of Rat and Dragon, The Cordwainer Smith RW Franson
In Search of Wonder:
  Essays on Modern Science Fiction
Damon Knight RW Franson
Lose the Loose
  Road-Bumps of Word-Substitution via Misspelling
RW Franson
Poker Face Theodore Sturgeon RW Franson
Science Fiction Ideas & Dreams
  The Illustrated Book of
David Kyle RW Franson
To Say Nothing of the Dog Connie Willis RW Franson
  

  

— Leiber, quoted —
  

Charles Fort
  Prophet of the Unexplained
Damon Knight RW Franson
  

  
[Enter GOWER, before the monument of MARINA at Tarsus]

Gower:
Thus time we waste, and long leagues make short,
Sail seas in cockles, have and wish but for't,
Making to take our imagination,
From bourn to bourn, region to region.
By you being pardoned, we commit no crime
To use one language in each several clime
Where our scene seems to live. I do beseech you
To learn of me who stand i'th' gaps to teach you,
The stages of our story.

William Shakespeare
Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 4.4.1-9


  
Lankhmar
The Fritz Leiber Home Page
  

  
magazine cover, top right:
Fantastic August 1963
by Vernon Kramer

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