"Gonna Roll the Bones" (1967)

Fritz Leiber's big fat Washington Irving ghost story is one of the greatest hits of Harlan Ellison's collection, arguably the very greatest, winning Hugo and Nebula awards in the Best Novelette category. The category is based on word count, by the way—compare short story, novella, and novel. It might be too much categorizing for me, but OK. Leiber was born in 1910 and publishing stories by 1934, so has to be accounted as old-school science fiction. Doubtless I ran across him in those Groff Conklin collections though I don't have much sense now of what he's about. Once again, when Ellison put in the order for a dangerous story, it came back with religion. Leiber's story is highly effective and well-done—I understand where the kudos are coming from—and deeply American too. It smacks of Irving, Stephen Crane, and Ambrose Bierce, though it's perhaps a bit too mechanical for comparison with the more intuitive Edgar Allan Poe. A somewhat dissolute man has learned a remarkable way to cheat at craps and finds himself in a game with Old Scratch. Or the Grim Reaper. Or some terrible specter. Or something. There are wonderful details here like the table, and the dice, but the opponent remains murky. The gambling man's home and family are an interesting sideline nightmare. But there are distracting flaws here. Sometimes it's the writing: "the cards fall softlier," Leiber writes, describing a tense moment in the casino. Or: "It was maddening, in fact insanitizing," describing a moment of frustration. Oh, editor Ellison—yoo-hoo! Leiber uses the N-word twice, apparently to lather on racial tension. He wants to keep us uncomfortable, but that only breaks a spell of unease he has put together painstakingly and well. Interesting to see also that the gambling man has religion in his background, at one point studying to become a minister in the Episcopal Church. In many ways the story is a kind of reenactment of the chess contest in The Seventh Seal, if that movie had focused only on the moves of the chess game. That's the reason I'm reluctant to praise Leiber's story more, which is so nicely fleshed out with mood and detail. It's mostly a craps game. I know nothing about the game, and Leiber is even skillful at explaining it without getting in the way of the action too much. But the action is only throwing two dice, recording the number, and exchanging money. The story has lots of impressive special effects. I love the way the Angel of Death throws the dice, for example. It almost couldn't be any other way. But it's a craps game, both players are cheating, and the stakes are not high for the reader—they can both go to hell, as far as I'm concerned. There's an artful resolution but the problem persists.

Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison