The Big Time (1958)

Fritz Leiber has a big reputation in horror and science fiction circles, but I haven’t read enough yet perhaps to be impressed myself. This very short mess of a novel (about 100 pages, a length sometimes considered a novella) won a Hugo (for “Best Novel or Novelette”). Wikipedia says it a nice way: “The Big Time is a story involving only a few characters, but with a vast, cosmic backstory.” That backstory is basically time travel, which can change history and erase people (who can then be “resurrected” somehow). It’s an interesting concept but explanatory exposition is scant here. These characters are similarly in a place, called “a Place,” which requires explanation. But, again, in medias res, baby. Catch the clues and keep up. It started to feel make-believe in childish ways. The Place, by the way, has affinities with Samuel Beckett’s let’s call it universe. It’s possible that reading The Big Time again, knowing what I learned the first time, might open it up more impressively for me. People see something in it. It won a Hugo and is included in a Library of America anthology of science fiction novels. There are some gems among the nine novels gathered there—notably Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination and Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man—but more often they felt slight to me and poorly done. The Big Time could maybe have been bigger and more descriptive, which I hate to say in this era of bloat—big novels part of big series. It was kind of refreshing to see a novel coming in at 100 pages. But it is dense and work to fathom. For about the first 20 pages I could barely make out what was even happening. There’s something that stinks a little of the MENSA mentality going on here, the arrogance and contempt. I’ve seen it in science fiction before. Maybe it’s a tradition. I’m thinking here of Philip Jose Farmer, to name names. And maybe Fritz Leiber too. All I can say about what I’ve read of Leiber is that it usually leaves me cold, but I’m thinking I should give it or him another try. All that love. There has to be something to it. But tastes in genre can often be stubbornly individual, I guess. Ramsey Campbell is another even more extreme example of my lack of understanding.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

"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