Fritz Leiber discussion

This group is about all things Fritz Leiber. We are fans of his work gathered here to read it together and to discuss what we read, to share the joys of discovering the brightest corners of Leiber's vast literary domain.

Because this group is about one person's work instead of an entire genre, I envision a different sort of format for doing Group Reads here. Monthly polls of which Leiber book we should read don't really make sense to me.

I want to open this group up for more than just group reads of his fiction as well. If we hear of a movie coming out based on a Leiber story, know that his work just won a retro Hugo, see that he is going to have a panel devoted to him at some upcoming con, read a comic book based on a Leiber novel, just saw a new uploaded interview he gave, came across some artist's rendition of a work of Leiber's, etc., we all as members can create topics and bring it to everybody's attention here. In other words, this group is open for discussion of all Leiberana (is that a word?), whatever its medium.

Hi Dan,

I look forward to seeing what work folks would like to start off with for the summer. Until then, Cheers!

Charles

Charles, the founder of the group, is no longer with us here in the group. His website devoted to Leiber is also no longer active. Charles did not send me a message or in any way communicate with me that he was deleting his GoodReads account or taking down his website. But I think I get it. People's interests can change over time.

As sole moderator of the group now, I want to change its direction slightly. Charles was very interested in developing his website, a role-playing game based on Leiber's work, and in compiling reader ratings of all of Leiber's works. I was not so interested in this. Interests Charles and I shared will remain the focus of this group, namely Leiber's life (every aspect of it) and his writings (all of them whatever the genre).

Since the direction of the group is changing, I am going to place the posts that concerned the aspects that were uniquely Charles' interests in an archive. (It would be presumptuous of me to modify or delete someone else's posts, especially when I can archive them instead.) I'm leaving all the other posts alone, except for restructuring the filing system slightly in order to hopefully achieve greater clarity and ease of use.

I would like to try a new format for conducting group reads. Traditionally, most groups on GoodReads that do group reads have polls and use a democratic process to decide what book to read next. That makes perfect sense when there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands or more works one can choose from.

That isn't the case with us. We're dedicated to the work of one man (for now): Fritz Leiber. Using ISFDB as my bibliographic guide, that limits our choices to a couple hundred Leiber works. We're so fortunate he was highly prolific! Eventually, we can read all these works, or all the ones we want to.

But what order should we choose? Should we do it by poll? I don't like this idea. It's work for me to run them every month. And we would then be reading Leiber works in order of popularity or name recognition, getting to obscurer and obscurer works month by month.

So what about chronologically published order? That has much to recommend it. We'd be reading stories in the order Leiber himself developed as a writer. However, what if a member doesn't much care for early Leiber? That member would have to wait a year, maybe two, before being able to read what he or she considers an enjoyable Leiber work.

No. We need something more random. I have an idea I want to try. Gutenberg.org makes available for free 26 Fritz Leiber works. How about if we read one work per month for the next 26 months? Assuming we own a Kindle, we can download one Leiber work to read and discuss every month, absolutely free of charge.

If you have never put a Gutenberg book on your Kindle for free, it is really, really easy once you figure out how. You basically just download the Gutenberg book to your computer (I use my desktop), then email the downloaded file from your desktop to your Kindle email address (listed in Amazon) as an attachment. It's that easy. More detailed steps are here if you need them: https://libguides.sdstate.edu/c.php?g...

I'd like to try this way of selecting Leiber works for group reads. Maybe it will generate enough interest for this group to become viable and work for a group of fellow Leiber fans. Maybe it won't. Please allow me to make adjustments as we go through on the basis of better ideas to come, mine or another member's suggestion. We might change the order. Modify the works we choose altogether. Take longer than a month on some works. Whatever. But let's use my idea at present as a starting basis, give it a whirl, and see what happens. So, would you care to join in on the fun?

Hi, I'm Rosemarie. I don't know how often I'll be able to join in the discussions, since I belong to so many groups, but I'm planning on reading the short stories.
Leiber was one of the first science fiction authors I read, way back when!