Fritz Leiber discussion

Our group reading for April 2022 is "Coming Attraction," a short story Leiber published in the November 1950 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Synopsis, from ISFDB: "A future where all women have started to cover their faces as a fad, but that eventually has turned out to more or less compulsory. There has also been a third world war, and there are areas with high radiation."

One place you can obtain the work for free from is here (the second entry): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/sear.... Come join us, won't you?

Despite its flaws, I really loved this story. Please read my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I tried to keep it spoiler free, but perhaps slight ones crept in. It might be best to read this short, short story first.

On the far right side of this month's marquis can be seen the first page of Leiber's story as it appeared in Galaxy's November 1950 issue. Even as small as it appears in the marquis, isn't the art stunning?

The artist is named Paul Calle. He would have been 22 years old when he was commissioned to illustrate this story in Galaxy. He went on to become a top illustrator at NASA and designed some of the United States' most memorable postage stamps. His Wikipedia page is quite interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Calle

You know, Leiber's story did not win the retro Hugo award in 2001 for best 1950 short story. It was the runner-up. The winner was first published in that same November 1950 issue of Galaxy, "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight. It pays to have your story made into a Twilight Zone episode! Here is a link to the magazine issue: http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/G...

I've just finished the story and I agree that making masks a fashion is unlikely, although there have been some pretty strange fashions. The female character turned out to be a disappointment, and actually quite annoying,

Annoying? I guess! The Wikipedia page has her as being in on the con against the protagonist, a co-perpetrator. I'm not sure that's the only possible, or even probable, interpretation. Despite the fact I too don't like her, I like the fact she's hard to pin down, that she's masked in more ways than just literal.