Also, someone asks a question about IMDB confusion, there isn't any really, Fritz Leiber was his Dad and was indeed born in 1882, Fritz was born 1910 and also appeared in films such as the Great Garrick and Camille. So they are not smooshed together, it's Fritz and his Father, who did indeed run a Shakespeare Company, in which Fritz performed as Francis Lathrop. You can find a lot about this in his autobiographical essay in The Ghost Light collection, and more humorously in the story 237 Talking Statues 3tc.
Fritz did write two Cthulhu Mythos stories, but later in life really, such as To Arkham and the Stars and Terror from the Depths (Though I think he started that much earlier), he even stripped back the Mythos from the first draft of Adepts Gambit, worth getting the release of Adepts Gambit which is annotated with Lovecrafts letters (with whom he had a productive correspondance) , also worth a read is 'Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark'. Lovecraft of course casts a huge shadow over his novel Our Lady of Darkness.
Leiber's interest in Leibniz's Monadology also inspired several of his stories like The Disappearance of Daniel Kesserich and The Big Engine and You Are Alone as well as his Change War series (The Big Time).
When I read these a few years ago I took them to be of the lovable rogue type of characters. Then, for one short story, The Black Priests, I think it was, they were on a mission to steal loot from a temple guarded by the priests that owned it. After they killed all of the priests, it left me with the impression that they were a right pair of evil bastards :-)
So, one extreme to the other, eh? Are you thinking of the story where the priests are servants of the world of Newhon itself, and they hunt the pair until they get killed off?
@@GregoryBSadler Allow me to interject like a weirdo, years after the fact... That sounds like the story to which the OP referred, ya. If I recall correctly, one of the items the heroes carry exudes an overpowering and combative influence on Fafhrd, of a nature so described as to appear corrupt. The priests are also shown to be cunning and immediately violent, before any provocation from Fafhrd or the Mouser. In fairness, such proclivities may have been developed of necessity, from their familiarity with numerous thieves and blasphemous vandals; the priests may also simply have been "black" down to their very hearts. So, it appears the evidence is there to see our duo of dubious parentage as evil or lovable, and the priests as corrupt or innocent. A damn good tale, either way!
The story was "The Seven Black Priests" and no, they were not on a mission to steal anything. They were simply traveling across a landscape and encountered the priests. In the course of the story Fafhrd becomes obsessed through magic with the gem they discover.
I've modded a lot of old school PnP modules. By far, Lankhmar Nights is the most played. There's something about that old city and setting that's just addictive to explore.
I revered Tolkien's stuff above all else, to me it was beyond mythology, it was almost the distilled wisdom of Western civilization. But when I played D and D, I did not want to "play" Tolkien, that was sacrosanct. It was all Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
Regarding D&D, the 1st edition AD&D Thief class seemed to me to be largely based on Leiber's thieves. The Thieves' Guild is prominent, the skills they have, the use of swords and slings as a sort of standard. Even the ability to use scrolls at a higher level, though in the book that was attributed to Mouser's early on magic training. I liked these stories so much that I wrote my own very short F&GM episode (not even a story) as a high school assignment.
I'm super late to this conversation, and it's a shame because I am loving it. Still, I wanted to make a note about what you said at 57:51 ( th-cam.com/video/bKQoaaEwhwU/w-d-xo.html ) about people getting "caught up" in the MeToo movement and how they cannot have a career anymore. It's true that this in some ways represents a sacrifice of the aesthetic for ethical reasons, which I don't think is too high a price to pay, but by framing it this way it's curious that we don't hear a similarly wistful sigh over the aesthetic loss of the countless men and women who were victims to these systemic abuses and tried to fight back. Abuse HAS been costing us aesthetically for years, but we never noticed it because those aren't the stories that get told and we never get more than a glimpse of what might have been had those people not been forced out into the periphery before their prime. I have no doubt that's not the intended implication here, but it's certainly an unexamined assumption of value. Furthermore, we may yet get many more great talents who never would have made it if those abusers were left in positions of power and influence. We will never truly know, but again, even if it were nothing but artistic loss I would count it it worth the cost.
@@GregoryBSadler I'm glad you're still monitoring replies to this video, and I thank you for taking the time to respond! To be clear, I don't wish to claim that everyone ought to adopt my stringent standards, nor do I truck with the opinion that we should abandon art whose creators' opinions have aged poorly but who were products of their own time. I also don't take the iconoclastic position that all works involving abusive individuals need to be destroyed; I only assert that once they have been found out, they rightly should no longer be given the same access to their creative platforms. I'm specifically thinking of folk such as Kevin Spacey, whose entire oeuvre now seems like he was always Kaiser Soze, hiding in plain sight. I personally don't believe that anything he could possibly accomplish is worth him continuing to earn a living in the public eye. I acknowledge that there are cases where people who were less foul in their actions, or even innocent, have suffered public reproach, and I certainly don't believe in preemptively punishing individuals against whom no reasonable evidence has been brought, but that reservation is for me also ethical in nature. At any rate, I don't think anyone is necessarily evil for disagreeing with my position: it is for me as much about personal discipline as it is about actual justice, because I understand that my own opinion (thankfully) is not what decides any art or artist's fate.
'Finding Leiber in this tiny little apartment with books and crap all around, hammering away on a cheap type writer.' That would be the addiction of writing. 😂 For writing, it's not about the efficiency of writing--from longhand to typing--while it's very nice, if there is a story to be told, if dire enough, it shall be written in whatever form that can be done. Yes, it is about building the world, the world getting more complex. The writer's desire in the writing, like the need or compulsion to write out these threads/ follow through these threads... Well, I've been writing the same book for 9 years now--my own world, so lots of detail...a lot of notebooks filled with notes of various stages, facts, story-lines, and characters. It is a layered process. Once you see the first plot finish, it rolls over into another character/event that deepens the story. It can seem never ending, like The Library of Babel. 😂 Once you have a full grip on your characters, writing flows even easier, because you, the writer, are not making up the plot alone anymore. Developed characters have reactions that are already within them, and they can be demanding at times for certain events to be carried out. You have to work with them at times. And, having key characters be around in my head for 9 years, they are well-developed characters. They have their own life, thoughts, opinions. And a joy to work with because I know them so well. When new characters are brought in and intertwine with developed characters, it is the developed characters that can help pull the root, the core, out of new characters. I don't have to focus so much on the developed as I do the new. The developed will roll with ease in a natural way for both me and the character. There is a need/compulsion/desire to bring the characters' stories out to share--even if it's just you as the writer reading and re-reading it over and over again, otherwise, it can bring madness in the writer's mind. Write for yourself, not the public. That's a big thing. I've written many, many scenes, that are just for me, and not the reader, to learn about the characters and draw an even more closeness to them. Essentially, characters created can be very addicting. A well-crafted world can be very addicting. Writing is very much so addicting. And when a writer is not writing, they are thinking about writing.
I believe much art isn't so much created but found. With music, there is somewhat a limit of how many different ways the chords can be arranged. Was it inevitable that sampling would become so ubiquitous?
I don't want to be mean, but listening to the other people behind the camera give their ideas about things is painful sometimes. You are very polite. Some of them fairly cringe worthy. One instance that sticks out being the idea that Bahai can never have any sort of schism or break up because breaking up is "against the rules" but somehow Catholicism was silly for claiming you could not break off. Stuff like that.
I've been looking for fantasy stories written by Asian authors using white (Caucasian) characters and in a medieval European-like background. There seems to be a shortage of such authors out there. Does anyone know of any? All the Asian fantasy authors out there tend to write about Asian characters like from Wuxia novels only. We need more Asian authors writing things like LOTR, GOT, World Of Newhon, etc. (using European characters LIKE in those stories, NOT just Asian characters). I know millions of Asians also play D&D and other RPGs too, so, writing such stories must have crossed some of their minds sometimes, but where are they ? Thoughts, book recommendations, etc., anyone ?
Terrific presentation.... Lean Times in Lankhmar is just the most glorious story for me.
Fritz Leiber came up with the term Sword & Sorcery in a reply to Michael Moorcock about how they should market their style of fantasy tales.
Well, there you go!
Also, someone asks a question about IMDB confusion, there isn't any really, Fritz Leiber was his Dad and was indeed born in 1882, Fritz was born 1910 and also appeared in films such as the Great Garrick and Camille. So they are not smooshed together, it's Fritz and his Father, who did indeed run a Shakespeare Company, in which Fritz performed as Francis Lathrop.
You can find a lot about this in his autobiographical essay in The Ghost Light collection, and more humorously in the story 237 Talking Statues 3tc.
Fritz did write two Cthulhu Mythos stories, but later in life really, such as To Arkham and the Stars and Terror from the Depths (Though I think he started that much earlier), he even stripped back the Mythos from the first draft of Adepts Gambit, worth getting the release of Adepts Gambit which is annotated with Lovecrafts letters (with whom he had a productive correspondance) , also worth a read is 'Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark'.
Lovecraft of course casts a huge shadow over his novel Our Lady of Darkness.
Leiber's interest in Leibniz's Monadology also inspired several of his stories like The Disappearance of Daniel Kesserich and The Big Engine and You Are Alone as well as his Change War series (The Big Time).
When I read these a few years ago I took them to be of the lovable rogue type of characters. Then, for one short story, The Black Priests, I think it was, they were on a mission to steal loot from a temple guarded by the priests that owned it. After they killed all of the priests, it left me with the impression that they were a right pair of evil bastards :-)
So, one extreme to the other, eh?
Are you thinking of the story where the priests are servants of the world of Newhon itself, and they hunt the pair until they get killed off?
@@GregoryBSadler Allow me to interject like a weirdo, years after the fact... That sounds like the story to which the OP referred, ya. If I recall correctly, one of the items the heroes carry exudes an overpowering and combative influence on Fafhrd, of a nature so described as to appear corrupt. The priests are also shown to be cunning and immediately violent, before any provocation from Fafhrd or the Mouser. In fairness, such proclivities may have been developed of necessity, from their familiarity with numerous thieves and blasphemous vandals; the priests may also simply have been "black" down to their very hearts. So, it appears the evidence is there to see our duo of dubious parentage as evil or lovable, and the priests as corrupt or innocent. A damn good tale, either way!
The story was "The Seven Black Priests" and no, they were not on a mission to steal anything. They were simply traveling across a landscape and encountered the priests. In the course of the story Fafhrd becomes obsessed through magic with the gem they discover.
I've modded a lot of old school PnP modules. By far, Lankhmar Nights is the most played. There's something about that old city and setting that's just addictive to explore.
Sounds fun!
I revered Tolkien's stuff above all else, to me it was beyond mythology, it was almost the distilled wisdom of Western civilization. But when I played D and D, I did not want to "play" Tolkien, that was sacrosanct. It was all Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
I'd say that there's a bit more of the Tolkien in the original D&D stuff than in the later (but still early) Basic/Advanced stuff
Regarding D&D, the 1st edition AD&D Thief class seemed to me to be largely based on Leiber's thieves. The Thieves' Guild is prominent, the skills they have, the use of swords and slings as a sort of standard. Even the ability to use scrolls at a higher level, though in the book that was attributed to Mouser's early on magic training. I liked these stories so much that I wrote my own very short F&GM episode (not even a story) as a high school assignment.
Gygax talks quite a bit about Leiber in the DM's guide
Friends are heroes
Those two are
I'm super late to this conversation, and it's a shame because I am loving it. Still, I wanted to make a note about what you said at 57:51 ( th-cam.com/video/bKQoaaEwhwU/w-d-xo.html ) about people getting "caught up" in the MeToo movement and how they cannot have a career anymore. It's true that this in some ways represents a sacrifice of the aesthetic for ethical reasons, which I don't think is too high a price to pay, but by framing it this way it's curious that we don't hear a similarly wistful sigh over the aesthetic loss of the countless men and women who were victims to these systemic abuses and tried to fight back. Abuse HAS been costing us aesthetically for years, but we never noticed it because those aren't the stories that get told and we never get more than a glimpse of what might have been had those people not been forced out into the periphery before their prime. I have no doubt that's not the intended implication here, but it's certainly an unexamined assumption of value. Furthermore, we may yet get many more great talents who never would have made it if those abusers were left in positions of power and influence. We will never truly know, but again, even if it were nothing but artistic loss I would count it it worth the cost.
You're preaching to the choir here, except for the aesthetics vs. ethics stuff
@@GregoryBSadler I'm glad you're still monitoring replies to this video, and I thank you for taking the time to respond!
To be clear, I don't wish to claim that everyone ought to adopt my stringent standards, nor do I truck with the opinion that we should abandon art whose creators' opinions have aged poorly but who were products of their own time. I also don't take the iconoclastic position that all works involving abusive individuals need to be destroyed; I only assert that once they have been found out, they rightly should no longer be given the same access to their creative platforms. I'm specifically thinking of folk such as Kevin Spacey, whose entire oeuvre now seems like he was always Kaiser Soze, hiding in plain sight. I personally don't believe that anything he could possibly accomplish is worth him continuing to earn a living in the public eye.
I acknowledge that there are cases where people who were less foul in their actions, or even innocent, have suffered public reproach, and I certainly don't believe in preemptively punishing individuals against whom no reasonable evidence has been brought, but that reservation is for me also ethical in nature. At any rate, I don't think anyone is necessarily evil for disagreeing with my position: it is for me as much about personal discipline as it is about actual justice, because I understand that my own opinion (thankfully) is not what decides any art or artist's fate.
'Finding Leiber in this tiny little apartment with books and crap all around, hammering away on a cheap type writer.'
That would be the addiction of writing. 😂
For writing, it's not about the efficiency of writing--from longhand to typing--while it's very nice, if there is a story to be told, if dire enough, it shall be written in whatever form that can be done.
Yes, it is about building the world, the world getting more complex.
The writer's desire in the writing, like the need or compulsion to write out these threads/ follow through these threads...
Well, I've been writing the same book for 9 years now--my own world, so lots of detail...a lot of notebooks filled with notes of various stages, facts, story-lines, and characters.
It is a layered process. Once you see the first plot finish, it rolls over into another character/event that deepens the story. It can seem never ending, like The Library of Babel. 😂
Once you have a full grip on your characters, writing flows even easier, because you, the writer, are not making up the plot alone anymore. Developed characters have reactions that are already within them, and they can be demanding at times for certain events to be carried out.
You have to work with them at times.
And, having key characters be around in my head for 9 years, they are well-developed characters. They have their own life, thoughts, opinions. And a joy to work with because I know them so well.
When new characters are brought in and intertwine with developed characters, it is the developed characters that can help pull the root, the core, out of new characters.
I don't have to focus so much on the developed as I do the new. The developed will roll with ease in a natural way for both me and the character.
There is a need/compulsion/desire to bring the characters' stories out to share--even if it's just you as the writer reading and re-reading it over and over again, otherwise, it can bring madness in the writer's mind.
Write for yourself, not the public. That's a big thing. I've written many, many scenes, that are just for me, and not the reader, to learn about the characters and draw an even more closeness to them.
Essentially, characters created can be very addicting. A well-crafted world can be very addicting.
Writing is very much so addicting.
And when a writer is not writing, they are thinking about writing.
I believe much art isn't so much created but found. With music, there is somewhat a limit of how many different ways the chords can be arranged. Was it inevitable that sampling would become so ubiquitous?
I don't want to be mean, but listening to the other people behind the camera give their ideas about things is painful sometimes. You are very polite. Some of them fairly cringe worthy. One instance that sticks out being the idea that Bahai can never have any sort of schism or break up because breaking up is "against the rules" but somehow Catholicism was silly for claiming you could not break off. Stuff like that.
You work with the audience you get, sometimes. . .
I've been looking for fantasy stories written by Asian authors using white (Caucasian) characters and in a medieval European-like background. There seems to be a shortage of such authors out there. Does anyone know of any? All the Asian fantasy authors out there tend to write about Asian characters like from Wuxia novels only. We need more Asian authors writing things like LOTR, GOT, World Of Newhon, etc. (using European characters LIKE in those stories, NOT just Asian characters). I know millions of Asians also play D&D and other RPGs too, so, writing such stories must have crossed some of their minds sometimes, but where are they ? Thoughts, book recommendations, etc., anyone ?