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Strange Wonders

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Started 1 year ago by Khahkht
Latest reply from Khahkht

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Khahkht
Member

Just figured I'd throw this out there... Has anyone preordered Strange Wonders, the volume of fragments and other previously unpublished bits and pieces from early in Leiber's career? If so, what are your expectations?

I've ordered, but I'm also ambivalent about the project. Having experienced the editorial adventure which is "Ben Zoom" (Szumskyj) on a couple of occasions, there's a very real possibility this book could be a complete train wreck. On the other hand, Subterranean usually does a nice job, so maybe their quality control efforts will cancel out his shortcomings (i.e., his total disregard for actual editing, a la Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays, which had a few good pieces in it but which was predominately amateurish dreck that went un-copyread before going to press).

Thoughts? :)

Posted 1 year ago #
Srith of the Scrolls
Key Master

I do have it on pre-order. Personally, I'm just happy to be able to get my hands upon some unpublished or rare Leiber material. Hopefully the texts come through intact.

Since it is a collection of Leiber's rare and uncollected works and not a series of essays from various authors, I would expect the editorial task to be of an easier nature. But then again, I have no experience of these things.

I am looking forward to it.

Posted 1 year ago #
Khahkht
Member

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm eagerly anticipating its release also. And true, since there shouldn't be a lot of "corrections" to make (come to think of it, given the nature of the project, perhaps even Leiber's original typos and other errors should be left as is), it should be okay. I guess I'm just a little puzzled how someone gets a gig like this with such a checkered track record. In any case, it should be interesting. Did you preorder the deluxe edition with the extra 60-odd pages, or the trade edition? I ordered the trade edition myself.

Posted 1 year ago #
Srith of the Scrolls
Key Master

I didn't catch that the deluxe had more pages, but I checked and there it is. Cool. I did order the limited edition. I couldn't help myself. :)

Personally, I'm not familiar enough with Szumskyj's works to judge him. I do have Writers of the Dark and Critical Essays.

I'm happy with Writers of the Dark, other than the fact that Leiber's letters to Lovecraft are not included, but that is not the editors' faults as Leiber himself gave those letters away but couldn't remember who he gave them to. I can't remember where I read that, but if needed I couldn't eventually find the source.

In Critical Essays, John Pelan points out in the Foreward that the academic community has neglected Leiber's writings. This I think could be the ultimate reason that the essays are so uneven in this book--simply a lack of interest to write critically on Leiber. Thus causing a scarcity of essays to include in this volume.

At any rate, that's my take from the sidelines.

I'll tell you what I'd love to see, though. A couple of years ago, there was a series of Penguin editions of Lovecraft with annotations by S.T. Joshi. I thought those were very well done and really allowed me to understand the context of Lovecraft's writings. Now if Joshi would be willing to do the same for Leiber, that would be great!

Posted 1 year ago #
Khahkht
Member

Unfortunately, Subterranean only announced the limited edition after I had ordered the trade, so it was buy another at 60 bucks or be content with the fewer pages.

Yeah, in Writers of the Dark (which I also have) it's not made clear whether carbon copies (which would of course have been necessary unless HPL saved FRL's correspondence) were made, or where they are if so. Could be among the U of T papers, possibly. You seem to be saying that carbons were made. If so, I'd be very interested to know where they went/are.

I found the majority of the essays in the Critical Essays volume fairly interesting and well thought out, but extremely poorly edited. My M.A. committee would never have let me get away with some of the crap the articles in this supposedly learned publication did.

Aside from my gripes about John Pelan (he owes me, and a fair number of other authors and readers, a substantial amount of money over the Cthulhuian Singularity debacle), he's absolutely correct, Leiber has been totally ignored by academia, and that's not especially surprising. REH was and is a far more popular author (though a far inferior writer, IMO), but even he has received fairly little actual scholarly attention, and fantasy literature in general has been historically neglected. Even JRRT gets only a little nod now and then, and mostly from Oxford dons. I thought the articles themselves were generally well done, and it was about time. Szumskyj just wasn't the man to do it properly.

An interesting thought, Joshi doing a take on Leiber. S. T. Joshi, of course, is the premier authority on all things Lovecraftian, and I agree that his annotations are well done. I don't necessarily think he needs to be the guy to do the analogous Leiber volume(s), though... Perhaps you and I?? Don't laugh, it could happen...

Posted 1 year ago #
Srith of the Scrolls
Key Master

OK, I found where Leiber mentions lost letters in his essay Lovecraft in My Life, but I may have been confused because now that I read it again it seems to me he is referring to the letters written to him by Lovecraft:

By that time Derleth had excerpted Lovecraft's letters to myself and Jonquil (for eventual appearance in the last of the Selected Letters volumes, still to come) and I loaned them to a seemingly serious scholar, whose name I have truthfully forgotten and who has not yet returned them. I didn't care much then--a measure of my mood.

- That was written in 1976.

So I'm a little confused. Obviously we have Lovecraft's letters to Leiber, but what of Leiber's to Lovecraft?

Now you and me annotating Leiber's works?!? That would be something! As it is, I'm trying to put a lot of things into context myself. I'm still trying to get my hands on more biographical material--one of the reasons I'm interested in Strange Wonders. Also, I need to read more of the stuff that Leiber read, since he does makes references to a great deal many different authors in his writings, but assumes that his readers are as well read as he is.

At any rate, what I do learn I will incorporate into this web-site!

Posted 1 year ago #
Khahkht
Member

Check out The Ghost Light (in paperback or LE hardcover) by Leiber. There's a fairly long, actually painfully long, autobiography which makes up around half of the volume. Called "Not too Much Disorder and not too Early Sex". It's pretty dry stuff, despite the title. I think I got about 2/3 of the way through before I quit, LOL. I prefer to read about his life in such tales as "Horrible Imaginings" and the novel Our Lady of Darkness, but it is probably more factual strictly speaking.

RE: the letters. By 1936/37, I believe Lovecraft was keeping carbons of all correspondence he sent. I think that's how Joshi/Szumskyj acquired it for Writers of the Dark. I'm not sure whether HPL kept all of the stuff sent him. I haven't read the Joshi HPL biography, in which those sorts of issues are probably discussed. I have read a couple of the HPL Letters volumes (3 and 5, but only cursorily), but those are all one-sided. The HPL-->Leiber letters are in volume 5. So long story short, unless HPL retained FRL's letters or carbons of the Leibers' (both Jonquil and Fritz, as well as HOF) correspondence to HPL are in the U of T Leiber Papers, I wouldn't know where to start. Justin Leiber might know, might not.

Posted 1 year ago #

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