By Fritz Leiber
Tor, $18.95
ISBN 0312854080
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Reviews by Larry Woods
When death comes for one of your favorite authors, one of the fervent wishes is always that somewhere, there are more manuscripts yet to be published. For fans of Fritz Leiber it has come true with the announcement that his manuscript of The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich has been rediscovered after 50 years.
Leiber was initially influenced heavily by H.P. Lovecraft but in the 1940s evolved his own style of science fantasy with works such as Conjure Wife and Gather, Darkness! as well as Hugo Award-winning works such as The Big Time. He is probably best known for his sword and sorcery series of books involving Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, who almost always succeeds in overthrowing all decent standards of purported civilization.
Lieber wrote The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich in the 1930s and revised it in the 1940s where it was supposed to be published in Unknown Worlds, but that magazine folded before publication of this Lovecraftian fiction. In this horrific tale of madness, Daniel Kesserich is a mad scientist exploring the boundaries of space and time and a fourth dimension from his isolated Smithville, California, laboratory. From footsteps eerily appearing in the desert to a disappearing house to fragments of scientific apparatus and the remains of a notebook, Lieber's suspenseful interpretation of a classic horror tale is a wonderful gift for his readers.
The Wonderland Gambit: The Hot-Wired Dodo by Jack L. Chalker. Jack L. Chalker is famous for his fantasy series such as The Well World and The Dancing Gods. In this concluding novel of the Wonderland trilogy, reality is simply not what it could be. Cory Maddox has been entangled in a series of lives of seeming reincarnation where he has appeared and reappeared as men, women, and children in a cycle of neverending but ever-changing realities. Each world seems more bizarre than the last as Cory seeks to find his way back to his reality amidst a strange UFO crash, alien technology, and a computer matrix that may be controlled by a virtual reality genius who disappeared years ago. This is typical Chalker high adventure style in a series that is reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's Amber books.
The Howling Stones by Alan Dean Foster. The nature of evil is always a rich source of allusion and illusion for both author and reader. Alan Dean Foster explores those attitudes and preconceptions about evil in the context of the Humanx Commonwealth where there is a newly discovered planet, Senisran, on which each island is inhabited by a different tribe. Xenologist and first contact specialist Pulickel Tomochelor expects to negotiate with each tribe for its mining rights, but his meeting with the Parramat tribe is stunning in its extraordinary revelation about the exotic green stones which display awesome technology and bring him to the essence of evil.
Larry D. Woods is an attorney and an avid collector of science fiction.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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