27 Facts About Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber was a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright, and chess expert.

Fritz Leiber was born December 24,1910, in Chicago, Illinois, to the actors Fritz Leiber and Virginia Bronson Leiber.

Six short stories later included in the 2010 collection Strange Wonders: A Collection of Rare Fritz Leiber Works carry 1934 and 1935 dates.

Fritz Leiber appeared alongside his father in uncredited parts in George Cukor's Camille, James Whale's The Great Garrick, and William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

From 1937 to 1941, Fritz Leiber was employed by Consolidated Book Publishing as a staff writer for the Standard American Encyclopedia.

Fritz Leiber accepted a position with Douglas Aircraft in quality inspection, primarily working on the C-47 Skytrain.

Thereafter, the family returned to Chicago, where Fritz Leiber served as associate editor of Science Digest from 1945 to 1956.

Fritz Leiber gradually regained sobriety, an effort impeded by comorbid barbiturate abuse, over the next two decades.

In 1992, the last year of his life, Fritz Leiber married his second wife, Margo Skinner, a journalist and poet with whom he had been friends for years.

Fritz Leiber died a few weeks after a physical collapse while traveling from a science fiction convention in London, Ontario, with Skinner.

Judith Merril remarks on Fritz Leiber's acting skills when the writer won a science fiction convention costume ball.

Fritz Leiber's costume consisted of a cardboard military collar over turned-up jacket lapels, cardboard insignia, an armband, and a spider pencilled large in black on his forehead, thus turning him into an officer of the Spiders, one of the combatants in his Change War stories.

The younger Fritz Leiber can be seen briefly as Valentin in the 1936 film version of Camille starring Greta Garbo, probably his most widely-seen film performance.

The original version of the movie has a longer appearance by Fritz Leiber recounting the ancient book and a brief speaking role; all were cut from the re-release.

Fritz Leiber appears as Chavez in the 1979 Schick Sunn Classics documentary The Bermuda Triangle, based on the book by Charles Berlitz.

Fritz Leiber liked cats, which are featured in many of his stories.

Fritz Leiber later wrote several essays on Lovecraft the man, such as "A Literary Copernicus", the publication of which formed a key moment in the emergence of a serious critical appreciation of Lovecraft's life and work.

In 1951, Fritz Leiber was Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention in New Orleans.

Fritz Leiber received the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1970 and 1971 for "Ship of Shadows" and "Ill Met in Lankhmar".

Fritz Leiber wrote the 1966 novelization of the Clair Huffaker screenplay of Tarzan and the Valley of Gold.

Many of Fritz Leiber's most acclaimed works are short stories, especially in the horror genre.

Fritz Leiber was Guest of Honor at the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton, England.

Fritz Leiber was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s and led by Lin Carter.

Fritz Leiber himself is credited with inventing the term sword and sorcery for the particular subgenre of epic fantasy exemplified by his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories.

Fritz Leiber's legacy has been consolidated by his most famous creations, the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, written over a span of 50 years.

Fischer and Fritz Leiber contributed to the original design of the 1976 wargame Lankhmar from TSR.

Two Fritz Leiber stories were filmed for TV for Rod Serling's Night Gallery.