Fritz Leiber

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Fritz Leiber
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Encyclopedia of SF

See first quotes from Fritz Leiber

32 Quotations from Fritz Leiber

alternate world n. 1944 F. Leiber Business of Killing in Astounding Science Fiction Sept. 61/1 I am visiting the alternate worlds in search of one that has learned how to do away with the horrid scourge of war, in order to bring back the precious knowledge to my erring co-timers.
anywhen adv. 1958 F. Leiber Try and Change the Past in Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 94/1 In the Change War we're trying to alter the past—and it’s tricky, brutal work, believe me—at points all over the cosmos, anywhere and anywhen, so that history will be warped to make our side defeat the Spiders.
changewar n. 1958 F. Leiber Try & Change the Past in Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 94/1 In the Change War we’re trying to alter the past—and it’s tricky, brutal work, believe me—at points all over the cosmos, anywhere and anywhen, so that history will be warped to make our side defeat the Spiders.
changewar n. 1958 F. Leiber The Big Time in Galaxy Mar. 8/1 This war is the Change War, a war of time travelers…. Our Soldiers fight by going back to change the past, or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now.
dayside n. 1950 F. Leiber Gather, Darkness! 101 Out there in the darkness—and on the day-side of Earth, too—something was gnawing at that empire, as mice might gnaw at the strands of some vast net.
Earthan n. 1959 F. Leiber Our Saucer Vacation in Fantastic Universe Dec. 42/2 These Earthans looked like arthritic heptapussies with only four tentacles, the other three either cropped off (ugh!) or twined in a permanent tight knot at the tops of their bodies (double ugh!). When Sis first discovered that the Earthans had bones inside their tentacles she actually took sick!
Earthan n. 1972 F. Lieber Day Dark, Night Bright in R. Hoskins Infinity Four 124 The bakery’s trays were only half-filled and there were few Earthans about—sort of odd.
Earthan adj. 1959 F. Leiber Our Saucer Vacation in Fantastic Universe Dec. 42/1 Earth was as exciting as a basketful of baby grunch, of course. We first surveyed it all from about one-half tentacle of radius, then began to make closer approaches. We would observe Earthan tests of nuclear weapons—the bulletin board back at Center kept us pretty well posted on the when and where of things like that.
ET n. 1961 F. Leiber Big Time (1969) 13 The Place has sectional gravity to suit our Extraterrestrial buddies—those crazy ETs sometimes come whooping in for recuperation in very mixed bunches.
everywhen n. 1957 F. Leiber Big Trek in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct. 126/2 Wherever they were heading they seemed to have come from everywhere and maybe everywhen.
ftl adj. 1950 F. Leiber Enchanted Forest in Astounding Science Fiction Oct. 111/2 Your FTL radio can take no fix.
ftl adv. 1950 F. Leiber Enchanted Forest in Astounding Science Fiction Oct. 111/2 ‘You fly fast, Elven.’…Elven agreed softly without looking around, and added, ‘FTL’—Meaning Faster Than Light.
groundside adv. 1961 F. Leiber Beat Cluster in Galaxy Magazine Oct. 163/1 The new Administrator’s planning to ship us all groundside!
Luna City n. 1964 F. Leiber Wanderer (1986) 37 Hey check me, Mr. Kettering—I see a white light flashing near Copernicus… I never trust myself on moon-stuff—I keep seeing the lights of Luna City and Leyport and all the other science-fiction places.
pseudopod n. 1943 F. Leiber Gather, Darkness! in Astounding June 144/1 The cloud seemed to make a last despairing effort, thrusting out an inky pseudopod toward the door of the chamber, as if to make a way of escape for the witches.
rocketport n. 1970 F. Leiber America the Beautiful in Year 2000 18 The purity of the atmosphere was strikingly brought to my notice when I debarked at Dallas rocketport and found the Grissims waiting for me outdoors, downwind of the landing area.
saucerian n. 1964 F. Leiber Wanderer (1969) xv. 112 ‘If beings were that advanced, wouldn’t they also be careful not to injure or even disturb any inhabited planets they came near?’ He added uncertainly: ‘I suppose I’m assuming a benign Galactic Federation, or whatever you’d call it...’ ‘Cosmic Welfare State,’ Doc suggested in faintly sardonic tones. ‘No, you’re absolutely right, young man,’ the fat woman said authoritatively, while the thin woman nodded, her mouth pursed. ‘The first law of the Saucerians is to harm no life, but to nurture and protect all.’
saucer people n. 1969 F. Leiber When They Openly Walk in Galaxy Magazine Aug. 83/1 But surely you of all people, Mr. Hunter, ought to believe in flying saucers [...] Because for the last twenty-five years the saucer people have been telepathically giving all you science-fiction writers the ideas for all your stories, to prepare us humans for the day when they openly walk among us.
shapechange n. 1965 F. Leiber Monsters & Monster-Lovers in Fantastic Mar. 121/1 They are shape-changers too: man turned to wolf or bat, dead come alive, carrion shocked into pulsifing [sic] flesh, Helen Vaughan become slime, Charles Dexter Ward dust. At the alien extreme there are the amorphous shoggoths, their protoplasm molded by hypnotic suggestion, and the man-counterfeiting being from a bluer sun in John W. Campbell’s ‘Who Goes There?’ Closest to home perhaps we have Jekyll-Hyde, a byword for the basic shape-change. Practically all monsters are fundamentally schizoid, symbolizing on the subjective frontier evil, aggression, original sin, the unconscious, the id, the death wish, animus or anima, the shadow.
shapechanger n. 1961 F. Leiber Big Time (1969) 33–4 A strange kind of folk, bright but always in the background, with built-in nostalgia and cynicism, as adaptable as Centaurian shapechangers but with memories as long as a Lunan’s six arms, a kind of Change People, you might say, the cream of the damned.
shapechanging adj. 1965 F. Leiber Monsters & Monster-Lovers in Fantastic Mar. 126/1 But supernatural terror is thin fare for people fearing a more material knock at the door and a death that drops from the air shrieking in steel-cased bombs rather than fluttering on the wings of a shape-changing bat.
slidewalk n. 1944 F. Leiber Sanity in Astounding Science Fiction Apr. 168/1 He had stepped on to the corridor slidewalk and had coasted halfway to the elevator before he realized that Phy had followed him and was plucking timidly at his sleeve.
slidewalk n. 1950 F. Leiber Martians, Keep Out! in Future combined with Science Fiction Stories July–Aug. 50/1 A chalked sign—Kill the Bugs—came coasting by on the slidewalk. Scat put down his foot in front of it and let the slidewalk do the erasing.
slidewalk n. 1968 F. Leiber in Galaxy Magazine Feb. 73/2 A private, eiderdown-surfaced slidewalk, rolled out like the red carpet of ancient cliche…carried them toward the most diamond-glittering pillar of them all.
slideway n. 1951 F. Leiber in Galaxy Science Fiction July 146/1 As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship.
space dinghy n. 1953 F. Leiber Green Millennium (1980) xx. 249 Approaching Earth, they put their ship into an orbit and rendered it invisible. For about two more years they stayed in the ship, except for careful exploratory trips in a gravity-diverting space dinghy.
starship n. 1961 F. Leiber Big Time (1969) 73 A lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific and a starship between galaxies are not in it for loneliness.
sword and sorcery n. 1961 F. Leiber in Ancalagon Apr. 6 At any rate, I’ll use sword-and-sorcery as a good popular catchphrase for the field. It won’t interfere with the use of a more formal designation of the field (such as the ‘non-historical fantasy adventure’ which Sprague once suggested in a review of Smith’s Abominations of Yondro in AMRA) when one comes along or is finally settled on.
sword and sorcery n. 1961 F. Leiber in Ancalagon Apr. 6 Ancalagon looks nice, especially the…article on fantasy-adventure—a field which I feel more certain than ever should be called the sword-and-sorcery story.
sword and sorcery n. 1961 F. Leiber Letter in Amra early July 21 I feel more certain than ever [that this field] should be called the sword-and-sorcery story. This accurately describes the points of culture-level and supernatural element and also immediately distinguishes it from the cloak-and-sword (historical adventure) story—and (quite incidently [sic] ) from the cloak-and-dagger (international espionage) story too!
tight-beam v. 1959 F. Leiber Our Saucer Vacation in Fantastic Universe Dec. 48/1 ‘Dad,’ I said, tight-beaming it.
time travel v. 1965 F. Leiber Books in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Dec. 36/2 Whereupon the narrator, who thought he'd been time-traveling, awakes in Moscow, 1928. It was all a delirious dream.