“Fantasy on the March” was Fritz Leiber’s rallying call to fans of Fantasy, both heroic and dark. The piece appeared in The Arkham Sampler (Spring 1948). This quarterly magazine was a promotional publication for Arkham House Press. Its print run was about 1200 copies. Edited by August Derleth, the company had published Leiber’s Night’s Black Agents in 1947. This first collection by the San Francisco author was filled horror and heroic fantasy tales from Weird Tales and Unknown. It featured the first publication of the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser story “Adept’s Gambit”.
Which is a long-winded way of saying Leiber had skin-in-the-game. He wanted to sell copies of his collection but I think there are more important things to take from this article. He wrote it in an amusing style, as if it were being told by soldiers marching into an unknown future. He opens with:
“Halt the column! Here is a likely spot to hold our council, where eldritch rocks offer us shade from the wild sunshine of the atomic bomb…” Leiber will refer to nuclear bombs several times, it being 1948. This is not just in reference to the post-war world but a hint at the predominance of bleak Science Fiction about the nuclear war.
Next he refers to weird fiction by way of a vampire: “Who’s this that comes with the ashen face? You say the last vampire lies near death? Well, why do you hesitate? Give him transfusion of your heart’s own blood…”
Then in reference to fantasy fiction: “…And you, whose countenances show a stony, long-continuing grief, say the naiads, hamadryads, those lovely camp-followers, still lie in death-like sleep? They may find comfort in this cromlech’s shadow. Chafe their thin wrists, massage their shrunken brows, give them warmth, breathe between their fevered lips your breath of life. In ages past they loved you well, and now it’s time to show gratitude…”
Here Leiber is using the dryad as a representative for heroic fantasy and legend. He emphasizes the debt that is owed to story-lovers of old who marveled at tales of heroes and monsters. He feels that modern audience lack a sense of gratitude for the rich history of Fantasy.
Next he goes on to tell us the last werewolf has been shot and should be buried with full military honors. He cautions: “Dig the grave deep and pile it high with stones, so that no cheap-jack horror-monger of the plains can come and dig him up, to make out of his stinking bones and fur a show for fools.”
There is a lot to unpack there. As an old Weird Tales writer, Leiber is fond of the supernatural creature tale. The vampire and werewolf are good icons to represent that type of story. His reference to “cheap-jack horror-monger” who will use the werewolf for “a show for fools” must be a reference to Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which Universal premiered that year. Leiber is pointing to a coming trend where all the classic monsters will be used for laughs. Fritz had little love for Hollywood. He would later parody the film industry in stories like “The Bazaar of the Bizarre”.
Leiber warns of the sirens of mainstream writing: “…You hear it everywhere. It rises from the very ground, like gases from a bog. Cajoling voices promising to you the satisfaction of each last desire — the money-voice of film and print, white-breasted advertisement, and the sky-tainting lies of radio. They all promise wonder and you get: a candy bar and a plastic comb. They promise ecstasy and you receive: a Buick and a Chemtoned home. They really say: wonder is dead…”
We can see the commercial struggle within the author here. Work a regular job, write ads or work for radio programs, and abandon the Fantasy for the regular pay-check. This is a struggle all creative people must face, and Leiber often stayed on the side that did not get the money. He remained an amazing creator, winner of numerous awards, but suffered the poverty a Pulpster, especially one who did not write Westerns, must.
When I first read this piece I thought he was railing against Science Fiction replacing Fantasy, a trend that would dominate the 1950s. But this is 1948 and the full explosion of rockets and robots has yet to happen. The last of the Elak stories appeared in Weird Tales in 1941, marking a policy and editor change there. Farnsworth Wright rejected the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories in 1939 because the magazine was heading to straight horror. John W. Campbell picked up the series for Unknown. That fantasy magazine died as Unknown Worlds in 1943. Leiber had no good place to sell his Lankhmar tales after 1943. But this is not the gist of the piece. Later he says:
“Science has given us ….hints. What lurks beyond the universe’s rim? What thinks the tiny demon of the pox? And who was on the moon eons before Tyrannosaurus rex was on the world? What signifies the surging in the dark of forces only mathematics can discern, the dance of the giant-gutted atoms? No, I’ll take science…”
Here we see Leiber defending his SF work as part of his greater love of the fantastic. He is saying that Science Fiction can be a Lovecraftian device used to see the horror in the vast expanses of the galaxies. That the reader’s response need not be be “Gee Whiz, what a great gadget!”, but it can be an eye-popping wonder that borders on terror. To make this more obviously a Lovecraft moment he has the troupe march towards “Mountains of Madness”. Beyond those dark hills lie the future where Fantasy may survive, even flourish. Leiber is in 1948, so he can have no idea what lies ahead after the dry-spell of the 1950s. He can’t know that J. R. R. Tolkien will be published in paperback, sparking a wave of Fantasy that will create bestsellers. That Lancer will reissue the Conan stories and fuel Sword & Sorcery boom that will see his own Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories collected into six volumes. He is hopeful and history will bear him out.
Conclusion
“Fantasy on the March” was Fritz Leiber’s rallying call, though I don’t know how many followed him on that march into the future — possibly oblivion. Poul Anderson was one, with his The Broken Sword (1954), a masterpiece of Fantasy that received no applause until the 1970s. Anderson wrote most of his heroic fantasy under the guise of Science Fiction for the next two decades. L. Sprague de Camp and Gnome Press tried in the 1950s to revive Conan but failed. His own Pusad series tried another way. There were others. (I have written about them before in “The Men Who Saved Sword & Sorcery”.) Fritz was one of the most important of these writers, marching on despite the “unimaginable void of voids”.
