I later learned that Leiber felt “the two texts should be regarded as the same story told at different times. I came to understand that The Pale Brown Thing isn’t so much an earlier draft of the story as it is a different version.

Familiar, yet different more briskly paced. Reading The Pale Brown Thing was a way to re-engage and re-discover Our Lady of Darkness. And so I did, having tracked down those two issues of F&SF (because it’d never been reprinted anywhere else).

That painting there is by the great fantasy artist Ron Walotsky.Īnyway, I was intrigued. You can see below that it was the cover story of the January issue as well. The Pale Brown Thing was originally published in the January and February 1977 issues of F&SF. So, yeah, you could say I’m a fan.Ī few years back I learned that Our Lady of Darkness was originally published under a different title: The Pale Brown Thing, and not only that, but it was a different version than the novel I’d come to know and love. Our Lady of Darkness remains one of my favourite novels, a carefully constructed and fully realised fictional world.

To this real-world cast of characters Leiber added pulp fictioneer Franz Westen (a version of himself), the magnificently circumscribed Thibaut de Castries (author of the ultimate occult manifesto Megapolisomancy – how’s that for a title!), and of course Jaime Donaldus Byers. Lovecraft (with whom Leiber had corresponded), Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, George Sterling, and Clark Ashton Smith. A fantastical novel rooted in realism (it’s semi-autobiographical) with references to H.P. Our Lady of Darkness is a marvellous supernatural meta-fiction. Just as I had visited Lankhmar, becoming familiar with its dark alleys and byzantine guilds, so too would I visit San Francisco – or at least Leiber’s version of it – from 811 Geary Street to the Corona Heights a city filled with occult conspiracies, horrifying “paramentals”, flamboyant poets, and an illustrious pedigree of pulp fiction past. It’s been described as both Jamesian and Lovecraftian – and it is, but it’s also wholly Leiber. It picked up the World Fantasy Award for best novel of 1977, and rightfully so. Ill Met in Lankhmar was a thrilling tale set in some far-away land, but it wouldn’t be long before I discovered a work by Leiber that took its cue more from the real world – though was no less a stunning feat of imagination.įew would contest Our Lady of Darkness‘s status as a modern classic. I’ve still got my old Ace pocket paperback too, a prized item in my biblio-treasure hoard. My earliest exposure to Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) was via the adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser as they fought and drank and caroused their way through Lankhmar (City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes!) and realms beyond. This is my first UK edition also ex libris Joel Lane.

Our lady of darkness leiber