He Tackled the Oil Spill First

By JOHN J. MILLER

We've seen the disturbing videos of oil gushing up from aquatic depths, the unsettling maps of our spoiled sea, and the troubling pictures of pelicans covered in crude. It isn't hard to despair for the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet things could be much worse, at least in the vivid imagination of the author Fritz Leiber (1910-1992). In his 1964 short story "The Black Gondolier," petroleum threatens humanity not as a mindless environmental hazard but as a sentient menace. As one character speculates, what if man hadn't found oil, but "oil had found man"? What if the dark ooze "had thrust up its vicious feelers like some vast blind monster, and finally made contact"?

In May, San Francisco's Night Shade Books issued "Selected Stories," a greatest-hits anthology of Leiber's work that skips over "The Black Gondolier" but does include an admiring introduction by Neil Gaiman, one of today's leading fantasists. In October, Subterranean Press, a Michigan imprint, will put out "Strange Wonders," a compilation of previously unreleased material. Leiber was one of the most versatile writers of the 20th century and he left behind an impressive body of work—one that's now enjoying a miniature renaissance among independent publishers in his centennial year.

Leiber (rhymes with "fiber") was named for his father, a Shakespearean actor who later performed in films. One of the younger Leiber's finest tales is "Four Ghosts in Hamlet," about the bizarre happenings of a traveling production. His first published book, a collection of short stories called "Night's Black Agents," took its name from a line in "Macbeth."

Leiber once credited two writers as major influences: Shakespeare and H.P. Lovecraft, the ground-breaking horror writer of the 1920s and '30s. During the final months of Lovecraft's life, he and Leiber corresponded—a relationship made possible, in part, because Lovecraft had remembered seeing Leiber's father on stage in several roles, including Iago in "Othello."

Lovecraft's fictional vision of cosmic terror creeps into Leiber's work, but Leiber is better known for ushering the antiquarian ghost story into the modern age. In "Smoke Ghost," a 1941 story, a character dismisses old-fashioned specters who moan in attics. "I don't mean that traditional kind of ghost," he says. "I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books."

If Leiber had simply written a few ghost stories, he'd still be remembered for his innovations. Yet he ranged from genre to genre, racking up awards in the fields of fantasy and science fiction. In 1961, he proposed "sword and sorcery" as a catchphrase for the style of literature pioneered by E.R. Eddison, Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien—and himself.

The term caught on. Leiber's tales of Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser helped give it life. Fahfrd was a giant barbarian from the wintry north; the Gray Mouser was a streetwise trickster-thief. These boon companions inhabited a city called Lankhmar ("where swords clink almost as often as coins") in a world known as Nehwon ("no-when" spelled backward). They were among Leiber's most popular creations—always in pursuit of adventure, but often less earnest and more whimsical than other sword-and-sorcery protagonists. Leiber started to write about them in the '30s and didn't stop until his death.

These roguish heroes were "true depression children," according to Leiber, because they were born during a rotten economy and didn't earn money for years. Their author had his own troubles with employment. He bounced from job to job until alcoholism finally bounced him out of one for good. For the latter half of his life, he alternated between periods of sober productivity and drunken idleness.

This was a significant handicap, but he frequently rose above it. Some successful writers burn bright and then burn out. Not Leiber. With him, every decade seemed to have its flashes of brilliance. Many admirers say his best work is "Conjure Wife," a 1943 novel about faculty wives who secretly practice witchcraft at a small college. Others point to "Our Lady of Darkness," a 1977 novel of urban dread.

Autobiographical elements filled his fiction. "Our Lady of Darkness" features a horror author who is a recovering alcoholic in San Francisco (where Leiber spent his last years). Cats are a common presence as well. "Space-Time for Springers" is a 1958 story about a feline Einstein. "It's based loosely on Gummitch, a kitten he took from a litter in Chicago," says his son Justin Leiber, who is a philosophy professor at Florida State University. "All of the other kittens were dead. He nursed Gummitch back to health with an eye dropper."

Today, Leiber is arguably the beneficiary of a different kind of rescue operation—an effort by small publishers and devoted readers to keep his books alive before they slip out of print for good. If they succeed, he'll still be read long after the catastrophe in the Gulf, whatever its sources, is a distant memory.

Mr. Miller is the author of "The First Assassin" (AmazonEncore) and blogs at HeyMiller.com.