"The Rats of Limbo" by Fritz Leiber (from Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, August 1960)
The August 1960 issues of Fantastic Science Fiction Stories was a cornicopia of delights for the young teenaged me (as was just about every issue of the magazine edited by the talented Cele Goldsmith). A cover story by Robert Bloch, short stories from Eric Frank Russell, Arthur Porges, Fredric Brown, and Robert F. Young, the conclusion of a serial by Jack Sharkey, an article by Sam Moskowitz ob M. P. Shiel and H. F. Heard, an 11-page letters column, and Fritz Leiber's brief and (for me) unforgettable "The Rats of Limbo." I can't count the time I've read this story. It blew my young socks off the first time I read, and remained as impressive every other time I have read it over the decades.
The editorial introduction to the story" "Every writer must have his fun. One has his fun -- and gives you some, too -- in this tale, fable, sketych, scrap (crumb?)."
This particular crumb was a mere two and a half pages.
Two souls are conversing in Limbo and one mentions the rason he is there is his bad memory. There are rats -- lots of rats -- and there is Helen of Troy and Robert E. Lee and a knife and a rope and a way to improve one's memory...
Is it a comic story? Or is it an early New Wave experiment? Or is it out and out horror? Considering Leiber's background, could it be an early 60s take on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari? No matter; Leiber's surreal imagination swept me away. About the same time I read his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story "The Bleak Isle," and have been a worshipper at the alter of Leiber ever since.
The August 1960 issue of Fantastic Science Fiction Stories is available at Internet Archive.
Great minds think alike! I'm reading a Fritz Leiber collection for next week's WEDNESDAY'S SHORT STORIES. I actually read this story when it was first published in FANTASTIC long, long ago!
ReplyDeleteI would never have picked up a story about rats, one of the things that most scare me.
ReplyDeleteWell, Patti, there are rats and then there are Rats...some are even tragic figures, such as William Kotzwinkle's DOCTOR RAT...
ReplyDeleteAnd this magazine, never solely nor even primarily an sf magazine, soon changed its title to the more accurate FANTASTIC: STORIES OF IMAGINATION.
ReplyDeleteI wrote up a take on this issue, and on a contemporaneous F&SF, a bit back, too: https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2021/09/kurt-vonnegut-robert-bloch-fritz-leiber.html
Leiber the former professional actor and son of acting parents, and Robert Bloch also profoundly influenced by (and eventually deeply involved with) film and related dramatic forms...and Leiber was certainly among those who laid groundwork for what would be termed "New Wave" fantastica in the latter '60s...Bloch occasionally moving in that direction as well, as with his FANTASTIC story, "The Funnel of God"...
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