188-469: Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. ( / ˈ l aɪ b ər / LY -bər ; December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock , Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery . Fritz Leiber was born December 24, 1910, in Chicago, Illinois , to the actors Fritz Leiber and Virginia Bronson Leiber. For
376-728: A lay reader and studied as a candidate for the ministry, without taking a degree, at the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea, Manhattan , an affiliate of the Episcopal Church . After pursuing graduate studies in philosophy at the University of Chicago from 1933 to 1934 and again not taking a degree, he remained in Chicago while touring under the stage name of "Francis Lathrop" intermittently with his parents' company and pursuing
564-415: A "Conan yarn without sex interest." In another novel twist, Conan and the other protagonists have, at best, a pyrrhic victory ; this was rare for pulp magazines. This was followed by another experimental Conan story, " The Black Stranger ", with a similar setting. The story was, however, rejected by Weird Tales , which was rare for later Conan stories. Howard's next piece, " The Man-Eaters of Zamboula ",
752-528: A 'Transition', and two grouped as 'Ancient Adventures': "The Sunken Land" and "Adept's Gambit", which are both stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The science fiction novel Gather, Darkness followed in 1950. It deals with a futuristic world that follows the Second Atomic Age which is ruled by scientists, until in the throes of a new Dark Age, the witches revolt. In 1951, Leiber was Guest of Honor at
940-442: A 103-foot (31 m) tall cross built in 1934. Dominating this area is Sutro Tower , a large red and white radio and television transmission tower reaching 1,811 ft (552 m) above sea level. The nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on
1128-501: A Conan novel that later became Drums of Tombalku . The third attempt at writing the novel was more successful, resulting in Howard's only Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon , which was probably started on or around March 17, 1934. This novel combines elements of two previous Conan stories, "Black Colossus" and "The Scarlet Citadel", with Arthurian myth and provides an overview of Conan and
1316-457: A bimonthly publication and pulps such as Fight Stories , Action Stories , and Strange Tales all folded. Howard was further hit when his savings were wiped out in 1931 when the Farmer's National Bank failed , and again, after transferring to another bank, when that one failed as well. Early 1932 saw Howard taking one of his frequent trips around Texas. He traveled through the southern part of
1504-542: A boxer called Kid Allison. Howard wrote ten stories for this series but Sport Story only published three of them. With solid markets now all buying up his stories regularly, Howard quit taking college classes, and indeed would never again work a regular job. At twenty-three years of age, from the middle of nowhere in Texas, he had become a full-time writer; he was making good money and his father began bragging about his success, not to mention buying multiple copies of his work in
1692-438: A boxing-related ghost story published in the magazine Ghost Stories . In July of the same year, Argosy finally published one of Howard's stories, "Crowd-Horror", which was also a boxing story. Neither developed into ongoing series, however. After several minor successes and false starts, he struck gold again with a new series based on one of his favorite passions: boxing. July 1929 saw the debut of Sailor Steve Costigan in
1880-467: A coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car parked outside his kitchen window and shot himself in the head while sitting in the driver's seat. He died eight hours later. Howard was born January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas , the only son of a traveling country physician, Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, and his wife, Hester Jane Ervin Howard. His early life was spent wandering through
2068-611: A common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google . The early 2020s featured an exodus of tech companies from Downtown San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and struggles with homelessness and public drug use. Although some observers have raised the possibility that office vacancies and declining tax revenues could cause San Francisco to enter an economic doom loop , other sources have refuted this broad-based characterization of
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#17328513738942256-543: A couple's romance and created a new one with a supernatural element; the story was re-titled " The Phoenix on the Sword ", an element from this new subplot. Howard immediately went on to write two more Conan stories. The first of these was " The Frost-Giant's Daughter ", an inversion of the Greek myth surrounding Apollo and Daphne, set much earlier in Conan's life. The last of the initial trio
2444-407: A fantasy novel set in modern-day San Francisco, Our Lady of Darkness , which is about a writer of weird tales who must deal with the death of his wife and his recovery from alcoholism. In 1992, the last year of his life, Leiber married his second wife, Margo Skinner, a journalist and poet with whom he had been friends for years. Leiber died a few weeks after a physical collapse while traveling from
2632-640: A flood of treasure seekers (known as "forty-niners," as in "1849"). With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia , raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships , saloons , and hotels; many were left to rot, and some were sunk to establish title to
2820-452: A fort on Alcatraz Island to secure San Francisco Bay. San Francisco County was one of the state's 18 original counties established at California statehood in 1850. Until 1856, San Francisco's city limits extended west to Divisadero Street and Castro Street, and south to 20th Street. In 1856, the California state government divided the county. A straight line was then drawn across the tip of
3008-477: A gourmet marketplace. San Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen : Csb , Trewartha : Csll), characteristic of California's coast, with moist winters and dry summers. San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces
3196-642: A house in the town with a cash down payment and made extensive renovations. That same year, sitting in a library in New Orleans while his father took medical courses at a nearby college, Howard discovered a book concerned with the scant fact and abundant legends surrounding an indigenous culture in ancient Scotland called the Picts . In 1920, the Vestal Well within the limits of Cross Plains struck oil and Cross Plains became an oil boomtown. Thousands of people arrived in
3384-533: A job writing oil news for the local newspaper Cross Plains Review at $ 5 per column. It was not until July 1925 that Howard received payment for his first printed story. Howard lost his job at the newspaper in the same year and spent one month working in a post office before quitting over the low wages. His next job, at the Cross Plains Natural Gas Company, did not last long due to his refusal to be subservient to his boss. He did manual labor for
3572-528: A land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers) at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula , making it the second-most densely populated major U.S. city behind New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county , behind four of New York City's boroughs . Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022. San Francisco anchors
3760-554: A large African American population after World War II . The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley , the Fillmore , and Japantown , which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including
3948-508: A letter dated March 10, 1932, Farnsworth Wright rejected "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" but noted that "The Phoenix on the Sword" had "points of real excellence" and suggested changes. "The God in the Bowl" would also be rejected and so a potential fourth Conan story concerning Conan as a thief was abandoned at the synopsis stage. Instead of abandoning the entire Conan concept, as had happened with previous failed characters, Howard rewrote "The Phoenix on
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#17328513738944136-647: A light rail and bus network , in tandem with the BART and Caltrain systems, connects nearly every part of San Francisco with the wider region. San Francisco, which is Spanish for "Saint Francis," takes its name from Mission San Francisco de Asís , which in turn was named after Saint Francis of Assisi . The mission received its name in 1776, when it was founded by the Spanish under the leadership of Padre Francisco Palóu . The city has officially been known as San Francisco since 1847, when Washington Allon Bartlett , then serving as
4324-682: A literary career. Six short stories later included in the 2010 collection Strange Wonders: A Collection of Rare Fritz Leiber Works carry 1934 and 1935 dates. He also appeared alongside his father in uncredited parts in George Cukor 's Camille (1936), James Whale 's The Great Garrick (1937), and William Dieterle 's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). In 1936, he initiated a brief, intense correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft , who "encouraged and influenced [Leiber's] literary development" before Lovecraft died in March 1937. Leiber introduced Fafhrd and
4512-410: A literary course but was not allowed to take one. The reason for this is undocumented, however biographer Mark Finn suggests that his father refused to pay for such a non-vocational education. In the week of Thanksgiving that year, and after years of rejection slips and near acceptances, he finally sold a short caveman tale titled "Spear and Fang", which netted him the sum of $ 16 and introduced him to
4700-578: A magnet for America's counterculture movement . Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love . In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement , with
4888-513: A natural talent for prose writing and the encouragement of teachers, created in Howard an interest in becoming a professional writer. From the age of nine he began writing stories, mostly tales of historical fiction centering on Vikings , Arabs , battles , and bloodshed. One by one he discovered the authors who would influence his later work: Jack London and his stories of reincarnation and past lives, most notably The Star Rover (1915); Rudyard Kipling 's tales of subcontinent adventures;
5076-516: A new style of tale that ultimately became known as " sword and sorcery ". Featuring Kull , a barbarian precursor to later Howard heroes such as Conan , the tale hit Weird Tales in August 1929 and received fanfare from readers. Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright bought the story for $ 100, the most Howard had earned for a story at this time, and several more Kull stories followed. However, all but two were rejected, convincing Howard not to continue
5264-440: A port and naval base, post-Conquest San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a 19th-century settlement. These natural disadvantages forced the town's residents to bring water, fuel and food to the site. Its 1847 population was said to be 459. The California gold rush brought
5452-502: A position with Douglas Aircraft in quality inspection, primarily working on the C-47 Skytrain . Throughout the war, he continued to regularly publish fiction. Thereafter, the family returned to Chicago, where Leiber served as associate editor of Science Digest from 1945 to 1956. During this decade (forestalled by a fallow interregnum from 1954 to 1956), his output (including the 1947 Arkham House anthology Night's Black Agents )
5640-424: A regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction. However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage. USGS has released
5828-692: A result of this apprenticeship, his stories increasingly took on the aura of "prose-poems" filled with hypnotic, dreamy imagery and a power lacking in most other pulp efforts of the time. Further story sales to Weird Tales were sporadic but encouraging, and soon Howard was a regular in the magazine. His first cover story was for " Wolfshead ", a werewolf story published when he was only twenty. On reading "Wolfshead" in Weird Tales Howard became dismayed with his writing. He quit his stenographer's job to work at Robertson's Drug Store, where he rose to become head soda jerk on $ 80 per week. However, he resented
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6016-506: A science fiction convention in London, Ontario , with Skinner. His cause of death was a stroke. He wrote a 100-page-plus memoir, Not Much Disorder and Not So Early Sex , which can be found in The Ghost Light (1984). Leiber's own literary criticism, including several essays on Lovecraft, was collected in the volume Fafhrd and Me (1990). As the child of two Shakespearean actors, Leiber
6204-540: A seedy San Francisco residence hotel , its squalor relieved mainly by walls of books". Other reports suggest that Leiber preferred to live simply in the city, spending his money on dining, movies, and travel. In the last years of his life, royalty checks from TSR, Inc. (the makers of Dungeons & Dragons , who had licensed the mythos of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series) were enough in themselves to ensure that he lived comfortably. In 1977, he returned to his original form with
6392-540: A self-created regimen of exercise, including cutting down oak trees and chopping them into firewood every day, lifting weights, punching a bag and springing exercises, eventually building himself from a skinny teenager into a more muscled, burly form. Howard spent his late teens working odd jobs around Cross Plains, all of which he hated. In 1924, Howard returned to Brownwood to take a stenography course at Howard Payne College , this time boarding with his friend Lindsey Tyson instead of his mother. Howard would have preferred
6580-517: A series in print beyond just two stories, with seven Kane stories printed from 1928 to 1932. As the magazine published the Solomon Kane tale before Kull, this can be considered the first published example of sword and sorcery. 1929 was the year Howard broke out into other pulp markets, rather than just Weird Tales . The first story he sold to another magazine was "The Apparition in the Prize Ring",
6768-583: A significant portion of the Comstock Lode 's gold and silver mines, establishing a virtual monopoly. Using his incredible clout, Ralston was able to generate millions of dollars for San Francisco during its heady boom years. He founded the Bank of California , the first bank in the Western United States, and built the opulent Palace Hotel, a symbol of San Francisco's newfound prosperity and the largest hotel in
6956-516: A spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park . San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast. By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco
7144-518: A spider pencilled large in black on his forehead, thus turning him into an officer of the Spiders, one of the combatants in his Change War stories. "The only other component," Merril writes, "was the Leiber instinct for theatre." The similarity of the names of the father and the son caused some filmographies to incorrectly attribute to Fritz Jr. roles which were in fact played by his father, Fritz Leiber Sr., who
7332-593: A surveyor for a time before beginning a job as a stenographer for an oil company. In conjunction with his friend Tevis Clyde Smith , he dabbled heavily in verse, writing hundreds of poems and getting dozens published in Weird Tales and assorted poetry journals. With poor sales, and many publishers recoiling from his subject matter, Howard ultimately judged poetry writing a luxury he could not afford, and after 1930 he wrote little verse, instead dedicating his time to short stories and higher-paying markets. Nevertheless, as
7520-479: A time, he seemed inclined to follow in his parents' footsteps; the theater and actors feature in his fiction. He spent 1928 touring with his parents' Shakespeare company (Fritz Leiber & Co.) before entering the University of Chicago , where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received an undergraduate Ph.B. degree in psychology and physiology or biology with honors in 1932. From 1932 to 1933, he worked as
7708-479: A total of 21.9 million visitors. It is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods , its Chinatown and Mission districts, its cooling summers, fog , and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge , cable cars , and Alcatraz . The city is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of California, San Francisco ,
Fritz Leiber - Misplaced Pages Continue
7896-502: A variety of Texas cowtowns and boomtowns: Dark Valley (1906), Seminole (1908), Bronte (1909), Poteet (1910), Oran (1912), Wichita Falls (1913), Bagwell (1913), Cross Cut (1915), and Burkett (1917). During Howard's youth his parents' relationship began to break down. The Howard family had problems with money, which might have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard investing in get-rich-quick schemes. Hester Howard, meanwhile, came to believe that she had married below herself. Soon
8084-407: A variety of series characters. Soon he was submitting stories to magazines such as Adventure and Argosy . Rejections piled up, and with no mentors or instructions of any kind to aid him, Howard became a writing autodidact , methodically studying the markets and tailoring his stories and style to each. In the fall of 1922, when Howard was sixteen, he temporarily moved to a boarding house in
8272-491: A vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. By virtue of this, Howard quickly became a member of the "Lovecraft Circle", a group of writers and friends all linked via the immense correspondence of H. P. Lovecraft (who wrote over 100,000 letters in his lifetime ), who made it a point to introduce his many like-minded friends to one another and encourage them to share stories, utilize each other's invented fictional trappings, and help each other succeed in
8460-479: A wave of " Manhattanization " that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown. The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in
8648-524: Is G. K. Chesterton 's The Ballad of the White Horse and Chesterton's concept that "it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment." By March, Howard had recycled an unpublished Kull story called " By This Axe I Rule! " into his first Conan story. The central plot remains that of a barbarian having become king of a civilized country and a conspiracy to assassinate him. However, he removed an entire subplot concerning
8836-443: Is Howard's earliest surviving boxing story known to exist; it is told in the first person, uses elements of a traditional tall-tale and is a fictionalized account of Howard (as "Steve") and his friend Lindsey Tyson (as "Spike") training for a fight. This story and the elements it uses would also be important in Howard's literary future. In May 1927, after having to return home due to contracting measles and then being forced to retake
9024-483: Is essentially their original form, but most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek , have been partially or completely culverted and built over. Since the 1990s, however, the Public Utilities Commission has been studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks. An Historical Center of San Francisco monument, where the 1899–1906 City Hall was once located,
9212-408: Is gone." Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini 's Bank of Italy , later to become Bank of America , provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address
9400-566: Is in United Nations Plaza , at 37°46′48″N 122°24′49″W / 37.7800397°N 122.4135943°W / 37.7800397; -122.4135943 The earliest center of San Francisco is Portsmouth Square , in the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. Here in the northeast quadrant, the Financial District is centered, with Union Square , the principal shopping and hotel district, and
9588-537: The 13th most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States , with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area , the fifth-largest urban region in the U.S., had a 2023 estimated population of over 9 million. Prior to European settlement , the modern city proper was inhabited by the Yelamu , who spoke a language now referred to as Ramaytush Ohlone . On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established
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#17328513738949776-614: The Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma and the beginning of the U.S. Conquest of California , American forces from the USS Portsmouth under the command of John B. Montgomery captured Yerba Buena on July 9, 1846, with little resistance from the local Californio population, raising the American flag over Yerba Buena plaza (later renamed Portsmouth Square in commemoration of this event). Following
9964-562: The California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California. San Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina , Mission Bay , and Hunters Point , as well as large sections of the Embarcadero , sit on areas of landfill . Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from
10152-650: The Horror Writers Association made him an inaugural winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1988 (named in 1987); and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers. Leiber was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in
10340-695: The Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1970 and 1971 for "Ship of Shadows" (1969) and " Ill Met in Lankhmar " (1970). " Gonna Roll the Bones " (1967), his contribution to Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology, won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1968. Our Lady of Darkness (1977), originally serialized in short form in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under
10528-495: The Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway , allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood. The two recent decades have seen booms driven by the internet industry. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated
10716-452: The Middle Ages and the early Renaissance , tales that rival even his best Conan stories for their historical sweep and splendor. In addition to series characters such as Turlogh Dubh O'Brien and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey , Howard sold a variety of tales depicting various times and periods from the fall of Rome to the fifteenth century. The magazine eventually ceased publication in 1934 due to
10904-623: The Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate , and the Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi . The California gold rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, transforming an unimportant hamlet into a busy port, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time; between 1870 and 1900, approximately one quarter of California's population resided in
11092-478: The Standard American Encyclopedia . In 1941, the family moved to California, where Leiber served as a speech and drama instructor at Occidental College during the 1941–1942 academic year. Unable to conceal his disdain for academic politics as the United States entered World War II , he decided that the struggle against fascism mattered more than his long-held pacifist convictions. He accepted
11280-495: The Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill , once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf , and Pier 39 , where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill , a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street ; North Beach ,
11468-1116: The University of San Francisco , San Francisco State University , the San Francisco Conservatory of Music , the de Young Museum , the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , the San Francisco Symphony , the San Francisco Ballet , the San Francisco Opera , the SFJAZZ Center , and the California Academy of Sciences . Two major league sports teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors , play their home games within San Francisco proper. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) offers flights to over 125 destinations, while
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#173285137389411656-599: The "Best Novella" Hugo and Nebula Awards. Leiber's last major work, The Knight and Knave of Swords (1991), closed out the series while leaving room for possible sequels. In his last year, Leiber considered allowing other writers to continue the series, but his sudden death made this more difficult. One new Fafhrd and the Mouser novel, Swords Against the Shadowland , by Robin Wayne Bailey , appeared in 1998. The stories influenced
11844-461: The 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate. In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of
12032-934: The 1960s and led by Lin Carter . Some works by SAGA members were published in Lin Carter 's Flashing Swords! anthologies. Leiber himself is credited with inventing the term sword and sorcery for the particular subgenre of epic fantasy exemplified by his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. In an appreciation in the July 1969 "Special Fritz Leiber Issue" of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , Judith Merril writes of Leiber's connection with his readers: "That this kind of personal response...is shared by thousands of other readers, has been made clear on several occasions." The November 1959 issue of Fantastic , for instance: Leiber had just come out of one of his recurrent dry spells, and editor Cele Lalli bought up all his new material until there
12220-493: The 1966 novelization of the Clair Huffaker screenplay of Tarzan and the Valley of Gold . Many of Leiber's most acclaimed works are short stories, especially in the horror genre, including "The Smoke Ghost", "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes", and "You're All Alone" (later expanded as The Sinful Ones ). Leiber also challenged the conventions of science fiction through reflexive narratives such as "A Bad Day For Sales" (first published in Galaxy Science Fiction , July 1953), in which
12408-443: The 1967 William Rotsler film The Girl with the Hungry Eyes which is entirely unrelated to Leiber's story). Two Leiber stories were filmed for TV for Rod Serling 's Night Gallery . These were "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" (1970) (adapted by Robert M. Young and directed by John Badham) and "The Dead Man" (adapted and directed by Douglas Heyes). Robert E. Howard Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936)
12596-402: The 1979 Schick Sunn Classics documentary The Bermuda Triangle , based on the book by Charles Berlitz . Leiber was heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Graves , John Webster , and Shakespeare in the first two decades of his career. Beginning in the late 1950s, he was increasingly influenced by the works of Carl Jung , particularly by the concepts of the anima and the shadow . In
12784-535: The Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to "Old Gold Mountain," creating the city's Chinatown quarter. By 1880, Chinese made up 9.3% of the population. The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for
12972-435: The Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair , the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939–40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it. During World War II , the city-owned Sharp Park in Pacifica was used as an internment camp to detain Japanese Americans . Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became
13160-410: The Border ". This was the first Conan tale to have an explicit ( Robert W. Chambers -influenced) American setting, although American themes had appeared earlier, and the only one in which Conan himself does not appear. His next story was based on his unfinished material and became " Beyond the Black River ", which not only used the different American-frontier setting but was also, in Howard's own words,
13348-430: The Depression, leaving several of Howard's stories aimed at this market unsold. In August 1930 Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft 's " The Rats in the Walls " and discussing some of the obscure Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded warmly to Howard, and soon the two Weird Tales veterans were engaged in
13536-559: The Depression. Also in this period, Howard wrote the first of the James Allison stories, "Marchers of Valhalla". Allison is a disabled Texan who begins to recall his past lives, the first of which is in the later part of Howard's new Hyborian age. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith in October 1933, he wrote that its sequel "The Garden of Fear" was "dealing with one of my various conceptions of
13724-409: The Gray Mouser in "Two Sought Adventure", his first professionally published short story in the August 1939 edition of Unknown , edited by John W. Campbell . Leiber married Jonquil Stephens on January 16, 1936. Their only child, philosopher and science fiction writer Justin Leiber , was born in 1938. From 1937 to 1941, Fritz Leiber was employed by Consolidated Book Publishing as a staff writer for
13912-460: The Gray Mouser. In 1943, his first two novels were serialized in Unknown (the supernatural horror-oriented Conjure Wife , inspired by his experiences on the faculty of Occidental College) and Astounding Science Fiction ( Gather, Darkness ). 1947 marked the publication of his first book, Night's Black Agents , a short story collection containing seven stories grouped as 'Modern Horrors', one as
14100-498: The Headland ", " The Children of the Night " and " The Fire of Asshurbanipal "). He also corresponded with other "Weird Tale" writers such as Clark Ashton Smith , August Derleth , and E. Hoffmann Price . The correspondence between Howard and Lovecraft contained a lengthy discussion on a frequent element in Howard's fiction, barbarism versus civilization. Howard held that civilization
14288-470: The Hyborian age for the new British audience. Howard sent his final draft to Denis Archer on May 20, 1934. He had worked exclusively on the novel for two months, writing approximately 5,000 words per day, seven days a week. Although he told acquaintances that he had little hope for this novel, he had put a lot of effort into it. However, the publisher went into receivership in late 1934, before it could print
14476-536: The Hyborian and post-Hyborian world." In May 1933, a British publisher, Denis Archer, contacted Howard about publishing a book in the United Kingdom. Howard submitted a batch of his best available stories, including "The Tower of the Elephant" and " The Scarlet Citadel ", on June 15. In January 1934 the publisher rejected the collection but suggested a novel instead. Though the publisher was "exceedingly interested" in
14664-512: The Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley , now popularly called the Castro , was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village , and is now the center of gay life in the city. Located near
14852-701: The Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset can refer to the more western portions of their respective district and the Inner Richmond and Inner Sunset can refer to the more eastern portions. Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building , while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as
15040-712: The Picts in their struggle against the invading Romans , and introduced readers to Howard's king of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn . Howard followed up this tale with the now-classic revenge nightmare " Worms of the Earth " and several other tales, creating horrific adventures tinged with a Cthulhu -esque gloss and notable for their use of metaphor and symbolism. With the onset of the Great Depression , many pulp markets reduced their schedules or went out of business entirely. Howard saw market after market falter and vanish. Weird Tales became
15228-521: The Presidio garrison, commanded by Mariano Vallejo , relocated to the Presidio of Sonoma , which was regarded as needing a greater military presence due the proximity of the Russian settlement at Fort Ross . Only a small detachment remained at the Presidio of San Francisco. Mission Dolores sold most of its property in 1836, retaining only the church and related structures. In 1833, Juana Briones de Miranda
15416-688: The San Francisco Peninsula just north of San Bruno Mountain . Everything south of the line became the new San Mateo County while everything north of the line became the new consolidated City and County of San Francisco. The California Gold Rush triggered a wave of entrepreneurial activity as individuals sought to capitalize on the newfound wealth. The discovery of silver deposits, notably the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further fueled rapid population growth and economic expansion. San Francisco, as
15604-453: The San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified . Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000,
15792-450: The Spanish ship San Carlos , commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala , became the first ship to anchor in the bay. Soon after, on March 28, 1776, Anza established the Presidio of San Francisco . On October 9, Mission San Francisco de Asís , also known as Mission Dolores, was founded by Padre Francisco Palóu . In 1794, the Presidio established the Castillo de San Joaquín , a fortification on
15980-453: The Sword" based on Wright's feedback and including material from his essay. Both this revision and the next Conan story, " The Tower of the Elephant ", sold with no problems. Howard had written nine Conan stories before the first saw print. Conan first appeared to the public in Weird Tales in December 1932 and was such a hit that Howard was eventually able to place seventeen Conan stories in
16168-550: The Vietnam War , and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States . San Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities , high-tech , healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, and professional services sectors. As of 2020 ,
16356-652: The World Science Fiction Convention in New Orleans. Further novels followed during the 1950s, and in 1958 The Big Time won the Hugo Award for Best Novel . Leiber continued to publish in the 1960s. His novel The Wanderer (1964) also won the Hugo for Best Novel. In the novel, an artificial planet nicknamed the Wanderer materializes from hyperspace within earth's orbit. The Wanderer's gravitational field captures
16544-449: The action takes place in a small bubble of isolated space-time the size of a theatrical stage, and with only a handful of characters. Judith Merril (in the July 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction ) remarks on Leiber's acting skills when the writer won a science fiction convention costume ball. Leiber's costume consisted of a cardboard military collar over turned-up jacket lapels, cardboard insignia, an armband, and
16732-496: The age of nine, he longed to become a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. His greatest success occurred after his death. Although a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime. The main outlet for his stories
16920-458: The area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center , which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors . West of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue , lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with
17108-500: The award-winning "The Button Moulder". The short parallel worlds story " Catch That Zeppelin! " (1975) won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1976. It presents an alternate reality much better than our own, as opposed to the usual parallel universe story depicting a world worse than our own. "Belsen Express" (1975) won the World Fantasy Award—Short Fiction . Leiber
17296-582: The beginning of the assimilation of the Ramaytush people, and the decline of their language and culture. The Spanish Empire claimed San Francisco as part of Las Californias , a province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain . The Spanish first arrived in what is now San Francisco on November 2, 1769, when the Portolá expedition led by Don Gaspar de Portolá and Juan Crespí arrived at San Francisco Bay . Having noted
17484-426: The capture, U.S. forces appointed both José de Jesús Noé and Washington Allon Bartlett to serve as co- alcaldes (mayors), while the conquest continued on in the rest of California. On January 30, 1847, Mayor Bartlett ordained that the city should officially change its name from "Yerba Buena" to "San Francisco", as the former name was only locally recognized and the latter name was in use on international maps. There
17672-412: The character of Conan . Later, in 1935, Howard claimed in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith that Conan "simply grew up in my mind a few years ago when I was stopping in a little border town on the lower Rio Grande." However, the character actually took nine months to develop. Howard had originally used the name "Conan" for a Gael reaver in a past-life-themed story he completed in October 1931, which
17860-461: The citizenry by so-called 'civilized' leaders. Howard initially deferred to Lovecraft but gradually asserted his own views, even coming to deride Lovecraft's opinions. In 1930, with his interest in Solomon Kane dwindling and his Kull stories not catching on, Howard applied his new sword-and-sorcery and horror experience to one of his first loves: the Picts . His story "Kings of the Night" depicted King Kull conjured into pre-Christian Britain to aid
18048-466: The city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks. More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people died, though modern estimates put the number in
18236-516: The city as a whole, asserting that the issues of concern are restricted primarily to the urban core of San Francisco. As of March 2024, Union Square was in "sorry shape" and had lost its traditional position as the Bay Area's regional shopping hub to Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose. The Ferry Station Post Office Building , Armour & Co. Building , Atherton House , and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in
18424-414: The city is still home to numerous companies inside and outside of technology, including Salesforce , Uber , Airbnb , X , Levi's , Gap , Dropbox , and Lyft . In 2022, San Francisco had more than 1.7 million international visitors – the fifth-most visited city from abroad in the United States after New York City, Miami , Orlando , and Los Angeles – and approximately 20 million domestic visitors for
18612-466: The city of Lankhmar . Fafhrd was based on Leiber himself and the Mouser on his friend Harry Otto Fischer , and the two characters were created in a series of letters exchanged by the two in the mid-1930s. These stories were among the progenitors of many of the tropes of sword and sorcery . Some Fafhrd and Mouser stories were recognized by annual genre awards: "Scylla's Daughter" (1961) was "Short Story" Hugo finalist, and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970) won
18800-474: The city of Tyre a hundred years later, where the two visitors from Nehwon are remembered as local legends. Fischer and Leiber contributed to the original design of the 1976 wargame Lankhmar from TSR . Conjure Wife has been made into feature films four times under other titles: "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" was filmed under that title by Kastenbaum Films in 1995. (This film is not to be confused with
18988-618: The city proper. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county . After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire , it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama–Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II , it was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater . In 1945, the United Nations Charter
19176-541: The city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation ; and Telegraph Hill , which features Coit Tower . Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown , the oldest Chinatown in North America. The South of Market , which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies . New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot
19364-479: The city's alcalde , renamed it from Yerba Buena (Spanish for "Good Herb"), which had been the name of the first civilian pueblo in San Francisco, as well as the name of Yerba Buena Cove , which the pueblo was on the shore of. Earlier in San Francisco's history, the uninhabited area on the northeastern side of San Francisco was called El Paraje de Yerba Buena , after the herb that was growing abundantly there. The name Yerba Buena continues to be used in locations in
19552-417: The city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001 and again in 2023, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and
19740-560: The city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and urban renewal projects. The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening
19928-563: The city, according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco . San Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States , at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands — Alcatraz , Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island , and small portions of Alameda Island , Red Rock Island , and Angel Island —are part of
20116-839: The city, such as on Yerba Buena Island and in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Yerba Buena Gardens . While people residing outside the San Francisco Bay Area use nicknames including "Frisco" and "San Fran", local residents in the Bay Area sometimes refer to San Francisco as "the City" or "SF". The choice of nickname a person uses is a common way for locals to distinguish long-time residents from tourists and recent arrivals. "San Fran" and "Frisco" are sometimes considered controversial as nicknames among San Francisco residents. The earliest archeological evidence of human habitation of
20304-432: The city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands , 27 miles (43 km) offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a "seven-by-seven-mile square," a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly 232 square miles (600 km ). There are more than 50 hills within the city limits. Some neighborhoods are named after
20492-482: The classic mythological tales collected by Thomas Bulfinch . Howard was considered by friends to be eidetic , and astounded them with his ability to memorize lengthy reams of poetry with ease after one or two readings. In 1919, when Howard was thirteen, Dr. Howard moved his family to the Central Texas hamlet of Cross Plains , and there the family would stay for the rest of Howard's life. Howard's father bought
20680-606: The combination of a traditional tall tale and slapstick comedy. Stories sold to Fight Stories provided Howard with a market just as stable as Weird Tales . Due to his success in Fight Stories , Howard was contacted by the publisher Street & Smith in February 1931 with a request to move the Steve Costigan stories to their own pulp Sport Story Magazine . Howard refused but created a new, similar series just for them based on
20868-507: The country at the time. His financial empire, however, collapsed in 1875 as a result of the Panic of 1873 , triggering a major economic crisis in San Francisco. Development of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support ) helped make
21056-618: The course, Howard passed his exams. While waiting for the official graduation in August, he returned to writing, including a re-write of "The Shadow Kingdom". He rewrote it again in August and submitted it to Weird Tales in September. This story was an experiment with the entire concept of the "weird tale" horror fiction as defined by practitioners such as Edgar Allan Poe , A. Merritt , and H. P. Lovecraft , mixing elements of fantasy, horror and mythology with historical romance , action and swordplay into thematic vehicles never before seen,
21244-433: The cult horror film Equinox (1970) directed by Dennis Muren and Jack Woods, Leiber has a cameo appearance as a geologist, Dr. Watermann. In the edited second version of the movie, Leiber has no spoken dialogue but appears in a few scenes. The original version of the movie has a longer appearance by Leiber recounting the ancient book and a brief speaking role; all were cut from the re-release. He also appears as Chavez in
21432-678: The development of West Portal , and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood . Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District , a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population. The northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond , a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues . These two districts are each sometimes further divided into two regions:
21620-421: The drug store and, in September, returned to Brownwood to complete his bookkeeping course. It was during this August that he began working on the story that would become " The Shadow Kingdom ", one of the most important works of his career. While at college, Howard wrote for their newspaper, The Yellow Jacket . One of the short stories printed in this newspaper was a comedy called "Cupid vs. Pollux". This story
21808-500: The emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village , the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors , and his assassination , along with that of Mayor George Moscone , in 1978. Bank of America , now based in Charlotte , North Carolina , was founded in San Francisco; the bank completed 555 California Street in 1969. The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, igniting
21996-748: The excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake . A few natural lakes and creeks ( Lake Merced , Mountain Lake , Pine Lake , Lobos Creek , El Polin Spring ) are within parks and remain protected in what
22184-520: The fact that there were no churches to be found, prompted missionaries like William Taylor to come to San Francisco where he began preaching in the streets, using an upright barrel as his pulpit. Taylor was able to garner enough generous donations from successful gold miners with which he used to build a church. One of the most influential figures of this era was William Chapman Ralston . A shrewd banker and investor, Ralston amassed considerable wealth and influence in San Francisco. He gained control over
22372-489: The famous " Painted Ladies ," standing alongside Alamo Square . To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury , famously associated with 1960s hippie culture. The Haight is now home to some expensive boutiques and a few controversial chain stores, although it still retains some bohemian character. North of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights , an affluent neighborhood that features
22560-508: The final version. " Rogues in the House " is the only Conan story to be completed in a single draft. These stories sold easily and they include the first and second Conan stories to feature on the cover of Weird Tales , " Black Colossus " and " Xuthal of the Dusk ". Howard's motivation for quick and easy sales at this time was influenced by the collapse of some other markets, such as Fight Stories , in
22748-593: The first land grant in Yerba Buena: to William Richardson , a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth. Richardson had arrived in San Francisco aboard a whaling ship in 1822. In 1825, he married Maria Antonia Martinez, eldest daughter of the Californio Ygnacio Martínez . Yerba Buena began to attract American and European settlers; an 1842 census listed 21 residents (11%) born in the United States or Europe, as well as one Filipino merchant. Following
22936-511: The gateway to the goldfields, experienced a surge in population and commercial activity. However, the influx of fortune seekers also brought challenges. Lawlessness was rampant, and the Barbary Coast district became synonymous with vice, attracting criminals, prostitutes, and illicit activities, including but not limited to prostitution, bootlegging , and gambling. The rapidly growing population, with its lawlessness, gambling and other vices, and
23124-491: The genre of sword and sorcery grew up around Howard's masterwork, with dozens of practitioners evoking Howard's creation to one degree or another. In spring 1933, Howard started to place work with Otis Adelbert Kline , a former pulp writer, as his agent. Kline encouraged him to try writing in other genres in order to expand into different markets. Kline's agency was successful in finding outlets for more of Howard's stories and even placed works that had been rejected when Howard
23312-453: The hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill , Potrero Hill , and Russian Hill . Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks , a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson , is 928 feet (283 m) high and is capped with
23500-551: The homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina , a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay. In the southeast quadrant of the city is the Mission District —populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In
23688-455: The human protagonist yet repelled by human customs in the novel The Wanderer . Leiber's "Gummitch" stories feature a kitten with an I.Q. of 160, just waiting for his ritual cup of coffee so that he can become human, too. His first stories in the 1930s and 40s were inspired by Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos . A notable critic and historian of the wider Mythos, S. T. Joshi, has singled out Leiber's "The Sunken Land" ( Unknown Worlds , February 1942) as
23876-512: The job itself and worked such long hours every day of the week that he became ill. He relaxed by visiting the Neeb Ice House, to which he was introduced by an oil field worker befriended at the drug store, to drink and began to take part in boxing matches. These matches became an important part of his life; the combination of boxing and writing provided an outlet for his frustrations and anger. In August 1926, Howard quit his exhausting job at
24064-533: The larger Port of Oakland . The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America. From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population. Over this period, San Francisco became
24252-523: The magazine between 1933 and 1936. Howard then took a short break from Conan after his initial burst of stories, returning to the character in mid-1933. These stories, his "middle period", are routine and considered the weakest of the series. Stories, such as " Iron Shadows in the Moon ", were often simply Conan rescuing a damsel in distress from a monster in some ruins. While earlier Conan stories had three or four drafts, some in this period had only two including
24440-514: The metropolitan area, with 4.5 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($ 874 billion) and 2nd by GDP per capita ($ 131,082) across the OECD countries, ahead of global cities like Paris , London , and Singapore . It is the fourth-largest by aggregate income and economic output, with a GDP of $ 729 billion in 2022 . The wider San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland Combined Statistical Area is the nation's fifth-most populous, with around nine million residents, and
24628-408: The mid-1960s, he began incorporating elements of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces . These concepts are often mentioned in his stories, especially the anima, which becomes a method of exploring his fascination with, but estrangement from, the female. Leiber liked cats, which are featured in many of his stories. Tigerishka, for example, is a cat-like alien who is sexually attractive to
24816-419: The missions were made to divest themselves of their extensive landholdings and emancipate the indigenous people under their control. As part of the process of secularization, Governor José Figueroa opened up San Francisco to civilian settlement. Prior to secularization, the only settlements in San Francisco had been the military settlement at the Presidio and the religious settlement at Mission Dolores. In 1835,
25004-495: The moon and shatters it into something like one of Saturn's rings. On Earth, the Wanderer's gravity well triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and tidal phenomena. The multi-threaded plot follows the exploits of an ensemble cast as they struggle to survive the global disaster. In the same period, Leiber published "Black Gondolier", a short story in which a protagonist uncovers a cosmic conspiracy in which oil from ancient fossils preys upon human beings and human civilizations. Leiber received
25192-443: The most accomplished of the early stories based on Lovecraft's Mythos. Leiber also later wrote several essays on Lovecraft the man, such as "A Literary Copernicus" (1949), the publication of which formed a key moment in the emergence of a serious critical appreciation of Lovecraft's life and work. Leiber's first professional sale was "Two Sought Adventure" ( Unknown , August 1939), which introduced his most famous characters, Fafhrd and
25380-641: The nearby city of Brownwood to complete his senior year of high school, accompanied by his mother. It was in Brownwood that he first met friends his own age who shared his interest not only for sports and history but also writing and poetry. The two most important of these, Tevis Clyde Smith and Truett Vinson, shared his Bohemian and literary outlook on life, and together they wrote amateur papers and magazines, exchanged long letters filled with poetry and existential thoughts on life and philosophy, and encouraged each other's writing endeavors. Through Vinson, Howard
25568-415: The next two decades. Perhaps as a result of his substance abuse, Leiber seems to have suffered periods of penury in the 1970s; Harlan Ellison wrote of his anger at finding that the much-awarded Leiber had to write his novels on a manual typewriter propped up over the sink in his apartment. Marc Laidlaw wrote that, when visiting Leiber as a fan in 1976, he "was shocked to find him occupying one small room of
25756-400: The novel. The story was briefly held as part of the company's assets before being returned to Howard. It was later printed in Weird Tales as a serial over five months, beginning with the December 1935 issue. Howard may have begun losing interest in Conan in late 1934, with a growing desire to write westerns. He began to write, although never finished, a Conan story called " Wolves Beyond
25944-456: The omnipresence of evil and enemies in the world, and taught him the value of physical strength and violence. As the son of the local doctor, Howard had frequent exposure to the effects of injury and violence, due to accidents on farms and oil fields combined with the massive increase in crime that came with the oil boom . Firsthand tales of gunfights, lynchings , feuds , and Indian raids developed his distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on
26132-460: The pages of Fight Stories . A tough-as-nails, two-fisted mariner with a head of rocks and occasionally a heart of gold, Costigan began boxing his way through a variety of exotic seaports and adventure locales, becoming so popular in Fight Stories that the same editors began using additional Costigan episodes in their sister magazine Action Stories . The series saw a return to Howard's use of humor and ( unreliable ) first-person narration, with
26320-659: The pair were actively fighting. Hester did not want Isaac to have anything to do with their son. She had a particularly strong influence on her son's intellectual growth. She had spent her early years helping a variety of sick relatives, contracting tuberculosis in the process. She instilled in her son a deep love of poetry and literature, recited verse daily and supported him unceasingly in his efforts to write. Other experiences would later seep into his prose. Although he loved reading and learning, he found school to be confining and began to hate having anyone in authority over him. Experiences watching and confronting bullies revealed
26508-629: The people who came with it. He was already poorly disposed towards oil booms as they were the cause of the constant traveling in his early years but this was aggravated by what he perceived to be the effect oil booms had on towns. "I'll say one thing about an oil boom; it will teach a kid that Life's a pretty rotten thing as quick as anything I can think of." —Robert E. Howard in a letter to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright, Summer 1931. At fifteen Howard first sampled pulp magazines , especially Adventure and its star authors Talbot Mundy and Harold Lamb . The next few years saw him creating
26696-473: The period of Mexican rule , although it was not until 1833 that the missions would be secularized. Agricultural land became largely privatized as ranchos , as was occurring in other parts of California. Coastal trade increased, including a half-dozen barques from various Atlantic ports which regularly sailed in California waters. With the enactment of the Mexican Secularization Act of 1833 ,
26884-462: The primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations . The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South , to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations
27072-408: The protagonist, Robie, "America’s only genuine mobile salesrobot", references the title character of Isaac Asimov's idealistic robot story, "Robbie". Questioning Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics , Leiber imagines the futility of automatons in a post-apocalyptic New York City. In his later years, Leiber returned to short story horror in such works as "Horrible Imaginings", "Black Has Its Charms" and
27260-661: The pulp field. In time this circle of correspondents has developed a legendary patina about it rivaling similar literary conclaves such as The Inklings , the Bloomsbury Group , and the Beats . Howard was given the affectionate nickname "Two-Gun Bob" by virtue of his long explications to Lovecraft about the history of his beloved Southwest , and during the ensuing years he contributed several notable elements to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos of horror stories (beginning with " The Black Stone ", his Mythos stories also included " The Cairn on
27448-641: The pulps. Howard's " Celtic phase" began in 1930, during which he became fascinated by Celtic themes and his own Irish ancestry. He shared this enthusiasm with Harold Preece , a friend made in Austin in the summer of 1927; Howard's letters to both Preece and Clyde Smith contain much Irish-related material and discussion. Howard taught himself a little Gaelic , examined the Irish parts of his family history and began writing about Irish characters. Turlogh Dubh O'Brien and Cormac Mac Art were created at this time, although he
27636-599: The quality of housing after the earthquake. The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights , where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes. In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in the Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915. During this period, San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy
27824-559: The readers of a struggling pulp called Weird Tales . Now that his career in fiction had begun, Howard dropped out of Howard Payne College at the end of the semester and returned to Cross Plains. Shortly afterwards, he received notice that another story, "The Hyena", had been accepted by Weird Tales . During the same period, Howard made his first attempt to write a novel, a loosely autobiographical book modeled on Jack London 's Martin Eden and titled Post Oaks & Sand Roughs . The book
28012-607: The research necessary for a purely historical setting was too time-consuming for him to engage in on a regular basis and still earn a living. The Hyborian Age, with its varied settings similar to real places and eras of history, allowed him to write fantastical historical fiction without such problems. He may have been inspired in the creation of his setting by Thomas Bulfinch 's 1913 edition of his Bulfinch's Mythology called The Outline of Mythology , which contained stories from history and legend, including many that were direct influences on Howard's work. Another potential inspiration
28200-407: The series. In March 1928, Howard salvaged and re-submitted to Weird Tales a story rejected by the more popular pulp Argosy , and the result was " Red Shadows ", the first of many stories featuring the vengeful Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane . Appearing in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales , the character was a big hit with readers and this was the first of Howard's characters to sustain
28388-529: The several thousands. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless. Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay . Jack London is remembered for having famously eulogized the earthquake: "Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco
28576-746: The shaping of sword and sorcery and other works. Joanna Russ ' stories about thief-assassin Alyx (collected in 1976 in The Adventures of Alyx ) were in part inspired by Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Alyx made guest appearances in two of Leiber's stories. More recently, playing off the visit of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser to our world in Adept's Gambit (set in second century B.C. Tyre), Steven Saylor 's short story "Ill Seen in Tyre" takes his Roma Sub Rosa series hero Gordianus to
28764-530: The southern side of the Golden Gate , which later came to be known as Fort Point. In 1804, the province of Alta California was created, which included San Francisco. At its peak in 1810–1820, the average population at the Mission Dolores settlement was about 1,100 people. In 1821, the Californias were ceded to Mexico by Spain. The extensive California mission system gradually lost its influence during
28952-496: The state with his main occupation being, in his own words, "the wholesale consumption of tortillas, enchiladas and cheap Spanish wine." In Fredericksburg , while overlooking sullen hills through a misty rain, he conceived of the fantasy land of Cimmeria , a bitter hard northern region home to fearsome barbarians. In February, while in Mission , he wrote the poem Cimmeria . It was also during this trip that Howard first conceived of
29140-447: The stories, the rejection letter explained that there was a "prejudice that is very strong over here just now against collections of short stories." The suggested novel, however, could be published by Pawling and Ness Ltd in a first edition of 5,000 copies for lending libraries. In late 1933 Howard returned to Conan, starting again slightly awkwardly with " The Devil in Iron ". However, this
29328-561: The strategic benefits of the area due to its large natural harbor, the Spanish dispatched Pedro Fages in 1770 to find a more direct route to the San Francisco Peninsula from Monterey , which would become part of the El Camino Real route. By 1774, Juan Bautista de Anza had arrived to the area to select the sites for a mission and presidio . The first European maritime presence in San Francisco Bay occurred on August 5, 1775, when
29516-437: The territory of San Francisco dates to 3000 BCE. The Yelamu group of the Ramaytush people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay . The Ohlone name for San Francisco was Ahwaste , meaning, "place at the bay." The arrival of Spanish colonists, and the implementation of their Mission system, marked
29704-419: The third following a few days later. With these three completed he created an essay called " The Hyborian Age " in order to flesh out his setting in more detail. There were four drafts of this essay, starting with a two-page outline and finishing as an 8,000-word essay. Howard supplemented this with two sketched maps and an additional short piece entitled "Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age." In
29892-409: The third-largest by economic output, with a GDP of $ 1.32 trillion in 2022 . In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $ 252.2 billion, and a GDP per capita of $ 312,000. San Francisco was ranked fifth in the world and second in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2023 . Despite a continuing exodus of businesses from the downtown area of San Francisco,
30080-424: The title "The Pale Brown Thing" (1977), featured cities as the breeding grounds for new types of elementals called paramentals, summonable by the dark art of megapolisomancy , with such activities centering on the Transamerica Pyramid . Its main characters include Franz Westen, Jaime Donaldus Byers, and the magician Thibault de Castries. Our Lady of Darkness won the World Fantasy Award—Novel . Leiber also wrote
30268-417: The town looking for oil wealth. New businesses sprang up from scratch and the crime rate increased to match. Cross Plains' population quickly grew from 1,500 to 10,000, it suffered overcrowding, the traffic ruined its unpaved roads and vice crime exploded but it also used its new wealth on civic improvements, including a new school, an ice manufacturing plant, and new hotels. Howard hated the boom and despised
30456-402: The underwater lot. By 1851, the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870, Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and
30644-434: The world. Sports, especially boxing , became a passionate preoccupation. At the time, boxing was the most popular sport in the country, with a cultural influence far in excess of what it is today. James J. Jeffries , Jack Johnson , Bob Fitzsimmons , and later Jack Dempsey were the names that inspired during those years, and he grew up a lover of all contests of violent, masculine struggle. Voracious reading, along with
30832-574: Was Weird Tales , where Howard created Conan the Barbarian. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard helped fashion the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, and is one of the best-selling fantasy writers of all time. Howard's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to speculation about his mental health . His mother had been ill with tuberculosis her entire life, and upon learning she had entered
31020-400: Was " The God in the Bowl ", which went through three drafts and has a slower pace than most Conan stories. This one is a murder mystery filled with corrupt officials and serves as Conan's introduction into civilization, while showing that he is a more decent person than the civilized characters. Before the end of the month, he sent the first two stories to Weird Tales in the same package, with
31208-415: Was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill , and a thriving arts scene. The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904 . At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across
31396-434: Was also concern that a new town being planned by General Vallejo on the Carquinez Strait was to be called "Francisca", after the first name of his wife. After the name change to "San Francisco", the name of Vallejo's town was changed to Benicia , after his wife's middle name. Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Alta California was ceded from Mexico to the United States . Despite its attractive location as
31584-494: Was an American writer who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He created the character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. Howard was born and raised in Texas . He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains , with some time spent in nearby Brownwood . A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing , eventually taking up amateur boxing, and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding . From
31772-469: Was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge , completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz , a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone , and Robert Franklin Stroud ,
31960-412: Was centered on a plaza that is now Portsmouth Square . A land survey of Yerba Buena was made by the Swiss immigrant Jean Jacques Vioget as prelude to the city plan. Francisco de Haro , a non- Californio Mexican native, became the first alcalde of Yerba Buena. The second alcalde José Joaquín Estudillo was a Californio from a prominent Monterey family. In 1835, while in office, he approved
32148-549: Was characterized by Poul Anderson as "a lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business". In 1958, the Leibers returned to Los Angeles. By then, he could afford to relinquish his journalistic career and support his family as a full-time fiction writer. Jonquil's death in 1969 precipitated Leiber's permanent relocation to San Francisco and exacerbated his longstanding alcoholism after twelve years of fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous . He gradually regained sobriety, an effort impeded by comorbid barbiturate abuse, over
32336-536: Was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers . Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways , of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition . The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to
32524-410: Was enough [five stories] to fill an issue; the magazine came out with a big black headline across its cover — Leiber Is Back! His legacy has been consolidated by his most famous creations, the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, written over a span of 50 years. The first, "Two Sought Adventure", appeared in Unknown , August 1939. The stories are about an unlikely pair of heroes found in and around
32712-410: Was fascinated with the stage, describing itinerant Shakespearean companies in stories like "No Great Magic" and "Four Ghosts in Hamlet", and creating an actor/producer protagonist for his novel A Specter is Haunting Texas . Although his Change War novel, The Big Time , is about a war between two factions, the "Snakes" and the "Spiders", changing and rechanging history throughout the universe, all
32900-405: Was followed with the beginning of the latter group of Conan stories that "carry the most intellectual punch," starting with " The People of the Black Circle ". Howard probably began to work on the novel in February 1934, starting to write Almuric (a non-Conan, sword and planet science fiction novel) but abandoned it half way. This was followed by another abortive attempt at a novel, this time
33088-437: Was granted a small rancho at El Polín Spring , near the Presidio, founding the first non-indigenous civilian household in San Francisco. In 1834, the pueblo of Yerba Buena was founded. Yerba Buena Cove (named after a native herb ) was already a favored anchorage spot and the new settlement and trading post was founded by its shores. Yerba Buena was located in what is now the city's Chinatown and Financial District and
33276-465: Was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel , the Twin Peaks Tunnel , the San Francisco Municipal Railway , the Auxiliary Water Supply System , and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system, of which the J , K , L , M , and N lines survive today, was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It
33464-432: Was inherently corrupt and fragile. This attitude is summed up in his famous line from " Beyond the Black River ": "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph." Lovecraft held the opposite viewpoint, that civilization was the peak of human achievement and the only way forward. Howard countered by listing many historic abuses of
33652-414: Was introduced to The Tattler , the newspaper of the Brownwood High School. It was in this publication that Howard's stories were first printed. The December 1922 issue featured two stories, "'Golden Hope Christmas" and "West is West", which won gold and silver prizes respectively. Howard graduated from high school in May 1923 and moved back to Cross Plains. On his return to his home town he engaged in
33840-468: Was marketing himself alone. Howard continued to sell directly to Weird Tales , however. San Francisco San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco , is a commercial, financial , and cultural center within Northern California . With a population of 808,988 residents as of 2023, San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in the U.S. state of California behind Los Angeles , San Diego , and San Jose . It covers
34028-409: Was more formulaic and was accepted by the magazine with no problems. Howard only wrote one more Conan story, "Red Nails", which was influenced both by his personal experiences at the time and an extrapolation of his views on civilization. The character of Conan had a wide and enduring influence among other Weird Tales writers, including C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber , and over the ensuing decades
34216-415: Was named the second Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy by participants in the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), after the posthumous inaugural award to J. R. R. Tolkien . Next year he won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement . He was Guest of Honor at the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton, England (1979). The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its fifth SFWA Grand Master in 1981;
34404-416: Was not able to sell the latter's stories. When Farnsworth Wright started a new pulp in 1930 called Oriental Stories , Howard was overjoyed—here was a venue where he could run riot through favorite themes of history and battle and exotic mysticism. During the four years of the magazine's existence, he crafted some of his very best tales, gloomy vignettes of war and rapine in the Middle and Far East during
34592-468: Was otherwise of middling quality and was never published in the author's lifetime, but it is of interest to Howard scholars for the personal information it contains. Howard's alter ego in this novel is Steve Costigan, a name he would use more than once in the future. The novel was finished in 1928, but not published until long after his death. Weird Tales paid on publication, meaning that Howard had no money of his own at this time. To remedy this, he took
34780-419: Was published in the magazine Strange Tales in June 1932. Although the character swears by the god "Crom", that is his only link to the more famous successor character. Going back home he developed the idea, fleshing out a new invented world—his Hyborian Age —and populating it with all manner of countries, peoples, monsters, and magic . Howard loved history and enjoyed writing historical stories. However,
34968-446: Was signed in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers . After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration , liberalizing attitudes, the rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution , the peace movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in
35156-410: Was the O'Shaughnessy Dam , Hetch Hetchy Reservoir , and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco. An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today. In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash , not a single San Francisco-based bank failed. Indeed, it
35344-421: Was the evil Inquisitor in the Errol Flynn adventure film The Sea Hawk (1940) and had played in many other movies from 1917 to the late 1950s. It is the elder Leiber, not the younger, who appears in the Vincent Price vehicle The Web (1947) and in Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947). The younger Leiber can be seen briefly as Valentin in the 1936 film version of Camille starring Greta Garbo . In
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