Leiber is terrifically talented - these three stories are written in three different voices, each perfectly suited to the ideas and texture of the story.

The title story, a novella, is actually a horror story more than anything else. But it's told straightforwardly, without the framing or foreshadowing or other 'time to be scared now' pointers that too many horror authors used to use. It would make an absolutely *fantastic* movie, seriously, I'm tempted to read it again (despite my enormous tbr list) so that I can visualize it that way. Thrilling and provocative, with not a word or episode wasted.

The second, 'Four Ghosts in Hamlet,' purports to be a ghost story, but is actually more humorous than anything else. If an unknown had offered it to F&SF it would not have been seen to fit - it's almost more like something for the 'Saturday Evening Post.'

The third, 'The Creature from Cleveland Depths,' sounds like a B movie. But it's actually a traditional 'what if' about the potential evils of technology. A couple of extra-interesting characters, and a resemblance of said technology to BlackBerries and smart-phones, make it special.

Come on, it's a Leiber. Read it.



( )

This is a collection of the titular short novel (aka The Sinful Ones) and two novelettes.

"You're All Alone" is an effective solipsistic fantasy, one of those stories which plays off that common feeling most of us have at one time or another - that we're trapped in some foreordained world of pre-plotted movements. Our hero, Carr Mackay, is one of those parts of the "big engine" who comes awake after viewing a girl. Said girl acts a little oddly when he meets her in his job working at a Chicago employment agency. Eventually, our hero finds himself wandering around a Chicago of puppets with the girl. She delivers him a list of things he needs to do to avoid attention from a gang of men and a woman of which she knows. They are most decidedly not puppets. This being a 1950 story, the sadistic pleasure they take with the puppets is usually muted but scary nonetheless.

To be sure, even when you're reading it, some logical questions occur to you, but Leiber pushes the story along to its exciting and mostly satisfying conclusion.

"Four Ghosts in Hamlet" is the star of this collection. It's a classic ghost story that uses Leiber's experience and knowledge of the theater, Shakespeare, and being an alcoholic. (Not only was his father a famous Shakespearean actor, but Leiber himself pursued an acting career when younger.). He gives us not only bits of theater lore but, with his characters, a thoroughly believable cast of characters for his traveling Shakespearean company and the odd circumstances that lead to, as the title indicates, a strange performance of Hamlet.

"The Creature From Cleveland Depths" from 1962 hasn't aged well though it reminds us that Leiber was capable of plausible scientific and technological extrapolation - albeit in a somewhat satirical vein. (After all, he was once an editor of Science Digest.) Here a future writer of science fiction-like novels is tapped by a corporation to come up with ideas for inventions. He comes up with sort of a PDA like device that morphs into a 20+ pound devices that rests on the shoulders (causing ulcers) with preprogrammed subliminal messages set by medical and political authorities, regulates physiological processes via drugs, and remembers things the wearer can't but still needs to know for their job. His off the cuff idea threatens subjugation of humanity - or, at least, the American portion, by an artificial intelligence. ( )

Un antologia di Fritz Leiber che ci propone un romanzo breve e due racconti lunghi. Il romanzo breve “Siamo Tutti Soli” verra' in seguito ampliato in “Scacco al Tempo” (The Sinful Ones, 1953, gia' uscito nella BdB).
Se scoprite che il mondo intorno a voi funziona come un'enorme macchina i cui spaventosi ingranaggi consentono solo a pochi di prendere coscienza della realtà delle cose, e se al tempo stesso scoprite che quei pochi costituiscono il più abominevole gruppo di sadici torturatori che la storia umana conosca, è logico aspettarsi che cerchiate scampo in qualche rifugio sicuro dopo aver appurato la vostra impossibilità a lottare contro di loro. Ma se la Macchina che forma il mondo, lo schema inalterabile delle cose di ogni giorno, vi mettessero dinanzi a scelte quasi impossiblli, che cosa fareste? In questo magistrale e crudele romanzo inedito, Fritz Leiber vi offre la storia di un uomo come tanti altri... un uomo che di colpo, un giorno, scopre che la realtà che lo circonda non è affatto come migliaia di anni di storia hanno insegnato.
Completano il volume due grandi racconti : Quattro Spettri in Amleto (Four Ghosts in Hamlet, 1965) , La creatura dagli abissi di Cleveland (The Creature from Cleveland Depths, 1962)