History Creator / FritzLeiber

* AFishOutOfWater: "A Spectre is Haunting Texas" features an actor coming down from a satellite colony to complete a mission and who finds a future Earth future where Russia and an overgrown Texas have fought a nuclear war, the Texans have used genetic engineering to grow seven feet tall (the Russians have used the same technique to grow broader) and enslaved normal-sized Mexicans. And it's a comedy.

* AFishOutofWater: "A Spectre is Haunting Texas" features an actor coming down from a satellite colony to complete a mission and who finds a future Earth future where Russia and an overgrown Texas have fought a nuclear war, the Texans have used genetic engineering to grow seven feet tall (the Russians have used the same technique to grow broader) and enslaved normal-sized Mexicans. And it's a comedy.

* BadFuture: "A Spectre is Haunting Texas" presents a future where Russia and an overgrown Texas have fought a nuclear war, the Texans have used genetic engineering to grow seven feet tall (the Russians have used the same technique to grow broader) and enslaved normal-sized Mexicans. And it's a comedy.

* EarWorm: An in-universe example is at the center of the story "Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee".

* "[[Literature/AliceAndTheAllergy]]"

* [[Literature/"AliceAndTheAllergy"]]

* [[Literature/AliceAndTheAllergy]]

* [[Literature/"AliceAndTheAllergy"]]

* AlternateHistory: Happens a lot in the Change War series.
* ArmyOfTheAges: The premise of the Change War stories, but the stories are all told by grunts who have no understanding of the big picture.

* ForeverWar: The Change War, a war of time travellers between "the Spiders" and "the Snakes." The two sides span galaxies and species as well as ages, and no one, at least no one the reader meets, knows what the war is about. Both sides are trying to redesign the history of the universe, but no one knows to what end, nor does the war appear to even have a history.
* HiddenInPlainSight: In ''The Big Time'', a piece of equipment, the "Major Maintainer", seemingly vanishes from the extra-temporal Place. The characters know that it couldn't have been removed from the room, since it is the very machine whose presence maintains the Place's continued existence, but it's nowhere to be found even after they ransack the entire room. It turns out that [[spoiler:one of the characters had turned it inside-out, using one of the medical machines, and hid the resulting unrecognizable object among a gallery of equally abstract-looking alien art pieces.]]

* LockedRoomMystery: A non-murder example in ''The Big Time''; it is referred to practically by name, as chapter 9 is titled "A Locked Room" and includes a quote from the detective story ''Literature/ThePurloinedLetter''. Part of the story involves the disappearance of a device which maintains the life support within an inescapable hyperdimensional location; it must be inside, seeing as everyone are still alive and there was no possible way to remove it from the area, yet it's nowhere to be found, even when the place is searched top to bottom.

* NaziProtagonist: ''The Big Time'' has a sympathetic Nazi, though in a completely alien context. (It takes place in a background of TimeTravel and changed timelines, in a recreation station between dimensions.)
* NecroNonSequitur: "Try and Change the Past", in which a Time Soldier tries to use his tools to prevent his own past death. (Time Soldiers are recruited just before the moment of their death, but, for handwaved reasons, remember dying.) He goes back and prevents himself from being shot, only to see his past self, with a look of despair, pick up the gun and shoot himself. So he goes back again and disables the gun, only to see his past self hit by a bullet-sized meteorite in exactly the same place the bullet struck in the previous two deaths. At which point he understandably gives up.

* OntologicalInertia: Codified in the Change War series as the Law of Reality Conservation: "Anything in existence will continue to exist until a sufficient force acts against it."

* RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic: ''The Big Time'' contains a sustained example (it begins "Woe to Spider! Woe to Cretan! Heavy is the news I bring you. Bear it bravely, like strong women."). The occasional swoops from one sort of vocabulary to another ("But I didn't die there, kiddos") are found to be funny by some readers, but in full context they fit the character and her background too exactly.

* TimeTravel: Especially in the Change War series.

* RecursiveAdaptation: Leiber adapted ''Tarzan and the City of Gold'' starring Mike Henry into a prose {{Tarzan}} novel. He took pains to footnote past Tarzan adventures by Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs to make this a canonical continuation of the Tarzan continuity of Burroughs.

Fritz Leiber (1910 - 1992) was an American writer of {{fantasy}}, {{horror}} and ScienceFiction, best known for his fantasy series ''Literature/FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser'', and for creating the term "Sword and Sorcery".

* [[Literature/DangerousVisions "Gonna Roll The Bones"]]

* ArmyOfTheAges: The premise of the Change War stories.

* RobotNames: ''The Silver Eggheads'' has multiple examples.

He was given a lifetime-achievement UsefulNotes/WorldFantasyAward in 1976, and was elected a [[DamonKnightMemorialGrandMasterAward Grand Master of Science Fiction]] in 1981.

He was given a lifetime-achievement WorldFantasyAward in 1976, and was elected a [[DamonKnightMemorialGrandMasterAward Grand Master of Science Fiction]] in 1981.

Fritz Leiber (1910 - 1992) was an American writer of {{fantasy}}, {{horror}} and ScienceFiction, best known for his fantasy series ''Literature/FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser''.

'''Fritz Leiber''' (1910 - 1992) was an American writer of {{fantasy}}, {{horror}} and ScienceFiction, best known for his fantasy series ''Literature/FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser''.

* [[DangerousVisions "Gonna Roll The Bones"]]

'''Fritz Leiber''' (1910 - 1992) was an American writer of {{fantasy}}, {{horror}} and ScienceFiction, best known for his fantasy series ''FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser''.

* ''FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser''

His other works include the contemporary fantasy novel ''Conjure Wife''; the science fiction novel ''The Wanderer''; and the TimeTravel ''Change War'' series (including the novel ''The Big Time'').

* MerlinSickness: In "The Man Who Never Grew Young", it happens to everyone -- except the immortal title character -- and history itself runs backwards.
* NecroNonSequitur: "Try and Change the Past", in which a Time Soldier tries to use his tools to prevent his own past death. (Time Soldiers are recruited just before the moment of their death, but -- for handwaved reasons -- remember dying.) He goes back and prevents himself from being shot, only to see his past self, with a look of despair, pick up the gun and shoot himself. So he goes back again and disables the gun -- only to see his past self hit by a bullet-sized meteorite in exactly the same place the bullet struck in the previous two deaths. At which point he understandably gives up.

* OntologicalInertia: Codified in the Change War series as the Law of Reality Conservation -- "Anything in existence will continue to exist until a sufficient force acts against it."

'''Fritz Leiber''' (1910 - 1992) was an American writer of {{fantasy}}, {{horror}} and {{science fiction}}, best known for his fantasy series ''FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser''.

* RecursiveAdaptation: Leiber adapted ''Tarzan and the City of Gold'' starring Mike Henry into a prose {{Tarzan}} novel. He took pains to footnote past Tarzan adventures by EdgarRiceBurroughs to make this a canonical continuation of the Tarzan continuity of Burroughs.