Our Lady of Darkness (1977) is an urban fantasy novel by American author Fritz Leiber. The novel is distinguished for three elements: the heavily autobiographical elements in the story, the use of Jungian psychology that informs the narrative, and its detailed description of "megapolisomancy", a fictional occult science. It was originally published in shorter form as The Pale Brown Thing (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January/February 1977).
The story centers on Franz Westen, a recovering alcoholic and writer of weird tales, who lives in San Francisco.
The plot unfolds as Westen discovers an old journal belonging to Clark Ashton Smith, a real-life writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. In this journal, Smith discusses "paramentals", entities that feed off of human emotions and are drawn to urban environments. As Westen delves deeper, he learns about "megapolisomancy", a fictional occult science focusing on harnessing the supernatural forces present in large cities.
Westen begins to experience bizarre and terrifying occurrences. He sees mysterious figures on nearby rooftops and encounters eerie phenomena, suggesting the presence of supernatural forces in the city. The novel's climax involves Westen's confrontation with these forces, symbolized by the entity "Our Lady of Darkness" – a powerful, ancient being connected to the history and fabric of San Francisco itself.
Like the protagonist Franz Westen, Leiber was recovering from his wife's death a number of years previously and descending into alcoholism. Like the author, Westen is an amateur astronomer who is looking for ways to re-engage with the life around him, and he lives at the address (811 Geary St) where Leiber lived at the time. The novel is set in actual San Francisco locations, including Corona Heights and the Sutro Tower behind it. As late as 2012, fantasy fans could take a walking tour of the city that included all the novel's main locations. Several of the other characters are thinly disguised versions of people active in Bay Area fandom in the mid-1970s.
The novel mentions the authors Jack London, Ambrose Bierce and Clark Ashton Smith, who all lived part of their lives in San Francisco. The title is taken from Thomas De Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis , and references are also made to M. R. James's ghost stories, and to the work of fantasy/horror writers such as H.P. Lovecraft. These allusions add an element of metafiction to the story, making it in part an examination and description of horror and the imagination.
Adding to the metafictional elements of the story are Leiber's frequent references to Jung's descriptions of the Anima (female self) and the Shadow (hidden self). These are elements that existed in Leiber's work nearly since the start of his career in the late 1930s, according to Bruce Byfield's Witches of the Mind: A Critical Study of Fritz Leiber. The main difference in Our Lady of Darkness is that, unlike much of his earlier works, the references to these figures are explicit, rather than implied, and at times supported by direct quotations.
Our Lady of Darkness was originally serialised, in shorter form and with the title The Pale Brown Thing, over two issues of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (January/February 1977). The story was featured on the cover of the January issue with a painting by Ron Walotsky. [1]
Fritz Leiber maintained that the two texts "should be regarded as the same story told at different times". [2]
The Pale Brown Thing was reissued by Swan River Press in 2016 as a limited edition hardback. The cover by Jason Zerrillo is an homage to Walotsky's original artwork for F&SF. [3] The volume includes an introduction by Leiber's friend, the San Francisco poet Donald Sidney-Fryer, who was the basis for the character of Jaime Donaldus Byers. [4] It also includes a reprint of an essay by John Howard, "Story-telling Wonder-questing, Mortal Me: The Transformation of The Pale Brown Thing into Our Lady of Darkness", which examines the differences between The Pale Brown Thing and its later, lengthier incarnation. [5]
Our Lady of Darkness won the 1978 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. [6]
Richard A. Lupoff praised Our Lady of Darkness as "one of the scariest, most original, and most damnably convincing fantasy notions I've ever come across". [7]
Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright, and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery and coined the term.
Sword and sorcery (S&S) or heroic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters. Sword and sorcery commonly overlaps with heroic fantasy. The genre originated from the early-1930s works of Robert E. Howard. The term "sword and sorcery" was coined by Fritz Leiber in the May 1961 issue of the fantasy fanzine Amra, to describe Howard and the stories that were influenced by his works. In parallel with "sword and sorcery", the term "heroic fantasy" is used, although it is a more loosely defined genre.
Arkham House was an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's best works, which had previously been published only in pulp magazines. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham, Massachusetts. Arkham House editions are noted for the quality of their printing and binding. The colophon for Arkham House was designed by Frank Utpatel.
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the label of New Weird, which continues into the 21st century.
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories. As an editor, he created a three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction restored to its original form as written, and edited the long-running and genre-defining The Year's Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. His Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.
Unknown was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknown's first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
Megapolis is a variant of the word megalopolis, meaning a large city or urban area.
Dark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporate disturbing and frightening themes of fantasy. It often combines fantasy with elements of horror, possessing a dark and gloomy tone or an atmosphere of horror and dread.
Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. is a fantasy and science fiction small press publisher in New Hampshire that was founded in 1964. It is notable for publishing fantasy and horror novels with lavish illustrations, most notably Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and the King/Peter Straub novel The Talisman.
"The Haunter of the Dark" is a horror short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written between 5–9 November 1935 and published in the December 1936 edition of Weird Tales. It was the last written of the author's known works, and is part of the Cthulhu Mythos. The epigraph to the story is the second stanza of Lovecraft's 1917 poem "Nemesis".
Whispers was one of the new horror and fantasy fiction magazines of the 1970s.
Balanos Georgios (1944–2020) was a Greek translator, author, publisher and researcher of the fields of science fiction, paranormal and magick.
The Whisperer in Darkness is a 26,000-word novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written February–September 1930, it was first published in Weird Tales, August 1931. Similar to The Colour Out of Space (1927), it is a blend of horror and science fiction. Although it makes numerous references to the Cthulhu Mythos, the story is not a central part of the mythos, but reflects a shift in Lovecraft's writing at this time towards science fiction. The story also introduces the Mi-Go, an extraterrestrial race of fungoid creatures.
Spirits, Stars, and Spells: The Profits and Perils of Magic is a 1966 history book by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, published by Canaveral Press. The book sold slowly, and the remaining stock was taken over by Owlswick Press and sold under its own name with new dust jackets in 1980. It has been translated into Polish.
Heather Gladney is an American author whose fantasy novels include Teot's War (1987) and its sequel Bloodstorm (1989).
Heroes and Horrors is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by American writer Fritz Leiber, edited by Stuart David Schiff and illustrated by Tim Kirk. It was first published in hardcover in December 1978 by Whispers Press, and in paperback in August 1980 by Pocket Books. The paperback edition omits the illustrations.
This is a bibliography of works by Fritz Leiber.
The Hotel Union, formerly the Rhodema Hotel and the San Carlos Hotel, at 811 Geary Street in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, California.
G. Sutton Breiding is an American poet and zine publisher of Speculative poetry, science fiction, dark fantasy, and horror poetry characterized by mysticism, black humor and references to San Francisco.
"Belsen Express" is a 1975 horror fiction short story, by Fritz Leiber. It first appeared in his collection The Second Book of Fritz Leiber.