Spectre is Haunting Texas

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read anything by Fritz Leiber – and I had forgotten just how much fun reading his work can be. An actor who lives in the satellites that circle the moon comes down to earth to recover an old mining claim. Living in zero gravity for his entire life, he

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would be crushed by gravity if not for the exo-skeleton he wears – an apparatus that makes him eight feet tall, on a par with the hormonally enhanced Texans. Yes, Texas now runs all of North America, and the actor finds himself playing the role of a lifetime – Death, come to free the downtrodden Mexicans. And it even gets weirder.

Leiber is an expert story-teller (few Grand Masters are not) and uses his skills well in this story. Seeing all experiences through the actors eyes, we feel his confusion; a confusion that is magnified as we try to come to grips with the changes that have occurred from the world we know. Parts of the story don’t always flow perfectly, and there is just a hint of the sixties in some of the writing (to the point where in one scene I felt the description contained just a hint of acid trip.) However, the levels of this story (downtrodden Mexicans, mega-powers struggling to take it all, raping the land for the glory of country) take on a whole ‘nother interpretation in the 21st century. The things Leiber is writing about were concerns in the sixties. They are just as big a concern now; we have just put a new spin on them. Accordingly, this fascinating book, by looking at those issues from a number of years ago, forces us to take a different look at it also.

(Now, what else of Leiber’s can I get my hands on right away?)

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