Leiber Masters of the Weird Tale

The Leiber set of the Masters of the Weird Tale seems to command very high prices on the secondary market. Can anyone shed some light on why? Are the production values that much greater than the other books in the series? The illustrations? The stories themselves?

And, if anyone is interested in selling their copy, I'm interested in buying.

Not really - it is like any of the others. It’s just the usual supply and demand problem - for some of the authors, there are other collections and editions out there; for some - not so much. And when something is the only decent collection of an author, prices tend to stay high.

As for the quality of the writing and so on - he is good but not really that much better than most. But it depends on your taste.

Leiber is one of those writers who it seemed like every fantasy writer I read as a teen in the '70s talked about but I couldn't find. I seem to remember him being mentioned in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing books as well (Yes, I was one of those kids in the '70s. Wish I still had those manuals as they are worth bank now, but more for the nostalgia of my youth).

I never found any of his books until a Science Fiction/Fantasy book club I was in published some of his Fahfrd & the Grey Mouser stories in the '80s. He writes like many of the white men writing fantasy in those days but I really enjoy the stories. I have all the published FGM Centipede books Jerad has published so far and love finally getting to read them!.

>1 ultrarightist: Leiber is one of the more influential writers within the Masters series (probably in the top four, along with Lovecraft, Poe, and Machen). Also it is a two volume set. Who knows though, in the end, what drives the vagaries of demand.

I'm not familiar with his work beyond the Lankhmar stories (Fahfrd & the Grey Mouser), but along with Robert Howard he was the main source of the swords & sorcery subgenre, which for a long time was the major counterpoint to epic fantasy.

I would argue that swords & sorcery was mostly supplanted by epic fantasy, to the detriment of fantasy more broadly (much as I love Tolkien, few of his imitators are nearly as effective), making Leiber one of the champions of a road not taken (or at least not taken very far). I also think that Leiber has a relatively unique writer's voice, at least in the Lankhmar stories. I challenge anyone to find a successful fantasy story published during the 80s that is written anything like, say, The Howling Tower (1941). There is a nice brief retrospective here (perhaps also of interest to >3 jveezer: given the old school D&D connection).

>4 abysswalker: But for some reason, unlike the other 3, trying to find a collection of his stories is... challenging :)

>4 abysswalker: Thanks for the link. Scanned the article as the part that interested me is the first supplement pamphlet released for D&D, not the later more fleshed-out one he talks about primarily. But I'm almost sure, as almost as a blonde and 60'ish memory can be, that the first D&D Greyhawk pamphlet specifically mention Leiber. Interesting.

>5 AnnieMod: aren't all of those four relatively difficult to come by? There's only a handful of copies of any of the "Masters of the Weird Tale" series by any author on either ebay or abe at the moment (less than 10 total), and none of them are the big names.

I don't follow the market on these that closely, but my sense is that all of Masters volumes are hard to find, with the big names hardest. Note there is another similar but less deluxe Centipede series ("Library of Weird Fiction") which has titles by some of the same authors, and these seem to come up more frequently and affordably (unsurprising given the higher limitations and lower production values).

>7 abysswalker: From this series? Yes. But for the other 3 authors there are other collections on the market - more than for Leiber in any case. Poe and Lovecraft are popular and often reprinted and Machen, albeit not being as loved from the market, still has the Hippocampus Press editions from a few years back and multiple other collections.

"Library of Weird Fiction" also contain less stories than their bigger Masters series brothers usually do :)

>8 AnnieMod: oh I see what you mean. Yes, there are fewer collections by any publisher of Leiber.

>3 jveezer: and >4 abysswalker: Thank you for the informative posts, and >4 abysswalker: for the link to the interesting article.

>3 jveezer: "He writes like many of the white men writing fantasy in those days but I really enjoy the stories."

That makes him all the more appealing to me.