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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9525434" data-attributes="member: 8461">I just finished two short stories by Fritz Leiber, both of his iconic Fafhrd and Gray Mouser: <a href="https://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0092/ERBAEN0092.htm" target="_blank">&quot;The Sadness of the Executioner&quot;</a> and <a href="https://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0092/ERBAEN0092___2.htm" target="_blank">&quot;Beauty and the Beasts,&quot;</a> both from Swords and Ice Magic.Calling these &quot;short stories&quot; is fairly generous, as &quot;The Sadness of the Executioner&quot; is something you can easily polish off in twenty minutes and have time to spare. &quot;Beauty and the Beasts&quot; isn't even that long, being (depending on how you define it) either &quot;flash fiction&quot; or &quot;microfiction.&quot; There's supposed to be a difference of word count between those, but I'm not interested in going back and seeing precisely which category these fall into.As far as the stories themselves go, I liked the former more than the latter, wherein Death (or rather, the Death of the world of Nehwon, as he himself notes) has a quota of lives that need to be snuffed out, and decides to add the famous heroes to it. Contrast this with the latter, which is basically an odd magical happenstance with no real buildup and a resolution that's equally thin. I can see &quot;Sadness&quot; being used to introduce someone to Leiber's style of writing (though it's not the best introduction to Fafhrd and Gray Mouser themselves), but not &quot;Beasts.&quot; I can understand writing a series of self-contained episodic vignettes, but the latter's excessive brevity seems to render the entire escapade pointless.Still, they're written well, and are entertaining as far as quick reads go, so I can't really bring myself to condemn either tale. Leiber is a good writer by any measure, even when he constrains himself the way he does here.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 9525434, member: 8461"] I just finished two short stories by Fritz Leiber, both of his iconic Fafhrd and Gray Mouser: [URL='https://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0092/ERBAEN0092.htm']"The Sadness of the Executioner"[/URL] and [URL='https://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0092/ERBAEN0092___2.htm']"Beauty and the Beasts,"[/URL] both from [I]Swords and Ice Magic[/I]. Calling these "short stories" is fairly generous, as "The Sadness of the Executioner" is something you can easily polish off in twenty minutes and have time to spare. "Beauty and the Beasts" isn't even that long, being (depending on how you define it) either "flash fiction" or "microfiction." There's supposed to be a difference of word count between those, but I'm not interested in going back and seeing precisely which category these fall into. As far as the stories themselves go, I liked the former more than the latter, wherein Death (or rather, the Death of the world of Nehwon, as he himself notes) has a quota of lives that need to be snuffed out, and decides to add the famous heroes to it. Contrast this with the latter, which is basically an odd magical happenstance with no real buildup and a resolution that's equally thin. I can see "Sadness" being used to introduce someone to Leiber's style of writing (though it's not the best introduction to Fafhrd and Gray Mouser themselves), but not "Beasts." I can understand writing a series of self-contained episodic vignettes, but the latter's excessive brevity seems to render the entire escapade pointless. Still, they're written well, and are entertaining as far as quick reads go, so I can't really bring myself to condemn either tale. Leiber is a good writer by any measure, even when he constrains himself the way he does here. [/QUOTE]

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