Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (/ˈlaɪbər/ LY-bər;[1] December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

He spent 1928 touring with his parents' Shakespeare company (Fritz Leiber & Co.) before entering the University of Chicago, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received an undergraduate Ph.B.

From 1932 to 1933, he worked as a lay reader and studied as a candidate for the ministry, without taking a degree, at the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea, Manhattan, an affiliate of the Episcopal Church.

[a] He also appeared alongside his father in uncredited parts in George Cukor's Camille (1936), James Whale's The Great Garrick (1937), and William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).

Unable to conceal his disdain for academic politics as the United States entered World War II, he decided that the struggle against fascism mattered more than his long-held pacifist convictions.

During this decade (forestalled by a fallow interregnum from 1954 to 1956), his output (including the 1947 Arkham House anthology Night's Black Agents) was characterized by Poul Anderson as "a lot of the best science fiction and fantasy in the business".

Marc Laidlaw wrote that, when visiting Leiber as a fan in 1976, he "was shocked to find him occupying one small room of a seedy San Francisco residence hotel, its squalor relieved mainly by walls of books".

In the last years of his life, royalty checks from TSR, Inc. (the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, who had licensed the mythos of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series) were enough in themselves to ensure that he lived comfortably.

[8] In 1977, he returned to his original form with a fantasy novel set in modern-day San Francisco, Our Lady of Darkness, which is about a writer of weird tales who must deal with the death of his wife and his recovery from alcoholism.

Leiber died a few weeks after a physical collapse while traveling from a science fiction convention in London, Ontario, with Skinner.

It is the elder Leiber, not the younger, who appears in the Vincent Price vehicle The Web (1947) and in Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

[citation needed] The younger Leiber can be seen briefly as Valentin in the 1936 film version of Camille starring Greta Garbo.

In the cult horror film Equinox (1970) directed by Dennis Muren and Jack Woods, Leiber has a cameo appearance as a geologist, Dr. Watermann.

The original version of the movie has a longer appearance by Leiber recounting the ancient book and a brief speaking role; all were cut from the re-release.

[17] Leiber's first professional sale was "Two Sought Adventure" (Unknown, August 1939),[18] which introduced his most famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

In 1943, his first two novels were serialized in Unknown (the supernatural horror-oriented Conjure Wife, inspired by his experiences on the faculty of Occidental College) and Astounding Science Fiction (Gather, Darkness).

[19] Our Lady of Darkness (1977), originally serialized in short form in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the title "The Pale Brown Thing" (1977), featured cities as the breeding grounds for new types of elementals called paramentals, summonable by the dark art of megapolisomancy, with such activities centering on the Transamerica Pyramid.

[21] Many of Leiber's most acclaimed works are short stories, especially in the horror genre, including "The Smoke Ghost", "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes", and "You're All Alone" (later expanded as The Sinful Ones).

Leiber also challenged the conventions of science fiction through reflexive narratives such as "A Bad Day For Sales" (first published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1953), in which the protagonist, Robie, "America’s only genuine mobile salesrobot",[22] references the title character of Isaac Asimov's idealistic robot story, "Robbie".

In his later years, Leiber returned to short story horror in such works as "Horrible Imaginings", "Black Has Its Charms" and the award-winning "The Button Moulder".

Leiber was named the second Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy by participants in the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), after the posthumous inaugural award to J. R. R.

Leiber himself is credited with inventing the term sword and sorcery for the particular subgenre of epic fantasy exemplified by his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories.

Fafhrd was based on Leiber himself and the Mouser on his friend Harry Otto Fischer, and the two characters were created in a series of letters exchanged by the two in the mid-1930s.