Been rereading what I can of his work, what I’ve got on me and what I can find online. From my preteen years I’ve got all of the collected Grey Mouser and Fafhrd books from the 1960′s or so (late 50′s I think, by the barbarians gracing the cover) and some other, scattered short fiction in various best of anthologies. First, his non-GM and F stories really stand up well against the test of time. Espicially Space Time for Springers. This could be written and published today and still (I think) feel fresh and current.
The GM and F stories don’t fare as well. In fact, only two of the stories really stand out, and still feel kind of old fashioned. Ill Met in Lankhmar and Lean Times in Lankhmar are the two best, I think, of all these stories. Ill Met is perhaps the best story I’ve read in a very very long time. Yet, it only works as a reference point to a certain moment in history- like most F/SF classics, it doesn’t hold up well in certain aspects (points of the prose are clunky, some of the descriptions go on and on and on for pages, there is some scant forms of sexism (including a gf in the refrigator syndrome), etc, etc) and in other aspects it just feels dated. Not that it’s a bad thing- some of the most fun about reading older SF/F is the retro-ness of it all, and that faux nostalgia for a time one hasn’t been a part of (speaking from someone of my generation).
I wouldn’t hesitate to hand off a copy of Space Time for Springers to someone new to Genre. I would be hesitant with Ill Met and Lean Times, since a new reader would be turned off by the writing, the infodumping and the pages and pages of description (as well as female readers being put off by some of the less, um, women friendly aspects). But for someone interested in genre (and a story that has a lot of good parts to it) I would put in their hands very quickly.
The other GM & F stories I would just use a historical reference, and nothing else. Most of them are pretty poor when compared to these two stories (and they feel kind of dashed off). Although for people wanting to write literary epic/heroic/s&S fantasy (modernized and such, for our current sensibilities) I would point them at necessary, just because writing in one genre one needs to be versed in the genre in all aspects.
Next on my retrospective- Jack Vance’s Dying Earth books. I read these originally at around the same time I read the original Leiber Swords of books and Howard’s Conan books (all these books bought second hand from a used bookstore for about a few cents for a book). Again, some aspects don’t hold up too well. But I’ll talk about those when I get to them.
