Tor Doubles #36: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness
Originally published in August 1991, Tor Double #36 offers two stories by Fritz Leiber, doubling the number of his stories included in the series. It also brings the official Tor Double series to an end, although just as I began by looking at a proto-volume in the series, I’ll be covering one last Tor Double next which, which was never published.
Conjure Wife was an originally published in Unknown Worlds in April 1943. The novel would eventually be awarded a Retro-Hugo, beating out works by C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner, Herman Hesse, C.S. Lewis, A.E. van Vogt, and Leiber, himself. The novel is also listed in James Cawthorn & Michael Moocock’s Fantasy: The 100 Best Books and David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels.
The novel follows Norman Saylor, a sociology professor at a small, conservative liberal arts college, Hempnell College. Saylor’s life is going well, he and his wife, Tansy, have a large circle of friends, his students respect him, and he is up for appointment to head the sociology department. Despite these seemingly close relationships with Tansy and their friends, most of the novel is focused on Norman’s thoughts and broodings, with little real interaction with anyone, certainly not over the important matters that concern him.