sdlotu
8/13/2023
THis is a clearly coded story about a man with problematic urges, and since it is writtem by a SF author, it has been set in a post-apocalyptic future. The urges are to murder and sex, and how one man struggles to control each in turn, sometimes in regards to the same person.
The story is talky and long winded, more an internal monologue than a tale about a man's life in the wasteland, and as such leaves little for the other characters to do or be other than reflections of the man's own dysfunctions.
By setting the dysfunctions in a dog-eat-dog post-apocalyptic North America, the author tries to blunt the obviously addictive and self-jiustifying behavior the man exhibits as a personality. Such a simplification makes the character into a monster, not a person, no matter how hard the author tries to wrap it in the setting of survival.
The coded references to Alcoholics Anonymous only make the story more labored and clumsy. Not a work Leiber should be remembered for, nor should fans seek it out.