In Bazaar of the
Bizarre Fritz Lieber demonstrates that message-fiction can be fun…provided
it’s presented as fiction-message. That
order is important. Lieber might be a
dirty red socialist, but he is a solid enough author that even his blatantly
anti-capitalist screeds are entertaining reads.
The Devourers are “the most accomplished merchants in all
the many universes,” Sheelba warns.
“They sell trash and take good money,” he continues. Worse, “they want all their customers reduced
to a state of slavish and submissive suggestibility, so that they are fit for
nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for
sale.” One can imagine Lieber sitting
down at a table near the entrance of a Wal-Mart, watching the parade of
humanity march past, shaking his head as his fingers merely describe what he
sees. With subtext elevated to
super-text like this, its easy to see why Moorcock counts this among his
favorite Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories.
It’s blatant to the point of parody, but it works. The menace in this story is capitalism. And yet, it’s delivered with enough panache
that even a crusty old John Bircher like myself can chuckle, set aside all
reason and logic, and accept the premise of the story for the purposes of the
story. It is a fantasy after all, and
the men(?) pronouncing this judgement – Ningauble and Sheelba – are hardly the
most reliable (or even sane) characters in Nehwon.
It helps that Fafhrd’s responses to this warning amount to a
very dry and sarcastic, “Monstrous!” At
least, this reader took them as sarcastic, and perhaps his responses are
enigmatic by design. Perhaps this story
serves as a Rorshach test of sorts – you can see whatever message in it your
heart chooses.
Either way, this time it is the Grey Mouser’s turn to get
into trouble, and Fafhrd’s turn to wade into the horrors of the house of low
cost consumer goods to pull the Mouse’s bacon from the fire.
But wait! Did the
Mouser get himself into trouble? Recall
that he was sent, as was Fafhrd, but without the warning to wait until a
specific time. The Creepy Eyed duo set
that up, didn’t they? They knew Fafhrd
was too practical to get sucked in to such a silly adventure, and that the Grey
Mouser was too curious not to. They used
Grey as bait to get Fafhrd into the shop.
They may be crazy, but they certainly are clever.
In keeping with my vow to finish off the month of February
without referencing Dungeons and Dragons, I’m instead going to point to
GURPS. Specifically, the best Actual
Play blog around, Peter dell’Orto’s excellent Dungeon Fantastic. Skyrockets went off in my back brain when
Ningauble asked the parenthetical question, “Is that coincidentally a city, do
think, Fafhrd? Cashamash?” That name
rang a distant bell in my memory, and it took me some time to recall that the
base city for his GURPs campaign contains a here-today-gone-today wizard for
hire named Black Jans who is from…Cashamash:
Of course, it might also say that the wizards of Cashamash
aren't worried about peasant rebellions or hostile townsmen rioting so much as
being able to get into any perhaps out of their towers quickly. Cashamash is a
weird place.
Ningauble was right, and his legendary knowledge of the
universe demonstrates that he knows about Stericksburg and Felltower. Of
course, this observation is no gotchya! It’s
actually a solid attaboy! You’re
supposed to put this sort of thing in your RPGs. It’s literally as old as RPGs themselves. Fellow fans of Pete’s blog should laugh and
rejoice that Dryst and Vryce share a multi-verse with Fafrhd and the Grey
Mouser.