Conjure Wife was originally published in John W. Campbell Jr.'s fantasy magazine Unknown. Campbell had made his name as the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog) and had a strong preference for hard, nuts-and-bolts science fiction. Even the stories he published in Unknown were expected to reflect this approach to writing. Ignoring many of the Gothic trappings typical of supernatural fiction, Leiber sets his story on what is recognizably a contemporary (circa 1940) American university campus and writes what is, at least in part, a realistic and very witty modern novel. His characters, the university professors and their wives, are adequately individualized, but are also clearly types — the stuffy full professor, the snobbish matron, the idealistic and naive assistant professor — that anyone who has spent time on a college campus will recognize. The book does contain an eclectic mix of accurately depicted "real" magic, from...