Heroic fantasy is humanity's oldest form of literature and if one looks for the earliest precedents for modern fantasy, whether it be the epic fictions of Tolkien or the sword and sorcery of Robert E. Howard, it is clear that one must go back to Homer, Virgil, Beowulf, and the medieval romance. Any critic of Fritz Leiber's stories, however, must add the satirists of that heroic tradition, Lucan, Ariosto, Cervantes, even Lord Byron. More directly, Leiber began writing for the pulp magazines and was undoubtedly influenced by such Weird Tales writers as Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. The great Irish fantasist Lord Dunsany, author of a number of fantasies with thieves as protagonists, was also a strong influence.

Leiber's own influence on other fantasy writers, though perhaps less than that of J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard, is considerable. He, along with L. Sprague...