Other editions of book The Night of the Long Knives: With The Creature From The Cleveland Depths

A post-apocalyptic novel set in the nuclear wastelands of America from the Grand Master of Science Fiction and author of the Lankhmar series. Ray is armed and dangerous, suspicious of everyone he comes across in the decimated Deathlands and willing to fight to the death as he scavenges for food and weapons. Into his life comes Alice, just as wary but whose intentions are not violent. The two drifters forge an uneasy truce, but their bloodlust will be tested when an old man—a former homicidal maniac—offers them something almost too painful to contemplate: hope. “A dark, edgy story, Leiber deconstructs the madness of such aggression in turns overt and subtle. . . . The character study of a killer paranoid everyone is out to kill him . . . A hard-edged, slightly satirical look at mankind’s propensity toward murder in the context of free choice.” —Speculiction “Vividly describes a horrifying possible future America where nuclear war has ravaged the land and the human brain.” —Fantasy Literature

I was one hundred miles from Nowhere—and I mean that literally—when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I'd been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugger left over from the murder party at Nowhere to be stalking me. I'd been following a line of high-voltage towers all canted over at the same gentlemanly tipsy angle by an old blast from the Last War. I judged the girl was going in the same general direction and was being edged over toward my course by a drift of dust that even at my distance showed dangerous metallic gleams and dark humps that might be dead men or cattle. She looked slim, dark topped, and on guard. Small like me and like me wearing a scarf loosely around the lower half of her face in the style of the old buckaroos.

This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains Fritz Leiber's post-apocalyptic science fiction thriller 'The Night of the Long Knives,' a nightmare vision of a post-nuclear war world with echoes of Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road.' Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.Contents:The Night of the Long KnivesBread OverheadNo Great MagicThe Creature from Cleveland DepthsThe Moon is GreenWhat’s He Doing in There?

I was one hundred miles from Nowhere ― and I mean that literally ― when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I’d been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugger left over from the murder party at Nowhere to be stalking me.Welcome to Deathland, a postapocalyptic nuclear desert where kill or be killed is the law of the land. The radiation-damaged survivors of this ravaged region are consumed by the urge to murder each other, making partnership of any sort a lethal risk. But when two drifters forge an uneasy truce, the possibility of a new life beckons.Written by a multiple Hugo Award–winning author and one of the founders of the sword-and-sorcery genre, this novel-length magazine story first appeared at the height of Cold War paranoia. Fritz Leiber's thought-provoking tale addresses timeless questions about the influences of community and culture as well as the individual struggle to reform.

What do you do when in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust the only way to survive is to kill or be killed? Two strangers, a man and a woman, come across each other in a hostile world where every life hangs by the thread. Instead of killing each other they decide to strike up a purely sexual relationship yet never losing the sight of their weapons. But things can never go as per plan when lust for blood runs higher than carnal lust. Will they survive? Or will they suffer the same gory end as that of the other victim who was murdered by the hero earlier? Interestingly the term "The Night of the Long Knives", was in reality, a military purge known as the Operation Hummingbird that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate Hitler's absolute hold on power in Germany. Read on!Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having in fact created the term.

"The Night of the Long Knives", a novella by Fritz Reuter Leiber written in 1960, is totally absorbing. It vividly describes a horrifying possible future America where nuclear war has ravaged the land and the human brain. Leiber’s characters are pathetic guilt-ridden people who’ve learned that the only way to eke out a wretched existence is to kill anyone who gets close. There is no goal but survival, and those who’ve managed have their methods. Ray wears sharp metal dental implants, a lead-lined hat, and a knife he calls “Mother.” Alice, who is missing a hand, screws a knife into her stump and hides weapons in her hair. They circle each other warily, knowing that it can’t be long before one of them can’t deny the urge to kill the other.Leiber uses his story to examine the mind of the murderer and to ask what it would take for a serial killer to change his ways. What are the influences of community, culture, and religion? How can a reformed killer get rid of guilt, make reparation, and help reform others? Another obvious theme, which was especially popular at the time Leiber wrote this novella, is the danger of nuclear war. "The Night of the Long Knives" is a grim story, but it doesn’t leave us in despair.