Night's Black Agents
 Dust Jacket Illustration by Ronald Clyne for Night's Black Agents by Fritz Leiber | |
| Author | Fritz Leiber |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Ronald Clyne |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy, horror |
| Publisher | Arkham House |
Publication date | 1947 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | x, 237 pp |
Night's Black Agents is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author Fritz Leiber. It was released in 1947 and was the author's first book. It was published by Arkham House in an edition of 3,084 copies.
Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Unknown and Weird Tales. Three were first published in this book.
The book's title is taken from Macbeth, Act III, scene ii.
Later editions added additional material under the same title. The Berkley (1978) reprint adds two stories "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" and "A Bit of the Dark World". The definitive version is the Gregg Press (1980) hardcover which adds a Foreword by Richard Gid Powers to the complete contents of the Berkley edition and is thus an expansion of the original Arkham House edition.
Contents
Night's Black Agents contains the following tales:
- "Foreword"
- "Smoke Ghost"
- "The Automatic Pistol"
- "The Inheritance / The Phantom Slayer"
- "The Hill and the Hole"
- "The Dreams of Albert Moreland"
- "The Hound / Diary in the Snow"
- "The Man Who Never Grew Young"
- "The Sunken Land"
- "Adept's Gambit"
Reprints
- New York: Ballantine, 1961 (as Tales from Night's Black Agents, abridged, omits "Adept's Gambit")
- New York: Berkley, 1978 (restored and adds two stories: "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes", "A Bit of the Dark World").
- Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980 (text identical to Berkley edition; adds new intro by Richard Gid Powers).
References
- Jaffery, Sheldon (1989). The Arkham House Companion. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, Inc. pp. 27–28. ISBN 1-55742-005-X.
- Chalker, Jack L.; Mark Owings (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd. p. 31.
- Joshi, S.T. (1999). Sixty Years of Arkham House: A History and Bibliography. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. p. 44. ISBN 0-87054-176-5.
- Nielsen, Leon (2004). Arkham House Books: A Collector's Guide. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 64. ISBN 0-7864-1785-4.