（外文电子版资料）Fritz Leiber - Gonna Roll the Bones.pdf

Professor Stythe Thompson spent considerable time and ef- fort in the exploration of myth, legend and folk-motif. After having read something of his works, I thought that I could put my finger on a particular piece and say -what it was. Myth, as I understand it, involves the gods, deals with the open end of the human condition. Legend may involve the supernatural, but not in so distinct or religious a fashion as myth. Folklore, basically, is just that: the lore of the folk, passed down, generation to generation, without supernatural overtones. Ill be damned if I know how to categorize the following Story. Maybe thats why it won a Nebula, however. . . . The sky was dark, the moon was yellow, the leaves came tumbling down. I am reminded of Stagalee and Red Hanrahan, and of all the people half of light and half of darkness who pass in the night, fight with the Devil on the banks of the Brazos, crash in their U-2s and cling to coffins while white whales destroy their ships. Here is a piece of future myth/legend/folkloremaybe. It is timeless, though, and like all such things, timely. GONNA ROLL THE BONES Fritz Leiber Suddenly Joe Slattermill knew for sure hed have to get out quick or else blow his top and knock out with the shrapnel of his skull the props and patches holding up his decaying home, that was like a house of big wooden and plaster and wallpaper cards except for the huge fireplace and ovens and chimney across the kitchen from him. Those were stone-solid enough, though. The fireplace was chin-high at least twice that long, and filled from end to end with roaring flames. Above were the square doors of the ovens in a rowhis Wife baked for part of their living. Above the ovens was the wall-long mantelpiece, too high for his Mother to reach or Mr. Guts to jump any more, set with all sorts of ancestral curios, but any of them that werent stone or glass or china had been so dried and darkened by decades of heat that they loo