[Many of the pieces in The Worlds of Fritz Leiber] are either overwritten or unimaginatively resolved, if not both together…. [To] Leiber's credit is the fact that none of these stories pretends to be anything more than an entertainment—even though he manages to touch on such weighty subjects as political witch-hunting, cold-war politics, the Bomb, father-and-son relationships, bungling bureaucracy, growing old, cats, and (obsessively but chastely, as if afraid to confront a healthy lust in anything but the most decorous or tangential terms) nubile and pre-nubile young women. Fine. The problem is that too many of these entertainments are so trivial as to be irritating or so facile in their resolutions as to border on cliches. Many would benefit from cutting. (pp. 29-30)

["Catch That Zeppelin!" is fascinating] and believable historical speculation, and Leiber's erudition shows to good advantage.

Structurally and stylistically, however, the story is a...