The Night of the Long Knives

The Night of the Long Knives, Fritz Leiber. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781504061438), 2020, first published in 1960.

Summary: In post nuclear America, Ray is a survivor whose killer instincts are tested when he meets Alice and Pops.

My school was a nuclear fallout shelter. We had drills where we filed into that shelter. During the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962, we wondered whether we would live to see the next day. This was the setting in which Fritz Leiber wrote The Night of the Long Knives. He and other science fiction writers of the time explored what life would be like for survivors in a post-nuclear world.

Leiber paints a bleak picture of a “kill or be killed” world narrated by Ray Baker, a survivor who has killed. He travels alone and scavenges to live in the Deathlands of what remains of middle America. Alliances of warring city states exist on the coasts. As he journeys, he spies another loner slowly getting nearer. However, just because it’s a woman doesn’t mean he is any less guarded. She bears the scars of radiation…and what else? Ray is torn by two lusts–blood lust and sexual lust. For the time being, the latter brings them together until the other becomes stronger.

Then two things happen. First, a strange aircraft lands. On instinct, Ray and Alice fight its occupant. A cry diverts the stranger’s attention long enough for the killing blow. Second, an old man calling himself Pops approaches, with a belt full of knives. But he does not use them. Instead, he claims to be part of MA–Murderers Anonymous, a group of Deathlanders who have sworn off murder and support each other in that resolve.

The unlikely trio decide to take the plane and see if they can fly it somewhere else. They fantasize about all sorts of destinations untouched by the holocaust. But all they find is an array of buttons, only one of which works, flying them to what was formerly Atlanta. The long auto-piloted journey allows them time to talk and Pops talks about renouncing the way of murder, and the urge that remains.

Will Ray and Alice change their ways? We wonder at points if they will even try killing each other enroute. But something else occupies their attention. They learn by radio that they are carrying medical supplies for one of two warring factions that they need to drop. But then what will become of them?

The story is a little longer than novella length and explores the question of whether, in a “survival of the fittest” world, any form of human community can develop. Can people unlearn the instinct to kill? Leiber also explores how killing changes a person, and how having killed once, it becomes easier. We would think of these people as sociopaths. But Leiber raises the disturbing thought that this may not be so far from any of us. A bleak and disturbing story.

I also wondered about the title. The “night of the long knives” was a bloody purge by the Nazi’s of the SA (a.k.a. the Brownshirts) from June 30 to July 2, 1934. Eighty-five people at least died in this bloody, extra-judicial purge of political opponents. I can’t help but think Leiber is warning us how thin is the veneer of civilized behavior. If this could occur in highly civilized Germany, it could happen anywhere, with or without a nuclear holocaust. It can happen here.