Reviews

• Best SF Novel Ever Written

  I'll keep this simple and straightforward: I own over 4400 SF novels, and of all those, this is the best.

• 60's classic award winning SF

  Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer is a Hugo winning novel from the 60's. The title refers to a planetary, Earth-sized body that suddenly appears near the moon's orbit and proceeds to devour the moon. At the same time, excessive tidal forces create earthquakes and tsunamis that wreck havoc, destruction, and many deaths. The story is told from multiple perspectives of various groups around the world and focuses on two individuals who actually make it onto the behemoth, a moon-based astronaut who barely escapes and a man from Earth associated with the space program. Eventually, Earth is left to deal with a global catastrophe as well as the understanding that they are no longer alone in the universe. Leiber posits a crowded universe leading to bureaucratic malaise that instigates the Wanderer. Travel is through hyperspace, but tightly controlled. The main intelligence encountered suggests a feline evolution which is highly skeptical of "intelligent" monkeys. Control of gravity and thoughts is routine. There is also some focus on the amateur scientist. While the overall sense of galactic intelligence is a bit anthropomorphic, humanity seems well suited for galactic integration.

• Terrible on-demand print of eBook version

  Cheap print reproduction of the eBook version. Do not buy.

• Somehow missed this classic

  I started reading sci-fi in the 60s, and I should have found this book at once. But I just now became aware of it, because a good writer I enjoy made a reference to it. I’m so happy to have found it. It’s a wonderful book. It is written in the best style, it is imaginative, evocative, at once modest and alluring. In short, it is precisely that sort of book the best readers set off to find on their sci-fi quest. Enjoy it.

• Disaster epic with flying saucers

  The premise of this 1964 novel is that an Earth-sized planet suddenly materializes near the Moon. Of course this causes massive tides as well as earthquakes. And something horrible happens to the Moon... The big reveal doesn't come until the very end. The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of a variety of people dealing with the catastrophe. The central group is described as "saucer students," people on the California coast (naturally) who have come to hear talks on UFOs. A young woman and a young man stumble on to this group -- her boyfriend is an astronaut on the Moon, and he works for the government's Project Moon. The other characters are colorful, but never connect with one another, which I found frustrating. Leiber uses them simply to draw diverse sketches, some more compelling than others. The planet is referred to as The Wanderer (by many of the various disconnected characters, absurdly) and Leiber spends a lot of time describing its appearance (gold and purple) as it rotates and reveals different sides to Earth. Some have described the novel as an allegory. That is not accurate. At the end, the story of the Wanderer which is revealed might be seen as an allegory, but if so it is an allegory within the larger disaster epic novel, which is not an allegory. Without revealing the plot, I can say that there is a theme about the tension between youth and age, and between adventure and stability. Overall, despite the fact that Fritz Leiber is a great author, I was not very impressed with either the human/disaster epic story or the fanciful science fiction reveal. *** *** *** I don't remember ever hearing of this book back in the late Sixties and early Seventies when I first read lots of science fiction. I discovered it in the list of Hugo Award-winning novels and that's why I read it. It was the winner for 1965. It must have been a slow year. But now I have read the winners for every year of the 1960s!

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