Book Review: The Wanderer by Fritz Lieber (Podcast episode soon)

The Wanderer by Fritz Lieber

Paperback, 348 pages

Published December 2001 by Gollancz (first published 1964)

Hugo Award for Best Novel (1965)

So the reason I read this novel is pretty simple. Accidently I had recorded Three episodes of Dickheads about winners of best novel in Hugos from the sixties. Starship Troopers (1960) and Man in The High Castle (1963) are available and Stand on Zanzibar (1969) is recorded to be released later. Once I realized I had three of them I decided before the end of 2019 I wanted to record bonus episodes of Dickheads about all the 60's Hugo best novels of the year. So eventually There will be an episode of the podcast featuring author Edward Morris (Blackguard series and my Flesh Trade Co-author).

Until then here is my quick review. On the surface, this novel is an absolute bananas science fiction novel that was hit or miss reading experience for me. When I recount the totally bizarro insanity of the plot it sounds way better than the book I read. However, there were lots of cool ideas and moments. Many of which we will dive into more seriously on the podcast. I know that if I talk about this book and the themes I will convince myself that it was better than it actually was.

The book is one story told through many points of view, but the various windows into the tale create two very different feels. All the stuff on earth feels like a Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich disaster movie, while the stuff in space feels cosmic on a scale that is super weird. I like the space stuff much more in this book.

This book has more plots than a cemetery, and with 15 story threads, you would think that at least a couple of the characters might be interesting? Nah, not really. A few years after John Brunner lost the Hugo to this novel he actually used this method in a genius way in Stand on Zanzibar. In this novel, the methods fails to paint as vast picture of another world it just creates a mess that is hard to follow.

I didn't know until after I read this that the internet is filled with articles asking how the hell this book won the Hugo award. While there were other authors of respect nominated that year in Cordwainer Smith and Brunner none of the titles nominated that year are classics. Rough year. Most of the other winners in a given year and many of the nominees are classics that are remembered by any serious nerd of the field.

The story is an interesting one. A Planet suddenly appears in between the moon and earth, this is a death star like artificial planet filled with super-intelligent cat ladies who are on the run from galactic forces who want those to conform to their civilizations high standards. They come to earth because they have spent all their fuel living in hyperspace and our moon is just the raw materials they need. When they start crushing our moon up it sets off tidal forces and earthquakes.

I think Lieber was doing his 1964 best to be hard sci-fi but how realistic do you want your sci-fi when one of your characters falls in love after hooking up with an intergalactic anarchist cat-lady? Honestly, for me, the stuff on the Wanderer with the very cosmic ideas is where the book is interesting. The disaster porn while conceived to show off how unimportant and small humans are to the greater universe is well-intentioned but a fucking mess.

Goddamn it I wanted to like this book. When I talk about or recount it, it sounds cooler than it actually is. That said I am glad I read it. It is interesting to imagine this novel as it is happening. Fritz Lieber was my grandfather's age. He was already a pretty old grandmaster when this was written. You can really tell in some of the moments when the character is trying to do hip young people things. In that sense, this feels like a '50s, not sixties novel. I mean this is the decade when Stranger in a Strange Land, Man in the High Castle and plenty of classics came out. Really 1965 is this the best you got?