The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber

The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber, was the 1965 recipient of the Hugo Award for best novel. If you'll recall, this was his second novel to win the prize (and I didn't like the first one, The Big Time, at all).

The Wanderer is set on Earth in the mid-1960s, and is a fairly standard natural disaster story. The natural disaster, in this case, is caused by unnatural means; however, for most of the book's characters this matters little or not at all as they deal with the repercussions on a small, localized scale. As in The Big Time, Leiber's characters are rather two-dimensional--we get snapshots of their personalities and how they react to the expanding global disaster, but for the most part they're described mainly in terms of the cliche they represent: hipster, druggie, scientist, astronaut, treasure-hunter, etc. (for the record, there are WAY too many characters to make this book an easy read). Leiber also continues to play with language in this book, which at times becomes a tad cumbersome. Occasionally, this word-play brings something unique to a scene, such as an 11th-hour sex scene described mostly in terms of the characters' surroundings.

Leiber name-drops several classic science fiction writers, including Heinlein, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, E.R. Burroughs, and Doc Smith. Several of his characters work in snide critiques of the genre, which I enjoyed. "Science fiction is as trivial as all artistic forms that deal with phenomena rather than people" was one that seemed to be a statement against the all-action, no-character books that Leiber was trying hard not to write.

This book felt like the product of it's time, particularly the inhabitants of the Wanderer itself--"we Wild Ones, we Recalcitrants, we Untamed," whose government began to nibble at their freedoms millennia ago. They're the ultimate rebels, and like many fringe groups in the mid-60s, just want the government to leave them alone to do as they like. Interestingly, Leiber leaves the ultimate decision of whether they're the good guys or the bad guys up to the reader.

There were many things about this book that I found intriguing and fascinating, but in the end I felt that the general wordiness and the number of distinct character-threads made it difficult to read and follow. In my opinion it's better than many of the earlier Hugo winners, but it can't compete with most of the modern stuff I was reading at the same time. Rating: 3/5

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber, was published in 1957 and was the 4th Hugo Award winner. I'd like to start this post by saying that I've read and loved many stories and books by this author in the past, including many in his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series. I fully expected to love this book, too--I was disappointed.

TBT uses many standard sci-fi concepts and characters: time travel, ETs, cosmic war, futuristic technology, and specialized jargon. Some of these it uses well, some it uses hardly at all, and some are used in ways I (for the most part) just didn't appreciate.

The book's ETs are a minor feature of the story, but are somewhat unusual and interesting in concept. There are only two of them--one from 1 billion years pre-modern Luna and one from 1 billion years post-modern Venus. The future tech is nebulous and not completely explained, but each piece of it features prominently in what passes for action in the story. These aspects of the novel are handled well, in my opinion.

Although the book is nominally about time travel, it's only used in the sense of "if you could put together a dinner party and invite anyone--past, present, or future...?" In this case, it's a waystation in the void outside of a cosmic war instead of a dinner party, and the guests and hosts don't really get to choose each other, but that hardly matters. Each of the characters is from a specific locale and time, and comes attendant with the language and mannerisms of that locale and time.

To illustrate his clever grasp of the language of each character's locale and time, Leiber has the characters soliloquize. A lot. I applaud his use of varied styles and vocabularies, but wish that he'd focused a bit more on pacing and story and a bit less on monologues. I've met a few people who put this book on their favorites list just because of this, though, so it's certainly a polarizing preference. There's one ongoing bit by the narrator that I did enjoy tremendously, in fact, and which gave me an amusing easter-egg hunt to focus on--she has her own religious swearing vocabulary (based on god-invocations in multiple languages) which includes "Hey, Zeus!", "Shaitan shave us!", "Nervy Anna enfold me", "Got mittens", "praise/thank the Bonny Dew", "Kreesed us!", and "Crisis!" For the most part, though, I got horribly bogged down in the multiple slangs and jargons that represented the cross-time collection of characters.

Which brings us to the cosmic war. As explained by the oldest character in the book's timeline (the ET from Luna 1 billion years ago) at the end of the story, it's not really war at all. Just evolution, which he explains is the same thing on a different scale. Luke-warm ending, with no sense of payoff or "ah ha!" moment.

Overall, this book was like a "Murder in a Box" mystery party that's massively overacted by well-educated people. Been there, done that--don't really need or want to read it.

In another situation, I probably wouldn't have read past the first one or two chapters of this book. Because there's another Leiber lurking down in 1965 on my list, and it might be related to this one, I made myself forge ahead. As I mentioned earlier, opinions on this book range widely-- but my advice is to skip it. Rating: 2/5

Reading The Big Time, very slowly

I've started to read The Big Time, but it's very slow going. Very dense, very wordy, and filled with references that might have been accessible to the reader in the 50s but aren't to me in many cases. I'm re-reading many pages, which is something I almost never do. I have a feeling this could be a good book, but I can't get into it yet--if I weren't reading it for this project, I'd likely have abandoned it by now. At the moment crocheting, ceiling-gazing, and web surfing are much more compelling. If you've read this book and can give me any sign of hope, I'd appreciate it...