Following its initial paperback edition, The Wanderer was reissued in hardcover by Walker & Co. in 1969, by Gregg Press in 1980, and by the Easton Press in 1991, as well as a Science Fiction Book Club edition in 1987. It was released in hardcover in the UK by Dennis Dobson in 1967, with a paperback edition following from Penguin Books in 1969. Translations have appeared in Dutch, French, German, Hungarian and Italian.[1]
The Wanderer was the first novel to win the Hugo Award without previously being published in hardcover or appearing in some form in a genre magazine.[2]
The novel deals with a wandering planet that enters the Solar System. Its narrative follows multiple disconnected groups of characters to portray the widespread impact of the Wanderer on the entire population of the Earth (and above it) as well as the varied reactions of different groups as they struggle to cope and survive.
Plot
The novel is set in a future, a few years after its 1964 publication date. The Space Race is still on-going. Both the USA and the USSR have lunar bases, but the Soviets have retained their early lead by sending an expedition to Mars. The Vietnam War continues, but seems not to be a big issue for US citizens. Also an underground anti-Communist army now operates within North Vietnam. Some independent outsiders bring suppllies by sea to both sides. Technology is much the same, apart from better spaceflight.
From the point of view of most of the population of the Earth, a new planet appears out of nowhere close to the Moon towards the end of a total lunar eclipse. It is attended by a twinkling of stars, which some astronomers explain as the planet emerging out of hyperspace. This is later confirmed by a man captured by a feline humanoid, and she also explains that the moon was destroyed to fuel the wandering planet.
The planet's appearance is startling - several massive patterns of purple and yellow, and initially resembling the Tao symbol of human culture.
Within a few days the planet – referred to by everyone simply "The Wanderer"– consumes the Moon. Its gravity causes mass death and destruction as it raises huge ocean waves and causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Flying saucers appear, apparently trying to mitigate some of the disastrous effects. Then, after a spectacular battle in space between the new planet and yet another which had appeared just as suddenly, the skies are empty again. Earth is left without its Moon.
The novel follows the lives of disparate people around the globe. There is a man attempting a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, a smuggler operating off the coast of Vietnam, two friends in England, a trio of drug addicts in New York City, and the military controllers of the USA Moon mission, deep in a bunker somewhere near Washington, D.C.
The main protagonists are three longtime friends. Paul Hagbolt is escorting Margo Gelhorn (and her cat, Miaow) to observe the lunar eclipse at an observatory in California. Their friend, and Margo's fiance, is Don Merriam, one of the American astronauts at the Moon base. Following on a whim a sign advertising a "flying saucer symposium", Paul and Margo fall in with a group of intellectuals, dreamers, charlatans and misfits. At that point events overtake them. The new planet appears and triggers an earthquake that buries their cars in a landslide. They must avoid tsunamis, more earthquakes, roving mobs and flying saucers to survive. On the Moon Don Merriam is the only astronaut to escape the destruction of the American moonbase. He tries to take off in one of the base's spaceships, only to fall through the Moon itself as it splits asunder under the influence of the new planet. His ship is eventually captured by its crew.
Events take a bizarre turn when the group of saucer enthusiasts is faced with a tsunami. A flying saucer appears, and a cat-like being uses some kind of gun to repel the waves. Then the being uses the same device to pull Paul, who is holding Miaow, into the saucer. At the same time the gun falls into the hands of the people on the ground.
In the saucer Paul meets a being calling itself Tigerishka. A large, female telepathic feline creature, she initially mistakes Miaow as the intelligent being whose thoughts she can hear, and Paul as a "monkey". Realizing her mistake, she regards Paul with contempt. Monkey-beings are not well regarded by her people. However she slowly warms to him, and explains why her planet had consumed the Moon.
Like many of the human characters, her people are intellectuals, dreamers, charlatans and misfits. They belong to a culture that spans the Universe, has achieved immortality, and can construct planets and traverse hyperspace. They can even create bodies for themselves that reflect the origins of their races, such as Tigerishka's cat-form. They are, however, fleeing their culture's police. The standard culture rejects nonconformists, and devotes itself to ensuring that intelligent life survives to the end of time, whereas Tigerishka's cohort wants to explore hyperspace and tinker with space, time and the Mind. Their flight has brought them to Earth orbit to refuel as huge amounts of matter must be converted to energy to power their hyperspace drive and their weapons: the Wanderer is running on empty.
As alien as Tigerishka is, Paul becomes besotted with her. Tigerishka eventually yields to his advances. At the same time, Don Merriam has been rescued with his ship by the Wanderer's other spaceships. He is reunited with Paul aboard Tigerishka's ship. Now they must testify in the Wanderer's trial, for the police have arrived. A second planet, "The Stranger", colored a dull gray where the Wanderer is bright purple and yellow, appears and threatens battle. Don and Paul give their testimony as to the good treatment they have seen, along with thousands of other humans appearing by some kind of holographic projection. However the trial goes badly. Paul and Don are evacuated in Don's ship, placed into position close to Earth by Tigerishka. Tigerishka takes Miaow with her back to her planet. Then the final battle takes place, and both planets disappear. In the final scene, Margo and her companions walk to Vandenberg Spaceport as Don's ship comes in to land.
Characters
The three friends
Margo Gelhorn, Paul Hagbolt and Donald Merriam have been friends since High School. Don became an astronaut, and Paul followed him into NASA by using his journalism qualifications to become a publicist for the agency. Margo eventually bestowed her affections on Don and became his fiancee. This left Paul with unrequited feelings for her, although Margo tells Paul that his feelings for Don are "more than brotherly". The three form an odd triangle. Margo herself is manipulative and exploits both Paul and Don to serve her ends. Don is a loner at heart, however. The triangle is set to fly apart. Their collision with the Saucer Symposium provides the trigger.
The Saucer Symposium
When Paul and Margo encounter the Saucer Symposium on the beach near Vandenberg, they give the participants nicknames.
"Doc" (Rudolf Brecht) is a relentless debunker of UFO myths and a top-notch piano salesman. He is one of the symposium organizers and chairmen.
"Turban" (Rama Joan) is a mystic who wears a turban and a man's tuxedo. She was once the wife of a New York stockbroker but abandoned the comfortable lifestyle to lecture on mysticism and participate in events like the Symposium as a search for enlightenment.
"Beardy" (Prof. Ross Hunter) is a sociologist from Oregon State University. He originally began studying UFO groups but became interested in the subject itself. During the adventures caused by the appearance of the Wanderer, he gets close to Margo and eventually seduces her, in the process exposing and neutralizing her manipulative instincts.
"The Little Man" (Clarence Dowd) is a meticulous documenter of UFO events. He draws the Wanderer as it shows its different faces to Earth. These drawings appear in the book.
"The Ramrod" (Charlie Furby) is a tough-looking man who is really a fantasist. He insists that he has been transported to planets such as Ispan, whose location only he knows, but later admits he did this entirely in his fantasies. He is accompanied by two women who may both be his wives, part of a polygamous sect.
New Yorkers
Sally Harris and Jake Lesher are looking for a good time and thinking about writing a play. They start with an amorous encounter on a Coney Island roller coaster, achieving orgasm the instant the Wanderer appears. They wander through the crowds in Times Square, then take refuge in a penthouse apartment as the flood begins. They barely survive as the tsunami caused by Wanderer and the Stranger almost reaches roof.
Arab Jones, Pepe Martinez and High Bundy are stoners. High on marijuana, they chase the sight of the Wanderer through the streets of New York, making up crazy stories about it. They are eventually drowned by in-rushing flood in a subway station.
Floridians
Barbara Katz is another adventurous young woman with an agenda. She catches an old millionaire, Knolls K. Kettering III, spying on her with his telescope while she sunbathes. Deciding to become his "friend" she dons a black "playsuit" and sneaks into his yard during the eclipse, finding him observing the event with the same telescope. With "KKK" and his black servants, she tries to escape the flood tides by driving to high ground in the limousine. Dodging racist policemen and a delegation of Ku Klux Klan vigilantes they ride out one flood by climbing trees, then find a washed-up yacht in which they survive the subsequent catastrophes.
An undisclosed location
General "Spike" Stevens and Colonel Mabel Wallingford are two members of Mission Control team for the Moonbase, stationed deep underground somewhere near Washington D.C. At first they think the events are a "problem", a simulation created by their superiors to test their readiness. Not long after they realize that the events on their screens are real, the facility floods with water. Stevens and Wallingford are left trapped together. Fully aware they are about to die, they find their final release in each other, despite having hated each other from the moment they met.
In Great Britain
Dai Davies and Richard Hillary enjoy a drink together in the English county of Somerset and then go their separate ways. Hillary returns to the Home Counties of England but is caught in the exodus from the lowlands as tides flood the Thames basin. He survives by reaching high ground in the Malvern Hills. Davies, a romantic poet, composes odes to the new planet and then attempts to walk to Wales across the apparently dry estuary of the river Severn. He is finally engulfed in a huge version of the Severn bore and drowns.
At sea
Wolf Loner is attempting a solo crossing of the Atlantic. Because of bad weather, and the loss of radio communication, he has no idea that anything is happening in the sky. His first inkling that anything strange has happened is when his boat bumps up against the bell tower of Old North Church in Boston.
Bagong Bung is a smuggler supplying both sides in a guerrilla war, operating off the coast of Vietnam. The suddenly large tides uncover a wreck on the sea floor, which he loots for treasure.
Off the coast of South America, the atomic powered cruise liner Prince Charles is hijacked by revolutionaries. Flood tides carry it deep into the Amazon basin where it eventually comes to rest on land, like Noah's Ark, with hundreds of passengers.
Reception
P. Schuyler Miller described the book as a "thoroughly uncharacteristic" Leiber novel, saying that "the feel of what is happening . . . counts for more than the plot" and predicting that The Wanderer "would eventually be awarded 'classic' status".[3]Avram Davidson compared the novel unfavorably to Leiber's Conjure Wife, saying "The canvas is wide, the characters many, the charge scatters like buckshot, if you can imagine a buckshot cannon".[4]
James Nicoll has described the novel as "terrible", saying that although its premise — "hollow planets filled with catgirls who want to steal the moon" — may be "amazing or at least intriguing", the novel itself "falls well short of its potential"; he attributes its Hugo win to a weak slate of nominees, and to Leiber's "blatant and unabashed sucking up to SF fandom".[5]
Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright, and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery and coined the term.
Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. Ringworld tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, a rotating wheel artificial world, an alien construct in space 186 million miles in diameter. Niven later added three sequel novels and then cowrote, with Edward M. Lerner, four prequels and a final sequel; the five latter novels constitute the Fleet of Worlds series. All the novels in the Ringworld series tie into numerous other books set in Known Space. Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970, as well as both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971.
Have Space Suit—Will Travel is a science fiction novel for young readers by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and published by Scribner's in hardcover in 1958. The last Heinlein novel to be published by Scribner's, it was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1959 and won the Sequoyah Children's Book Award for 1961. Heinlein's engineering expertise enabled him to add realistic detail; during World War II, he had been a civilian aeronautics engineer at a laboratory which developed pressure suits for use at high altitudes.
Foundation and Earth is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, the fifth novel of the Foundation series and chronologically the last in the series. It was published in 1986, four years after the first sequel to the Foundation trilogy, which is titled Foundation's Edge.
Krypton is a fictional planet appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, most commonly appearing or mentioned in stories starring the superhero Superman as the world he came from. The planet was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and was named after the chemical element krypton. The planet was first mentioned in Action Comics #1 and made its first appearance in Superman #1 (1939).
The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
George Adamski was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of alien spacecraft, claimed to have met with friendly Nordic alien Space Brothers, and claimed to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets.
The interstellar space opera epic Star Wars uses science and technology in its settings and storylines. The series has showcased many technological concepts, both in the movies and in the expanded universe of novels, comics and other forms of media. The Star Wars movies' primary objective is to build upon drama, philosophy, political science and less on scientific knowledge. Many of the on-screen technologies created or borrowed for the Star Wars universe were used mainly as plot devices.
The World of Tiers is a series of science fiction novels by American writer Philip José Farmer. They are set within a series of artificially constructed universes, created and ruled by decadent beings who are genetically identical to humans, but regard themselves as superior, and are the inheritors of an advanced technology they no longer understand. This technology enables the "Lords" to create novel lifeforms, and also to prevent aging or disease, making them effectively immortal. Their technology also allows them to create small artificial universes, and the planets and stars within them, and modify the physical laws to create unusual or interesting phenomena within these universes. Instantaneous travel within and between these universes is achieved by the use of "gates" which seem to function as teleportation devices, or as a means of creating wormholes between different regions of spacetime.
Norby is a fictional robot created by Janet Asimov and Isaac Asimov who stars in his own series of children's science fiction books, The Norby Chronicles. His first appearance was in the 1983 book Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot, in total he appeared in 11 novels in the 'Norby' series. According to Isaac Asimov, although Janet Asimov did 90% of the work, his "name was wanted on the book for the betterment of sales [and he] went over the manuscript and polished it a bit."
Inconstant Moon is a science fiction short story collection by American author Larry Niven that was published in 1973. "Inconstant Moon" is also a 1971 short story that is included in the collection. The title refers to "O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon", a quote from the balcony scene in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The collection was assembled from the US collections The Shape of Space and All the Myriad Ways.
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel Micromégas by Voltaire. In the earliest depictions, it was portrayed as having a solid surface rather than its actual gaseous composition. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. In modern science fiction, the Saturnian atmosphere sometimes hosts floating settlements. The planet is occasionally visited by humans and its rings are sometimes mined for resources.
The Grand Tour is a series of novels written by American science fiction author Ben Bova.
When Heaven Fell is a 1995 military science fiction novel by William Barton.
The Stones of Nomuru is a science fiction novel by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, the tenth book in the former's Viagens Interplanetarias series and the first in its subseries of stories set on the fictional planet Kukulkan. It was first published as a trade paperback by Donning/Starblaze Editions in September 1988, and as a mass market paperback by Baen Books in May 1991. An E-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011 as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form. It has also been translated into Italian.
"The Star" is an 1897 apocalyptic short story by H. G. Wells.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
