The Wanderer (1964)

In my effort to collect and read all Hugo award-winning novels the latest book I read was The Wanderer/Zwerver by Fritz Lieber. The book was first published in 1964, my edition is the Dutch translation published in 1987.
It is the future, and both the US and Russia have a permanent base on the moon. The wife of one of the astronauts on the moon and his best friend are watching the total lunar eclipse when suddenly a new planet appears in the sky out of nowhere. The planet, and its gravity cause disaster on the earth (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding) and on the moon. The book is the story of many people on earth and on the moon dealing with the appearance of the planet and the disasters surrounding it. It is a mix of a dystopian world (every man is fending for himself) and first contact (who are the aliens on that planet? why are they there?).
The book was an entertaining read. Yeah, some of the events are pretty coincidental, and some are far-fetched. Not all characters (most actually) were necessary, and I would have enjoyed reading more about the aliens and their history. But especially the fact that I have just read Star Maker, and the book starts with a quote from that book, and borrows from the world building in that story it connected for me. It gave me an extra episode in the Star Maker world, a focus on one small event that could have happened in that universe. Entertaining, four out of five stars. ( )

Lucifer's Hammer sort of set me up for disappointment with this novel. Both novels flip back and forth between a large cast of characters before and after a disaster that comes from the heavens. Both depict that destruction in full immersion 3-D, Dolby Digital IMAX glory. Both are pretty rigorous in their science at the beginning though this novel, due to its plot twists, ends up in space opera territory. Still, a story where the moon gets chewed up, millions die from tidal waves, and civilization starts to fray should be more entertaining than it turns out to be.

The characters are colorful enough, all met on the eve of a lunar eclipse. They include a group of "saucer students", an American astronaut on a lunar base, a man sailing solo across the Atlantic, a has-been actor on a mission to bomb the Presidential Palace of Nicaragua, a sex-crazed couple in New York out to compose a musical, a couple of poets in the UK, a would-be treasure hunter off the seas of Vietnam, a captain ferrying fascists on an atomic-powered liner en route to a coup in Brazil, a science fiction fan who falls in with a dying millionaire, and a German scientist who absolutely will not accept any evidence of the apocalypse apart from his own instruments. The Black Dahlia killer just may put in an appearance too. They are all interesting, colorful, their segments generally at the right length.

The plot? After a lunar eclipse, another big object appears in the sky, the moon starts to get ripped apart, and massive tidal devastation - along with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes - is caused by that object. The first hundred pages mysteriously dragged for me, though. I think less ominous foreshadowing and anarchy and strife - at least on stage - than in the longer Lucifer's Hammer explains my dissatisfaction.

However, the latter part of the novel introduces a new and surprising element very much in keeping with some of Leiber's short fiction which sides with the dangerous and eccentric over an enforced safe, sane order of things. Aliens, cats, E. E. "Doc" Smith, and interspecies attraction all make an appearance too.

Read it for the characters and that last third and not for disaster porn. ( )

http://tpi-reads.blogspot.com/2012/01/wanderer-by-fritz-leiber.html ( )

Eh. I love Leiber, but this has aged poorly. He tries to go for the "same event as seen through the eyes of many different people" story, but it seems like even he got tired of most of these extras and focused almost entirely upon the main cast. The fact that aliens were involved with the story seemed to be almost a throwaway. Sure, he was probably going for a "huge extraterrestrial event happens in the blink of eye...business as usual for aliens, big friggin deal for Earth" thing, but it just seemed so... empty. Character development was minimal. You don't really get attached to anyone. ( )

A so-so book. It could have probably been condensed to 50 pages and been fine. The rest of the book is just fluff. A strange sort of fluff that follows the lives of perhaps a dozen different groups as the world falls apart. The groups are all odd in their own strange ways. The message seems to be that when the world will fall apart, all the weirdos will come out in mass. The main plot about the 'Wanderer' is interesting, but not enough is actually given to it. ( )