The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber

This book plays out as a series of fractured narratives of different character groups—who are spread across the globe—as a planet turned into a spaceship emerges from hyperspace near earth, then eats the moon. This causes massive tidal strain, including death and destruction in coastal and low-elevation areas. It also causes personal changes in the people the narratives follow.

But the book never really finds its footing. Leiber focuses on the story, which could excuse much of this lack of footing, but it doesn’t for me. None of the groups mesh to me: they’re not informing some shared discussion of concepts, they’re not building the tension for each other in ways that seem intentional, and they’re not all converging on a central point for a big finale. There are no threads that show something interesting—a conversation about a concept carried through all these character groups. Nothing ties them together except the fact that they’re all reacting to the earthquakes, tides, fires, changed weather patterns, and new planet in the sky. And their responses also show an opportunity missed by Leiber: this could’ve been an interesting conversation about humans in extremes, but none of the situations or analysis is allowed to get enough depth to be fascinating or informative. Instead of and ensemble film where each character group informs the reading of the others, this was like a few different short stories cut up and interlaced, but going in different directions and discussing different themes.

“No, I don't think so, though I suppose vanity plays a part." He touched his beard. "No, it was simply because I'd found people who had something to follow and be excited about, something to be disinterestedly interested in—and that's not so common any more in our money-and-sales-and-status culture, our don't-give-yourself-away yet sell-yourself-to-everybody society. It got so I wanted to make a contribution of my own—the lecturing and panel bits.”

Part of the lack of depth comes from the ensemble cast and quick jumps between the groups of people. This book is made up of hundreds of snapshots of scenes, vignettes of story that aren’t long enough to develop depth. This type of fractured narrative can be done well—like when Iain M Banks draws all the character groups together for a final showdown where their differing opinions are given space to grow, then come together and explode. But it’s not done well here, partly because the jumps are so short, and partly because Leiber drops the ball on exploring any almost interesting idea he has.

Not for the first time, Richard reflected that this age's vaunted "communications industry" had chiefly provided people and nations with the means of frightening to death and simultaneously boring to extinction themselves and each other.

Leiber has no theme here, really. He may be trying to put in themes, but they all fail to reach clarity. The saucer students are surprisingly functional when led, but that’s not dwelled on. Paul opens his mind to new experiences, but this isn’t explored either because Tigershika spends so much time explaining the science fiction of the story. The poet is a passionate drunk; okay, I’ve heard that before, yet Leiber adds nothing new to the conversation. I'm not going to list them all, but each character group fails to pull out their theme in any meaningful way.

Intelligent life spreads faster than the plague. And science grows more uncontrollably than cancer. On every undisturbed natural planet, life crawls and flutters for billions of years, then overnight comes the blossoming, the swift explosion across the great black distances of seeds that grow like weeds wherever they fall, and then the explosion of their seeds on, on, to the incurving ends of the universe.

There are plenty of science fiction themes thrown in here, but these are dropped as quickly as Leiber introduces them. For instance, galactic politics reflecting human politics: an idea which isn’t given enough space or depth or uniqueness to be interesting, but which also doesn’t terribly inform the story outside of a deus ex machina. The reasons for the Wanderer’s existence and existence near earth interest me, but only because that story is the only thing happening in the novel; and not enough is done with it for me to be satisfied. Another idea deals with relationships between aliens and humans, yet it's delivered awkwardly (sex with a lady space-cat), and lack of followthrough takes the legs out from under it before it gets started.

Then had come three fleeting yet shockingly vivid flashes: first, a huge, tapering, greenish-purplish cat face; second, two staring eyes with incredible five-petaled irises around the black five-spiked stars of the pupils; third, a long, slim, hand-sized paw with narrow indigo pads and four cruel curving claws of translucent, violet-gray horn—he had the impression that they'd just been buried in the scruff of his coat, and maybe his neck, too, hastening him.

However, the book is written wonderfully. The intro chapters particularly hold my attention. Passages throughout the book are well written and beautiful. Leiber practices rhyme and consonance to create captivating sentences. I’ve quoted some of my favorites here.

In closing, the opening chapters left me wondering when he would leave off the fractured narrative jumping between the character groups, and dig into the ideas he left floating off, making them interesting. He didn’t. He just kept jumping around and missing opportunity after opportunity. It’s a book I will not read again.

Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

1. This 1970 novella tells of the meeting of Leiber’s two characters, Gray Mouser and Fafhrd. These characters had already been around since 1939, but this is their origin story—not the origin of either, but the origin of their camaraderie. From this fact comes my main complaint with the story: it’s simply there to tell the story of their meeting and why they became such fast friends at first. This is fan service. Maybe it’s full of inside jokes and references to the rest of the tales about these two that would delight a fan, but I wouldn’t get them if it was. I like Leiber. I haven’t read any of his other sword and sorcery Gray Mouser and Fafhrd tales, but his novel The Big Time impressed me immensely. Yet I am bored by Ill Met because it doesn’t do enough outside of introducing and linking these two already linked characters. However, it’s a novella, so it’s short and wasn’t hard to read, despite my boredom.

2. The pacing is good: it starts with two thieves exiting a heist and being ambushed by Gray Mouser and Fafhrd, who then link up and introduce each other to their girlfriends, they then party and decide to invade the Thieves Guild to search for a way to assassinate Thief leader Krovas, then they invade and things go bad, on their return to the women they realize how bad, so they run back to the Thieves, get some revenge, and leave town. The pacing speeds up for the action, making it seem frantic but still giving enough details to make it legible. It then slows for the party and the sneaking parts, allowing the characters to take center stage and forcing my realization that this is fan service. Despite my complaint, I feel that the pacing is appropriate to the story—not going overlong into any one scene, and not breezing over any interesting bit. It’s a three scene story, essentially: ambush, party, invasion/revenge. This is an effective tactic for a novella.

3. The theme here is that true friends can be soulmates: they will fight against and for each other like siblings, and there is an intrinsic understanding between well-matched friends. Words are often unnecessary between them, yet the words that do come are important. Said another way, friends are the family we choose.

4. The writing annoys me at times. It adopts this fake nostalgia, trying to sound aristocratic and gutter simultaneously and coming off just awkward and unbelievable. For instance, some dialogue in a bar:

Ho, there, you back of the counter! Where are my jugs? Rats eaten the boy who went for them days ago? Or he simply starved to death on his cellar quest? Well, tell him to get a swifter move on and meanwhile brim us again!

This is awkward writing that I don’t enjoy. Which is strange because I like Leiber’s other writing, at least what I’ve read so far.

5. In short, as a stand-alone novella, this doesn’t work. I am now less interested to read the other stories with these two characters than I was before reading this. If it’s fan service, it doesn’t apply to somebody who isn’t already a fan and familiar. If it isn’t, it’s just a boring, pointless novella. It is fine pulp fiction: exciting and well paced, legible and simple. But it’s also lacking import and applicability because Leiber trusts the readers are already familiar with these characters and skates around actually building them here. It’s probably a testament to the popularity of these two characters that this won both the Hugo and Nebula for novella in 1971.