The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber thumbs up or down?

[rai]

I started to read this book a while back but was unable to get past 50 pages. I try to give a book a fair chance but this book was almost horrible (IMO).

Did I miss something? This book won the Hugo so I thought it would be good.

 

[j d worthington]

I'd say it is a very good book... but it may not be what you were looking for/expecting. It is, in some ways, very different from Leiber's other work, stylistically, and a bit difficult to get into at first, but I'd say it' worth it once you do. The best way to approach this one is without any preconceptions and simply go into it curious as to what Leiber is about here. It's a multi-layered book that includes satire, adventure, first contact, character studies, commentary on science fiction and popular culture..... In other words, it's a meaty book with a lot of layers, rather than a simple yarn. As the culture -- or at least a fair amount of it -- at the time was moving more toward this sort of complexity (take a look, for instance, as Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Delaney's novels of the period, or Zelazny, etc.) and this book was published during the midst of that, it's a bit different than what one may be led to expect from blurbs and such, and demands a fair amount of "mental mastication" of the reader....

 

[Ian Whates]

I have to agree with rai on this one. It's success puzzled me. Perhaps I simply expected too much. As a huge Leiber fan, and knowing this was an award winner, I expected something to compare with the Faffhrd and Gray Mouser tales (my very favourite all-time fantasy, LOTR aside), or at least his Changewar stories (The Big Time etc), but instead it seemed to me this trod a lot of familiar ground that I'd read about and heard about too many times before.

I appreciate your points, jd, but of them all, consider only the 'character development' to have been especially well handled. The satire was heavy-handed, the adventure was predictable and the comments on society in general were done better by others elsewhere; first contact... I'm pretty sure that's been done before, just once or twice, and as for the inter-species sex...

Sorry, most of what Leiber wrote I truly relish, but this one really didn't do it for me.

 

[Connavar]

It seems like i was right not to try this book.

I havent read Leiber yet and i see this book every time i go the SF shelf in the library.

I always think i will read his most famous work Faffhrd and Gray Mouser first.

 

[rai]

I was expecting an "End of the World" book like Lucifers Hammer.

But this book is structured more like Ubik (don't know if it's a good example) or some Sci-Fi by Moorcock where you can't undertand what's going on. The biggest problem for me was all the thread jumps to 10 different characters who would be in the book for just one minute.

I stopped reading when they were at the UFO convention. By this time I didn't care about the main characters. I didn't care if they lived or not basically I just was sick of it by this time.

Some books like Stainless Steel Rat are fun and maybe too shallow. But usually a good yarn and fun to read.

Then there is a book like Dune which is deep and hard to follow, but at least it's going somewhere, I care about the characters.

I prefer the type of book like Dune, (my best book of all time is Moby Dick) books like this where they may be hard to read but are rewarding the effort. But the Wanderer was difficult to read for no reason. I know Leiber does not always write this way see his Fantasy books.

The Wanderer seems indulgent for the author who doesn't care about the reader.

I have no problem with the book per-se. But my problem is why/how did it win a Hugo which keeps it alive when other books of that time are never thought of, the Wanderer will continue to sell just b/c people like me want to read the Hugo winners.

If you want my advice and you want to read a Hugo winner, just re-read Dune or Foundation etc.. and skip the Wanderer.

 

[j d worthington]

I have to agree with rai on this one. It's success puzzled me. Perhaps I simply expected too much. As a huge Leiber fan, and knowing this was an award winner, I expected something to compare with the Faffhrd and Gray Mouser tales (my very favourite all-time fantasy, LOTR aside), or at least his Changewar stories (The Big Time etc), but instead it seemed to me this trod a lot of familiar ground that I'd read about and heard about too many times before.

I appreciate your points, jd, but of them all, consider only the 'character development' to have been especially well handled. The satire was heavy-handed, the adventure was predictable and the comments on society in general were done better by others elsewhere; first contact... I'm pretty sure that's been done before, just once or twice, and as for the inter-species sex...

Sorry, most of what Leiber wrote I truly relish, but this one really didn't do it for me.

Another case of de gustibus, I think. I've never been that taken with A Specter is Haunting Texas, myself, though many I know and whose opinions I respect regard it highly. I'll admit that I had trouble with The Wanderer first time around, but I went back to it a few years later, and found it most rewarding....

And you're right, rai... this is something of an odd one for Leiber stylistically, if nothing else....