The novel “The Wanderer” by Fritz Leiber was published for the first time in 1964. It won the Hugo Award as the best novel of the year.
An object appears out of nowhere near the Moon. From its gravitational force people understand very quickly that it’s a planet and scientists theorize that whoever controls it can make it travel in hyperspace.
The new planet’s gravity causes earthquakes and an upheaval in the Earth’s tides and its magnetic field disrupts radio communications. The worst however happens to the Moon because the mysterious planet capture it in its orbit and starts absorbing its material.
One of the astronauts on a mission on the Moon can barely save himself leaving on one of the starships available but he’s captured. Another human is captured on Earth by an alien ship and brought to the planet, where he meets an alien who belongs to a feline species, sensual and dangerous at the same time.
“The Wanderer” is in some ways Fritz Leiber’s most ambitious novel because it’s a catastrophic novel and also a space opera, so it draws on the foundations of classic science fiction but also includes many characters who are ordinary people and tells their stories. Not accidentally it’s unusually long by Leiber’s standards: in fact it’s over three hundred pages long.
The catastrophic side is the basis of “The Wanderer” and occupies most of the novel. When the planet suddenly comes out of hyperspace, “The Wanderer” is how it’s called, the consequences are devastating for the Earth, especially in areas close to the seas. The tides are upset by the planet’s gravity and millions of people are forced to flee the coasts flooded by the waters.
Fritz Leiber follows the adventures of various characters in different places not only in the U.S.A. but also in England and on the world’s seas. The Wanderer’s magnetic field interferes with radio communications on Earth and the combined effects of the new planet soon lead to a disaster even at social level. There are in fact those who took the opportunity to start looting or simply to give in to their violent instincts and in an increasingly chaotic situation there’s so much the police can do.
Here’s the main flaw of the “The Wanderer”: the characters are really a lot, too many to be able to develop them all, in fact many don’t go beyond the cliches of a certain type of person and some subplots have no real use. Fritz Leiber wanted to go beyond the classic catastrophic novel based on a few characters’ point of view having in “The Wanderer” a lot of them alternating their points of view: unfortunately he went too far.
Maybe if the book had been twice as long it would’ve been possible to develop all the characters decently. Today there are writers who do it but in the ’60s an attempt of that kind was something new and a novels were on average much shorter. Of course, the useless subplots would’ve remained that way even if longer.
If “The Wanderer” is basically a catastrophic novel it’s true that there’s also the element of space opera. The Wanderer hasn’t only the function to start the catastrophic events but also to introduce the civilizations in the universe. For feline lovers the alien Tigerishka is a memorable character but her species is just one of the many that emerged long before humanity.
Although it won the Hugo Award, “The Wanderer” is perhaps Fritz Leiber’s most controversial novel because the excessive amount of characters with their subplots makes it difficult to follow all their stories and this results in an adverse opinion from many readers. Personally, while I agree about the erroneous handling of the characters I also see the positive elements of this novel, so I still consider it overall good.
It’s hard not to recommend a novel by Fritz Leiber but if you don’t like stories fragmented into many subplots “The Wanderer” might disappoint you and bore you, otherwise it may be an intriguing read for the many elements it contains.
