Product Description

All eyes were watching the eclipse of the Moon when the Wanderer came. Only a few scientists had even suspected its presence, and then, suddenly, it was there, dwarfing and threatening the Moon and wreaking havoc with Earth's tides and weather. The huge, garishly coloured artificial world has only stopped in the Solar system to refuel but its mere presence is a catastrophe for the inhabitants of Earth, who all struggle in their different ways to survive the climatic chaos it unleashes. A brilliant description of the of the days of chaos as total destruction threatens the Earth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1122364 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 348 pages

About the Author
Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) studied psychology and physiology at the University of Chicago and then spent a year at a theological seminary. He worked as an editor for the Science Digest, acted (he came from a theatrical family) and was a drama teacher before turning to writing. He is particularly well known for his fantasy writing but his other sf includes The Big Time, which also won a Hugo.

Customer Reviews

Great, Despite Dated Elements
Fritz Leiber is best known for his Landmark Fantasy Lankmar series, which are some of the best ever in that Genre. This though is one his Science Fiction Outings, from 1964. Well It's thriling in places, endearing & funny, the way the different viewpoints are handled is superb. Despite winning the Hugo, it's not a book often talked about these days, in the same way as 'Dune', 'Lord of Light', 'The Disposessed', 'The man in the High Castle' etc. Fans of Modern Hard Sci-Fi are likely not to appreciate the humourous and off-hand elements which off-set the apocalyptic story. It feels like it's from a by-gone era, Having said that few Science Fiction novels these days are as vivid and endearing....

A great scifi classic
First published in 1964, this is a classic period piece of science fiction.

The premise is simple.. an artificial planet suddenly appears next to the earth, causing huge earthquakes and massive tidal surges, but the inhabitants of the planet are seemingly indifferent to the plight of the Earth.

A good old-fashioned scifi book that makes you think about our impact on the earth.

A good middle ranking 60s SF novel.
I read this novel because it featured in David Pringle's Top 100 SF novels and I'm not sure it would make mine. The science stands up well considering this book was written in 1964 although there is a bit of hand-waving called hyperspace which would correspond to wormholes as I understand it. The place where the science was weakest I felt was the aliens which were based on terrestrial animals (One was a "felinoid").

The characters in the story are not very engaging but on the whole the story is reasonable but not outstanding.