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West of the Sun
The crew of the Argo, four men & two women at the end of an eleven-year flight to the unknown planet they named Lucifer--looking forward with desperate longing to the completion of their mission & their return to Earth. But when their spacecraft crashed, they faced an untamed world of huge, carnivorous birds with wolverine heads & flashing black teeth; furred, ten-foot-tall men; & red-skinned, man-eating pygmies. They warred fiercely, needing every last vestige of their skill & sanity to stay alive. Now their need was to colonize & populate the planet, but one of them was insane.
219 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
About the author
Edgar Pangborn
93 books39 followersEdgar Pangborn was an American mystery, historical, and science fiction author.
He published also under the pen-name of Bruce Harrison
He published also under the pen-name of Bruce Harrison
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 7, 2025
West of the Sun was Pangborn's first science fiction novel, though he had been writing fiction professionally since 1930. It appeared in 1953, and some of the mature themes (one of the men shares his wife?!) caused some raised eyebrows in the field. It's the story of a spaceship with four men and two women in 2056 that crash on a planet they call Lucifer that's inhabited by two humanoid races and a lot of other bizarre examples of flora and fauna. They establish a colony and begin to teach their philosophy to the natives. It gets a little overly complex and philosophical, but it's not a bad story for 1953. It's divided into three sections, so it feels more like a fix-up novel than a single narrative.
May 13, 2019
This just wasn't for me and I don't think there is too much of a point reading it nowadays when there are so much better and less dated renditions of such a story. The writing style was nice but few things described felt actually meaningful.
The idea was interesting but the execution was lacking for my taste, except for some little bits here and there it was quite boring.
The idea was interesting but the execution was lacking for my taste, except for some little bits here and there it was quite boring.
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May 26, 2026When I started this last week, I little suspected how timely that blazing orb on the cover would prove. It's even relevant to the story, ish, at least by the standards of seventies paperback SF with spaceships on, in that the story does begin with a botched approach to a new system, lifeboats launched in haste. But for all that, the title is really more of a metaphor, albeit one I can't exactly put my finger on. Pangborn ended up pretty influential – Ursula le Guin credited him with opening her eyes to what you could achieve within science fiction – but I suspect that was more down to the post-apocalyptic sequence on which he'd work later, of which the one book I've read was excellent, but which all feels a little close to home for me to read any more any time soon.
That said, while West Of The Sun is a first contact story set on a distant planet, there are definitely points in common. The lost ship means the human survivors are making do with limited resources from the world that was; fuel and ammunition only last so long, and then they must get by with what can be had through simpler methods. Oral transmission helps histories become legends; people with a theoretical grasp of warfare struggle when trapped in the unpalatable immediacy of the real thing. With that last in particular, I wondered if Pangborn's own service in the Pacific during WWII, only a decade or so before this was published, played a part. That sense of first-hand experience being one of the things that made me like this even though, in many respects, it's a poster child for how badly SF can age. The timeline that takes us from Pangborn's own 1950s to his book's 2056, most obviously; we're currently in the year where the discovery of 'charlesite' revolutionises space travel, but well behind schedule on Moon and Mars bases, and even running a little tardy on the second US civil war. One is tempted to wince at the vast, collectivist Asian Empire, but also to titter at its leader being called Jenga; there's even an inadvertent 'six, seven' to amuse the I suspect entirely hypothetical young reader. Generations of subsequent writers have built outwards from here to give us aliens who are more convincingly alien than these humanoids who learn decent English within a year, and less politically awkward than to so readily accept the Earthers as their leaders.
But at the same time, you can tell Pangborn is doing his best to think beyond the assumptions of his time. The existing society on the new planet is matriarchal; the newcomers contrast it with their own dynamic, which they call gender equality, but doesn't necessarily read that way in 2026. Whether that's deliberate, I don't know – but they do accept that, if a small, stranded and gender imbalanced group is to survive in the long term, they'd best accept polyandry. And the explorers' racial mix is both more progressive, and has much less made of it, than I'd expect in fifties or even sixties SF. A key driver of the story is tension between the new arrivals about how best to ally themselves with the locals – should they help the curious villagers they meet first, or seize the greater material opportunities presented by the newborn empire bearing down on same? I think Pangborn's answer might be born from the same optimism, sadly falsified by subsequent events, as his proposal that 21st century democracy would be well along the way to smoothing out capitalism's unpalatable wealth inequalities, but I still liked it, and don't recall seeing it expressed quite so neatly before: it's precisely the sort of people who trumpet their own supposed realism who are drunk on ideals, albeit ugly ones of strong leaders, while those they decry as naive idealists are the ones with the genuinely pragmatic goal of just letting people lead the most unbothered lives, like most people would prefer to.
Compounding both the power and the inaccessibility of the material is the style, which ranges from terse, oblique and Modernist to simply opaque, and occasionally orotund. It was Pangborn's first acknowledged novel, so little wonder if he wasn't fully developed yet; equally, at least some of the problem is down to poor typesetting choices, specifically that needlessly confusing one where the scene changes without a line break. But for all that, when it worked, it worked so well, and by the end I was quite moved to see this new world ten years in, a hybrid society trying to learn from millennia of earth's mistakes without reprising them, a less melancholy precursor to those Aldiss stories where human spacefarers are as changed as the new worlds they find by the encounter.
That said, while West Of The Sun is a first contact story set on a distant planet, there are definitely points in common. The lost ship means the human survivors are making do with limited resources from the world that was; fuel and ammunition only last so long, and then they must get by with what can be had through simpler methods. Oral transmission helps histories become legends; people with a theoretical grasp of warfare struggle when trapped in the unpalatable immediacy of the real thing. With that last in particular, I wondered if Pangborn's own service in the Pacific during WWII, only a decade or so before this was published, played a part. That sense of first-hand experience being one of the things that made me like this even though, in many respects, it's a poster child for how badly SF can age. The timeline that takes us from Pangborn's own 1950s to his book's 2056, most obviously; we're currently in the year where the discovery of 'charlesite' revolutionises space travel, but well behind schedule on Moon and Mars bases, and even running a little tardy on the second US civil war. One is tempted to wince at the vast, collectivist Asian Empire, but also to titter at its leader being called Jenga; there's even an inadvertent 'six, seven' to amuse the I suspect entirely hypothetical young reader. Generations of subsequent writers have built outwards from here to give us aliens who are more convincingly alien than these humanoids who learn decent English within a year, and less politically awkward than to so readily accept the Earthers as their leaders.
But at the same time, you can tell Pangborn is doing his best to think beyond the assumptions of his time. The existing society on the new planet is matriarchal; the newcomers contrast it with their own dynamic, which they call gender equality, but doesn't necessarily read that way in 2026. Whether that's deliberate, I don't know – but they do accept that, if a small, stranded and gender imbalanced group is to survive in the long term, they'd best accept polyandry. And the explorers' racial mix is both more progressive, and has much less made of it, than I'd expect in fifties or even sixties SF. A key driver of the story is tension between the new arrivals about how best to ally themselves with the locals – should they help the curious villagers they meet first, or seize the greater material opportunities presented by the newborn empire bearing down on same? I think Pangborn's answer might be born from the same optimism, sadly falsified by subsequent events, as his proposal that 21st century democracy would be well along the way to smoothing out capitalism's unpalatable wealth inequalities, but I still liked it, and don't recall seeing it expressed quite so neatly before: it's precisely the sort of people who trumpet their own supposed realism who are drunk on ideals, albeit ugly ones of strong leaders, while those they decry as naive idealists are the ones with the genuinely pragmatic goal of just letting people lead the most unbothered lives, like most people would prefer to.
Compounding both the power and the inaccessibility of the material is the style, which ranges from terse, oblique and Modernist to simply opaque, and occasionally orotund. It was Pangborn's first acknowledged novel, so little wonder if he wasn't fully developed yet; equally, at least some of the problem is down to poor typesetting choices, specifically that needlessly confusing one where the scene changes without a line break. But for all that, when it worked, it worked so well, and by the end I was quite moved to see this new world ten years in, a hybrid society trying to learn from millennia of earth's mistakes without reprising them, a less melancholy precursor to those Aldiss stories where human spacefarers are as changed as the new worlds they find by the encounter.
October 27, 2016
I read this book incessantly during high school, because it fell into my hands around the first time I saw Forbidden Planet and Star Trek, and both of those did more to shape my vision of the future than anything else. So when I found West of the Sun on Amazon recently--- who am I kidding, five decades later --- I ordered it, anticipating a happy return to those thrilling days of yesteryear.
Well, not quite. We are not forty years away from having a spaceship reach a habitable planet 12 light years distant, which is West of the Sun's premise, and the Earth is not divided between the Asians and the Federation (the not-Asians, although the Africans seem to have held out from joining as well). The historical guesswork that Pangborn employs has largely not come to pass, although he does get the Star Trek world of integrated ethnicity right. Unfortunately, the entire crew is American, but you can't hit every bullseye. Still . . . he misses computers completely. The entire world of literature the Terrans bring along is destroyed in the crash. Flash drive, anyone?
The party crash lands upon a world they christen "Lucifer", and the bulk of the novel concerns the "colonists" settlement and structuring of society with native species. In this, Pangborn seems never to question the morality of it all, much as the English, Spanish and French never considered whether they had a right to settle the New World. The Prime Directive, which despite being violated every episode was still one of the more fascinating Roddenberry creations, doesn't seem to have crossed Pangborn's mind.
Anyway, the book chugs along --- the writing is a lot clunkier than I remembered --- until the very end. At that point a second Earth ship comes down with a few new colonists, and the last quarter of the story is the political explanation of what it all means. This works about the same way that Ayn Rand's stuff does on me as literature --- I fall asleep. But Pangborn makes his points, and then West of the Sun ends.
I probably should have left it as a green memory, but to revisit Lucifer was too tempting. Still, it brought back enough good memories to make West of the Sun a worthwhile re-read.
Well, not quite. We are not forty years away from having a spaceship reach a habitable planet 12 light years distant, which is West of the Sun's premise, and the Earth is not divided between the Asians and the Federation (the not-Asians, although the Africans seem to have held out from joining as well). The historical guesswork that Pangborn employs has largely not come to pass, although he does get the Star Trek world of integrated ethnicity right. Unfortunately, the entire crew is American, but you can't hit every bullseye. Still . . . he misses computers completely. The entire world of literature the Terrans bring along is destroyed in the crash. Flash drive, anyone?
The party crash lands upon a world they christen "Lucifer", and the bulk of the novel concerns the "colonists" settlement and structuring of society with native species. In this, Pangborn seems never to question the morality of it all, much as the English, Spanish and French never considered whether they had a right to settle the New World. The Prime Directive, which despite being violated every episode was still one of the more fascinating Roddenberry creations, doesn't seem to have crossed Pangborn's mind.
Anyway, the book chugs along --- the writing is a lot clunkier than I remembered --- until the very end. At that point a second Earth ship comes down with a few new colonists, and the last quarter of the story is the political explanation of what it all means. This works about the same way that Ayn Rand's stuff does on me as literature --- I fall asleep. But Pangborn makes his points, and then West of the Sun ends.
I probably should have left it as a green memory, but to revisit Lucifer was too tempting. Still, it brought back enough good memories to make West of the Sun a worthwhile re-read.
May 17, 2014
This 1953 work is Pangborn's first, and let's not forget that it was also part of the early days of SF. Authors were still working on tropes and styles and unwritten rules, and shaking off the pulp era.
Already we see the excellent idea of saying very little about the spaceship, how it worked, or what happened on the voyage. Pangborn never did become a techie "hard SF" writer anyway. He wanted to get on with a story about people.
It's awfully convenient that the air's breathable and the aliens are good learners of language and not all that different from humans. It's also necessary, again so he can get on with the story.
The back cover blurb suggests something that doesn't actually become clear until near the end.
The characters are typical of the era: mostly noble but practical, quite formal and stilted of speech by our standards.
Pangborn's concern for humanity and goodness shines through here, as it does in his later books. He also shows that he can turn a pretty sentence from time to time, while usually just telling a clear story.
This is a worthwhile book to give a flavour of early SF by a good writer. I probably first read in on the 70s. It's still good.
Already we see the excellent idea of saying very little about the spaceship, how it worked, or what happened on the voyage. Pangborn never did become a techie "hard SF" writer anyway. He wanted to get on with a story about people.
It's awfully convenient that the air's breathable and the aliens are good learners of language and not all that different from humans. It's also necessary, again so he can get on with the story.
The back cover blurb suggests something that doesn't actually become clear until near the end.
The characters are typical of the era: mostly noble but practical, quite formal and stilted of speech by our standards.
Pangborn's concern for humanity and goodness shines through here, as it does in his later books. He also shows that he can turn a pretty sentence from time to time, while usually just telling a clear story.
This is a worthwhile book to give a flavour of early SF by a good writer. I probably first read in on the 70s. It's still good.
May 17, 2012
His first novel, written in 1953, was a fun read. His politics show through in Part III, as he paints an imagined history of the earth. However, the book is well worth the read to SF fans who want to capture the era of optimistic Space exploration.
The description of the humans stranded, and the two other races are well done, as is the character development. The only reason I give it a 3 versus a 4 was the politics of the third part.
The description of the humans stranded, and the two other races are well done, as is the character development. The only reason I give it a 3 versus a 4 was the politics of the third part.
July 19, 2009
Not Pangborn's best science fiction novel. Written in the early fifties, it is quite dated.
May 15, 2021
The first novel Pangborn has written. He knows how to write, unfortunately he has not a really exciting story to tell. Four men, two woman try to colonize a planet they call Lucifer. There are two native intelligent species on the planet. Sounds like something one could write about.
Well, I found myself skimming most of the second half. Seems like they managed to establish some kind of Utopia. At least that is what I got from a conversation at the end where we get some history lecture (why communism was wrong). “Man is neither good nor bad, but both. But he can swing the balance.” Yes, got it. And you need to always define your terms, he says. With respect: no, sir!
Well, I found myself skimming most of the second half. Seems like they managed to establish some kind of Utopia. At least that is what I got from a conversation at the end where we get some history lecture (why communism was wrong). “Man is neither good nor bad, but both. But he can swing the balance.” Yes, got it. And you need to always define your terms, he says. With respect: no, sir!
April 24, 2010
Deals with the first human settlement on another planet. Tells of the colonist's relations with the indigenous, intelligent fauna.
February 3, 2016
Good story but the writing got in the way - very stilted and unrealistic conversations of characters - very much old style writing.
September 24, 2020
Ah, the Fifties, when Real Men and Real Women would crash on alien planets, civilize the savage natives, teach them to speak English, and help in the fight against International Communism!
Actually, this book really wasn't all that bad, despite a clunky opening, a cop-out ending, and Edgar Pangborn's difficulty letting the reader know which character is speaking a third of the time. The story does assume that "civilizing savages" is an inherently good thing if done properly (which is why I almost quit a quarter of the way in) but the middle section of the novel is particularly strong, especially when the small nation of natives that the human settlers have made contact with come under attack from a much larger, warlike nation, and it seems as if the colonists' chances of survival will drop to zero. There is also an examination of how attempting to impose human beliefs and mores on another culture can go horribly wrong. However, that final conflict is short-circuited by a very conveniently timed deus ex machina, and in the end Pangborn veers into a pointless political screed that hasn't aged well at all, instead of finding a proper ending for his story.
Actually, this book really wasn't all that bad, despite a clunky opening, a cop-out ending, and Edgar Pangborn's difficulty letting the reader know which character is speaking a third of the time. The story does assume that "civilizing savages" is an inherently good thing if done properly (which is why I almost quit a quarter of the way in) but the middle section of the novel is particularly strong, especially when the small nation of natives that the human settlers have made contact with come under attack from a much larger, warlike nation, and it seems as if the colonists' chances of survival will drop to zero. There is also an examination of how attempting to impose human beliefs and mores on another culture can go horribly wrong. However, that final conflict is short-circuited by a very conveniently timed deus ex machina, and in the end Pangborn veers into a pointless political screed that hasn't aged well at all, instead of finding a proper ending for his story.
February 4, 2018
I do wish this is better written. There are some very interesting ideas. And some bits of almost poetic writing. But the 'science' is that of politics, with a little anthropology. And I found it difficult to read; I kept losing track of what was going on and also falling asleep.
For a discussion that will serve as a more thorough review, see: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
For a discussion that will serve as a more thorough review, see: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
June 30, 2019
Read this in 1962. It was a favorite of mine then as well as now! Excellent charact etc s, plenty of action within the framework of a very good plot. Classic Sci-fi at its best!
Did Not Finish
September 8, 2019Why I didn't finish this: I don't remember.
May 21, 2023
After 11 years of flight, the first explorers land on the planet. The landing craft has a defect and they are stranded. They will have to build a colony. There are 3 humanoid races.
The characters are in the center of the novel. They still don't interest me. It has a sentimental style. Little happens.
The lousy goodreads rating is a bit surprising but I also would say it's only 2.5/5. The humanism is a bit too naive in my opinion. Things aren't so nice in real life. I quit at p. 113 of 285
The characters are in the center of the novel. They still don't interest me. It has a sentimental style. Little happens.
The lousy goodreads rating is a bit surprising but I also would say it's only 2.5/5. The humanism is a bit too naive in my opinion. Things aren't so nice in real life. I quit at p. 113 of 285
June 28, 2016
Edgar Pangborn's first novel West Of The Sun, published in 1953 and this is not one of his best.
The story revolves around six individual who left earth and after eleven years their spaceship ARGON landed on a strange planet called LUCIFER. Where they must survive and cope with not only each other but also with the planet's two native sentient species- huge, carnivorous birds with wolverine heads and flashing black teeth; furred, ten-foot-tall men; and red-skinned, man-eating pygmies. They fought for mere survival. But their duty was to colonize and populate the planet . . . with four men and only two women! With limited supplies, and a war in the making, these adventurers embark on one of the most enthralling expeditions of survival in science fiction . . . somewhere West of the Sun. Also there were lots of hope and excitement. Against each threat, there are also great beauty await them: blue fireflies, red-green forests, vast mountains and deep seas. over a period of time six travelers actually built a successful, and a model, civilization that treated all individuals with respect and dignity.
After a many year, another rescue ship arrives, they decide to remain to continue developing their prosperous society. This reissue is from Old Earth Books, with an intention to follow-up with all of Pangborn's titles in uniform editions. It is extremely encouraging that there is renewed interest in this excellent but sadly neglected writer.
All main characters are equally important in this story and has their own contribution. Especially Paul, who efficaciously commanded the resistance to an invasion by a large (many thousands) tribe of skilled war-like pygmies. He did this without resorting to unnecessary savagery against the pygmies. Most Science Fiction fans will admire this book. It will help to develop an infuriating thought to look at how humans may someday need to deal with other sentient beings.
The story revolves around six individual who left earth and after eleven years their spaceship ARGON landed on a strange planet called LUCIFER. Where they must survive and cope with not only each other but also with the planet's two native sentient species- huge, carnivorous birds with wolverine heads and flashing black teeth; furred, ten-foot-tall men; and red-skinned, man-eating pygmies. They fought for mere survival. But their duty was to colonize and populate the planet . . . with four men and only two women! With limited supplies, and a war in the making, these adventurers embark on one of the most enthralling expeditions of survival in science fiction . . . somewhere West of the Sun. Also there were lots of hope and excitement. Against each threat, there are also great beauty await them: blue fireflies, red-green forests, vast mountains and deep seas. over a period of time six travelers actually built a successful, and a model, civilization that treated all individuals with respect and dignity.
After a many year, another rescue ship arrives, they decide to remain to continue developing their prosperous society. This reissue is from Old Earth Books, with an intention to follow-up with all of Pangborn's titles in uniform editions. It is extremely encouraging that there is renewed interest in this excellent but sadly neglected writer.
All main characters are equally important in this story and has their own contribution. Especially Paul, who efficaciously commanded the resistance to an invasion by a large (many thousands) tribe of skilled war-like pygmies. He did this without resorting to unnecessary savagery against the pygmies. Most Science Fiction fans will admire this book. It will help to develop an infuriating thought to look at how humans may someday need to deal with other sentient beings.
August 17, 2016
There was some very fine writing in this novel at times, yet on the whole it seemed to be disjointed. In actuality it is made up of what amounts to three novellas. The first interstellar exploration team of four men and two women. That is how many survived the trip, there was a Captain that apparently died on take-off from Earth.
The survivors learn that there are many species that have the potential to harm and or kill them. They soon befriend one of the hairy giants and then meet a village of pygmies. The first part of the novel deals with the landing and the acclimation of the crew to their new world. They are here for good as their rocket crashed. It is the second part which is a year later and the last part ten years later where the confusion comes in. The author has names for many people and the creatures of the planet. It tends to be confusing, because there is so many names.
On the whole it was a decent story, once you get past the confusing names and the story jumps. I give it a solid three and that is for the writing.
The survivors learn that there are many species that have the potential to harm and or kill them. They soon befriend one of the hairy giants and then meet a village of pygmies. The first part of the novel deals with the landing and the acclimation of the crew to their new world. They are here for good as their rocket crashed. It is the second part which is a year later and the last part ten years later where the confusion comes in. The author has names for many people and the creatures of the planet. It tends to be confusing, because there is so many names.
On the whole it was a decent story, once you get past the confusing names and the story jumps. I give it a solid three and that is for the writing.
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