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Burl #1-3
The Forgotten Planet
The story of an experiment gone wrong--a planet seeded with primitive bacterial, plant, and insect life forms, then forgotten until a spaceship crash-lands, stranding its crew. The crew must fight to survive in a savage nightmare world. From the Hugo Award-winning author, Murray Leinster.
209 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
17 people are currently reading
379 people want to read
About the author
Murray Leinster
898 books121 followerssee also:
Will F. Jenkins
William Fitzgerald Jenkins
Murray Leinster was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
An author whose career spanned the first six decades of the 20th Century. From mystery and adventure stories in the earliest years to science fiction in his later years, he worked steadily and at a highly professional level of craftsmanship longer than most writers of his generation. He won a Hugo Award in 1956 for his novelet “Exploration Team,” and in 1995 the Sidewise Award for Alternate History took its name from his classic story, “Sidewise in Time.” His last original work appeared in 1967.
Will F. Jenkins
William Fitzgerald Jenkins
Murray Leinster was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
An author whose career spanned the first six decades of the 20th Century. From mystery and adventure stories in the earliest years to science fiction in his later years, he worked steadily and at a highly professional level of craftsmanship longer than most writers of his generation. He won a Hugo Award in 1956 for his novelet “Exploration Team,” and in 1995 the Sidewise Award for Alternate History took its name from his classic story, “Sidewise in Time.” His last original work appeared in 1967.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
April 17, 2021
Really a good book. I was a little skeptical at first, because a science fiction book from a hundred years ago I thought it would be a bit trivial. But the idea behind the book is very beautiful. In practice, Humanity, in search of extra-terrestrial planets to inhabit, sends dozens of spaceships into the universe that "sow" slowly, with visits repeated centuries later, life as we know it on earth. So first the microbes, then the plants, then more and more complex organisms, to the point of repeating, over the centuries, a sort of forced evolution. However, it happens that due to a mistake, one of these planets is "forgotten" after a few sowings and therefore the cycle does not proceed as planned, but proceeds as nature wants. And then in the book we find a small group of humans who have to struggle to survive in a world populated by huge insects, which have evolved very differently than on earth, so that a spider can be three meters large, a millipede can be 10 meters long, a butterfly can have two meters of wings and an ant can be one meter long. In this fantastic world (in some pages it reminded me Journey to the Center of the Earth by J. Verne) we witness the events of Burl, the leader of this small group of humans and we will live with him their adventures until the end, when, by chance, one of the spaceships around the universe to sow, will land on their planet and will realize that it had been forgotten: the planet will therefore become a new and adventurous world for Humanity that in the meantime had evolved differently, and so we will witness the nice ending. Really a very enjoyable book to read.
January 21, 2023
A metaphor for humanity's rise from savagery!
Earth was now a crowded planet and science had advanced to the point where terraforming remote barren planets for the future expansion of humanity was a possibility.
"The seed ship Orana landed on this planet - which still had no name. It carefully infected it. It circled endlessly above the clouds, dribbling out a fine dust - the spores of every conceivable micro-organism which could break down rock to powder and turn that dust to soil. It was also a seeding of moulds and fungi and lichens and everything which could turn powdery primitive soil into stuff on which higher forms of life could grow. The Orana polluted the seas with plankton. Then it, too, went away."
Leinster's skill as a writer combined with his background as a scientist - an entomologist to be precise - makes for a powerful prologue that will enthrall any lover of classic science fiction.
Subsequent passes in the millennia long terraforming process brought fish, plant life and insects to this rapidly evolving but still primitive nameless planet. But, at that point, computers being what computers are and galactic government administration, like every government before it always having been prone to error, the data on this planet was lost and no further seeding trips were completed - no birds, no mammals, no reptiles and certainly no humans. The insects, the plants and the fish were left to evolve in splendid isolation until, centuries later, a lost and crippled space-liner crashes and maroons a group of humans on the planet which is now as foreign to our human experience as one could possibly imagine - a cloud covered humid swampy environment with predatory spiders and dragonflies that had grown to enormous proportions!
Over the course of many, many generations, the humanity that emerged from a wrecked spaceship slowly devolves to a primitive savagery that must have resembled the earliest stages of human development - no art, no music, no religion, no superstition, no culture, no leisure, nothing but fear and the most basic instincts for eating, reproducing and surviving. It is up to Burl, the metaphorical innovator who stumbles onto the concepts of leadership, hunting, planning, weaponry and teamwork to begin the process of resurrecting his tribe from the depths of savagery to something resembling a modern civilization.
The science is superb (we can overlook the melodrama of the impossibly over-sized insects as being appropriate to the fiction of the day!). The writing is magnificent and the descriptive passages are compelling, mesmerizing, mellifluous and ... well, utterly descriptive ... you'll have no trouble picturing what Leinster is talking about, to be sure! But, frankly, as short as it is, THE FORGOTTEN PLANET suffers from being over-long. A fix-up from three short stories, THE FORGOTTEN PLANET would be better presented as a novella at half its actual length. The central development phase of the novel lapses into needless repetition and bogs down into something that many readers will be tempted to set aside.
Persevere! The novel is only 200 pages long and will pass quickly enough! There's lots of meat for discussion and food for thought in an ending that, in my opinion, was worth the struggle through the slower middle sections. For some readers, the deus ex machina flavour of the ending will strike a raw nerve and irritate. For this reader, I felt it was the only ending possible. (At this point, I tread the very fine line of not wanting to put any spoilers into the review) For me the value of the ending was in realizing what Leinster was portraying as 1950s civilization and how utterly at odds the ecological sensibilities of that day were with today's feelings. Frankly, I was absolutely horrified by the ending ... not in terms of its literary values but in terms of the social values that Leinster was conveying in the writing!
Does that sound cryptic? Good! Then I haven't given anything away. Read it for yourself and you be the judge. You won't be sorry.
Recommended.
Paul Weiss
Earth was now a crowded planet and science had advanced to the point where terraforming remote barren planets for the future expansion of humanity was a possibility.
"The seed ship Orana landed on this planet - which still had no name. It carefully infected it. It circled endlessly above the clouds, dribbling out a fine dust - the spores of every conceivable micro-organism which could break down rock to powder and turn that dust to soil. It was also a seeding of moulds and fungi and lichens and everything which could turn powdery primitive soil into stuff on which higher forms of life could grow. The Orana polluted the seas with plankton. Then it, too, went away."
Leinster's skill as a writer combined with his background as a scientist - an entomologist to be precise - makes for a powerful prologue that will enthrall any lover of classic science fiction.
Subsequent passes in the millennia long terraforming process brought fish, plant life and insects to this rapidly evolving but still primitive nameless planet. But, at that point, computers being what computers are and galactic government administration, like every government before it always having been prone to error, the data on this planet was lost and no further seeding trips were completed - no birds, no mammals, no reptiles and certainly no humans. The insects, the plants and the fish were left to evolve in splendid isolation until, centuries later, a lost and crippled space-liner crashes and maroons a group of humans on the planet which is now as foreign to our human experience as one could possibly imagine - a cloud covered humid swampy environment with predatory spiders and dragonflies that had grown to enormous proportions!
Over the course of many, many generations, the humanity that emerged from a wrecked spaceship slowly devolves to a primitive savagery that must have resembled the earliest stages of human development - no art, no music, no religion, no superstition, no culture, no leisure, nothing but fear and the most basic instincts for eating, reproducing and surviving. It is up to Burl, the metaphorical innovator who stumbles onto the concepts of leadership, hunting, planning, weaponry and teamwork to begin the process of resurrecting his tribe from the depths of savagery to something resembling a modern civilization.
The science is superb (we can overlook the melodrama of the impossibly over-sized insects as being appropriate to the fiction of the day!). The writing is magnificent and the descriptive passages are compelling, mesmerizing, mellifluous and ... well, utterly descriptive ... you'll have no trouble picturing what Leinster is talking about, to be sure! But, frankly, as short as it is, THE FORGOTTEN PLANET suffers from being over-long. A fix-up from three short stories, THE FORGOTTEN PLANET would be better presented as a novella at half its actual length. The central development phase of the novel lapses into needless repetition and bogs down into something that many readers will be tempted to set aside.
Persevere! The novel is only 200 pages long and will pass quickly enough! There's lots of meat for discussion and food for thought in an ending that, in my opinion, was worth the struggle through the slower middle sections. For some readers, the deus ex machina flavour of the ending will strike a raw nerve and irritate. For this reader, I felt it was the only ending possible. (At this point, I tread the very fine line of not wanting to put any spoilers into the review) For me the value of the ending was in realizing what Leinster was portraying as 1950s civilization and how utterly at odds the ecological sensibilities of that day were with today's feelings. Frankly, I was absolutely horrified by the ending ... not in terms of its literary values but in terms of the social values that Leinster was conveying in the writing!
Does that sound cryptic? Good! Then I haven't given anything away. Read it for yourself and you be the judge. You won't be sorry.
Recommended.
Paul Weiss
February 25, 2025
The Forgotten Planet is a fix-up novel comprised of three novellas from pulp magazines, Mad Planet from the 6/12/20 issue of Argosy, The Red Dust from the 4/2/21 issue of Argosy, and Nightmare Planet from the 6/53 issue of Hugo Gernsback's Science Fiction Plus. (Gernsback reprinted the first two stories in Amazing Stories in 1926 and '27. Gnome Press published the novel version in 1954.) Many readers feel that it's one of Leinster's best science fiction works, but I thought it was just okay. The last story recasts the tale into a sort of space-opera/lost colony story, but the first two seem to be a cave-men-fighting giant bugs narrative. Lots and lots of giant bug fighting, which is cool to an extent, but it gets tedious. I believe the original idea was that it was a future Earth, ravaged by climate change, which I thought made it a more interesting story. It seems a little repetitive in spots, but it's an all-right fast read.
April 9, 2019
VALUTAZIONE PERSONALE: 3,8
Qui ci troviamo di fronte ad uno dei più interessanti lavori del periodo della Golden Age della Sci-fi, e ,ad avviso di molti, all'opera più riuscita di Murray Leinster: non sono in grado di confermare o meno, avendo letto dell'autore, oltre al qui presente, soltanto qualche raccontino in diverse antologie.
Come la maggior parte della produzione di quegli anni, non si può negare che questo romanzo (per meglio dire, racconto lungo!) non risenta fortemente del tempo trascorso, essendo costellato di ingenuità tali da far sorridere il lettore contemporaneo ( non dimentichiamoci che questo romanzo è stato pubblicato nel 1954 per la prima volta da un signore nato a fine '800): la migliore è senza dubbio il fatto che, in un futuro dove oramai la razza umana copre normalmente distanze di anni luce da capogiro, ci si serva ancora di schede perforate per l'immagazzinamento dei dati!
Ma ,perdonando questo ed altro, Il Pianeta Dimenticato è un'opera affascinante, ingenuamente epica e coinvolgente, nonché molto divertente da leggere, proponendo una versione "contemporanea" e fantascientifica dell'ascesa dell'Homo sapiens come specie dominante del pianeta, in un habitat da incubo dove da preda si trasforma, gradualmente, in cacciatore (anche grazie ad un epilogo un po' affrettato, paraculo e buttato lì) riscattando le generazioni di uomini che, abbandonati al loro destino, vivevano nel terrore e nella certezza di cadere ,prima o poi ,vittime degli insetti giganti.
Tutto questo soprattutto grazie al protagonista, Burl, che sembra essere l'unico tra i suoi simili a pensare a qualcosa di diverso dal procacciare il cibo e sopravvivere, rappresentando il catalizzatore e il motore propulsore che innalzerà la sua tribù e l'intera razza umana del pianeta dimenticato dal fango nel quale abitualmente viveva.
Insomma, se la Sci-fi ingenua e un po' datata vi fa scendere la lacrimuccia, o se più semplicemente avete voglia di leggere qualcosa di semplice, divertente e coinvolgente, non posso che consigliarvi Il Pianeta Dimenticato.
Qui ci troviamo di fronte ad uno dei più interessanti lavori del periodo della Golden Age della Sci-fi, e ,ad avviso di molti, all'opera più riuscita di Murray Leinster: non sono in grado di confermare o meno, avendo letto dell'autore, oltre al qui presente, soltanto qualche raccontino in diverse antologie.
Come la maggior parte della produzione di quegli anni, non si può negare che questo romanzo (per meglio dire, racconto lungo!) non risenta fortemente del tempo trascorso, essendo costellato di ingenuità tali da far sorridere il lettore contemporaneo ( non dimentichiamoci che questo romanzo è stato pubblicato nel 1954 per la prima volta da un signore nato a fine '800): la migliore è senza dubbio il fatto che, in un futuro dove oramai la razza umana copre normalmente distanze di anni luce da capogiro, ci si serva ancora di schede perforate per l'immagazzinamento dei dati!
Ma ,perdonando questo ed altro, Il Pianeta Dimenticato è un'opera affascinante, ingenuamente epica e coinvolgente, nonché molto divertente da leggere, proponendo una versione "contemporanea" e fantascientifica dell'ascesa dell'Homo sapiens come specie dominante del pianeta, in un habitat da incubo dove da preda si trasforma, gradualmente, in cacciatore (anche grazie ad un epilogo un po' affrettato, paraculo e buttato lì) riscattando le generazioni di uomini che, abbandonati al loro destino, vivevano nel terrore e nella certezza di cadere ,prima o poi ,vittime degli insetti giganti.
Tutto questo soprattutto grazie al protagonista, Burl, che sembra essere l'unico tra i suoi simili a pensare a qualcosa di diverso dal procacciare il cibo e sopravvivere, rappresentando il catalizzatore e il motore propulsore che innalzerà la sua tribù e l'intera razza umana del pianeta dimenticato dal fango nel quale abitualmente viveva.
Insomma, se la Sci-fi ingenua e un po' datata vi fa scendere la lacrimuccia, o se più semplicemente avete voglia di leggere qualcosa di semplice, divertente e coinvolgente, non posso che consigliarvi Il Pianeta Dimenticato.
April 7, 2015
There is a wonderful old term used to describe a feature of Golden Age science fiction novels: BEM, an acronym for "bug-eyed monsters." Back in the 1930s and '40s, you see, the covers of many sci-fi pulp magazines featured illustrations of bulbous-orbed, invariably menacing aliens and other creatures; just do a Google Image search for the "Thrilling Wonder Stories" periodical and you'll see what I mean! But anyone wanting to actually READ a book with more BEMs than any 10 other sci-fi books of the era combined would be well advised to pick up Murray Leinster's "The Forgotten Planet." This Golden Age classic not only features bug-eyed monsters, but also monsters--and scads of them--that just happen to be giant bugs! Leinster (1896 – 1975), who was born William Fitzgerald Jenkins in Norfolk, Virginia, would go on to write some 40 sci-fi novels and 10 books of short stories, copping a Hugo Award for his novelette "Exploration Team" in 1956. Along with "Sidewise in Time" (1950) and "Colonial Survey" (1956), however, he is perhaps best known for this tale of hypertrophied insects run amok. The contents of the book originally appeared as three separate stories: "The Mad Planet" (in the 6/20 issue of "Argosy All-Story," the publication that also ran many Tarzan and John Carter outings by Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as works by Abraham Merritt), "The Red Dust" (in the 4/21 "Argosy") and "Nightmare Planet" (in the 6/53 issue of "Science Fiction Plus"); Leinster cobbled the three into a "fix-up novel" that initially appeared as a Gnome Press hardcover in 1954.
In "The Forgotten Planet," the reader is introduced to the titular world, one which is never vouchsafed a name by the author. A sterile, barren hunk of rock, the world had been seeded by Earth ships with bacteria to break down the minerals into soil. Almost 1,000 years later, another ship had seeded the world with all sorts of plant and insect life, after which a "card file was upset" and the recorded details of the planet were lost. Hence, the nameless world was completely forgotten (more on this in a moment), and when the spaceliner Icarus crash-landed there many years later, with several thousand passengers, there was no hope of rescue. Some 40 generations later still, in the lowlands of the forgotten planet, the descendants of the Icarus passengers live in a state of reverted barbarism, subsisting on the ubiquitous giant fungi and cowering from the teeming swarms of gigantic insects (more on this in a moment, too) that rampage everywhere. We meet Burl, a 20-year-old, and the other members of his small tribe, who exist in their primitive state with no knowledge of fire or even basic tools. Burl's lot is completely changed one day, however, when he is accidentally swept 40 miles down the local river, floating atop a large piece of fungus. In the book's first section, Burl makes his way back to his tribe alone, learning to think and use tools and weapons (the broken legs of dead beetles make for handy spears!) while fighting off monster spiders and fleeing from a marauding swarm of giant army ants. In the book's middle section, Burl must lead his tribe to a new location, to escape the advent of the red puffball fungi, whose spore dust causes instant death. Finally, in the concluding segment, Burl decides to lead his tribe of 20 out of the swamplike lowlands completely, and up to the mountainous heights, where the course of life on the forgotten planet will be changed forever....
Leinster's novel asks the reader to swallow two very implausible propositions as it proceeds. First, the matter of a lost punch card that results in the planet being forgotten for centuries. Putting aside the matter of Leinster's seeming belief that we will be using punch cards rather than computers to store information hundreds of years in the future, I could accept this plot point; after all, there ARE billions of worlds in this galaxy alone, so perhaps forgetting about one of them is not too implausible after all (and I suppose it IS possible that those punch cards are meant to be used with computers). The matter of the giant insects is something else again, and I'm not sure that a mere hothouse environment would account for the 40-foot-wide butterflies, monstrous spiders, 40-foot-long millipedes and other terrors that the author casually dishes out. And then there is this question: If you were seeding a barren world from scratch, why in heaven's name would you want to introduce leeches, mosquitoes, army ants and other such nastiness? Why import poisonous Amanita mushrooms? Anyway, if one can overlook these factors, what is left is one helluva thrilling book, written in the old-fashioned tradition.
And yes, "The Forgotten Planet" IS quite generous in the action department, with any number of exciting sequences. My favorite: Burl, while using his new spear to fight a giant tarantula, falls, along with the monster, into the web of another spider! Talk about your double trouble! In other wonderful segments, Burl shows his tribe how to use weapons in combat (Burl's initial realization of how an animal fragment might be used to kill may resonate with readers who recall the "Dawn of Man" segment in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"); Burl leads his people across a plain filled with thousands of the lethal red puffballs; and the tribe climbs through the planet's perpetual cloud cover, only to see the sun and the stars for the first time. That elusive "sense of wonder," so valued by Golden Age sci-fi, is brought about wonderfully well by Leinster in this final segment. And dog lovers (I know you're out there!) should just eat up the scene in which humans and canines encounter one another for the first time after a 1,000-year separation. Marvelous stuff, truly!
Leinster, it should be said, is often a very effective writer, although some of his descriptions can be a tad vague; for example, when Burl crawls into a "three-foot tunnel," is that three feet high, three feet wide, three feet deep or what? He makes up his own words on occasion, such as "atavar" and "ensmalled" (not that there's anything wrong with that!), is guilty of some ungrammatical turns of phrase ("a busy world which teemed with life" instead of "THAT teemed"), and sometimes contradicts himself (in chapter 1, for instance, the white puffball spores are said to be "deadly poison"; in chapter 6, the author tells us that they are "harmless"). And in the Author's Note, in his listing of entomology books that the curious reader might consider seeking out, he mentions "Edge of the Jungle" by Ralph Beebe; that should be William Beebe. But these are minor matters. As I said up top, readers who are desirous of some exciting man vs. giant bug action could do a lot worse than "The Forgotten Planet," which gives the reader more BEMs than 1950s giant-bug flicks such as "Them!," "Tarantula," "Beginning of the End," "Monster From Green Hell" and "The Black Scorpion" combined! And on a curious note, the sentence "That clicking roar continued, but in Burl's ears it was almost drowned out by the noise made by the halo of flies accompanying him." Could THIS possibly be the source of the famous Alice Cooper song title "Halo of Flies"?!?! If so, I think I’m bugging!
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website, a most excellent destination for all fans of Golden Age sci-fi: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ )
In "The Forgotten Planet," the reader is introduced to the titular world, one which is never vouchsafed a name by the author. A sterile, barren hunk of rock, the world had been seeded by Earth ships with bacteria to break down the minerals into soil. Almost 1,000 years later, another ship had seeded the world with all sorts of plant and insect life, after which a "card file was upset" and the recorded details of the planet were lost. Hence, the nameless world was completely forgotten (more on this in a moment), and when the spaceliner Icarus crash-landed there many years later, with several thousand passengers, there was no hope of rescue. Some 40 generations later still, in the lowlands of the forgotten planet, the descendants of the Icarus passengers live in a state of reverted barbarism, subsisting on the ubiquitous giant fungi and cowering from the teeming swarms of gigantic insects (more on this in a moment, too) that rampage everywhere. We meet Burl, a 20-year-old, and the other members of his small tribe, who exist in their primitive state with no knowledge of fire or even basic tools. Burl's lot is completely changed one day, however, when he is accidentally swept 40 miles down the local river, floating atop a large piece of fungus. In the book's first section, Burl makes his way back to his tribe alone, learning to think and use tools and weapons (the broken legs of dead beetles make for handy spears!) while fighting off monster spiders and fleeing from a marauding swarm of giant army ants. In the book's middle section, Burl must lead his tribe to a new location, to escape the advent of the red puffball fungi, whose spore dust causes instant death. Finally, in the concluding segment, Burl decides to lead his tribe of 20 out of the swamplike lowlands completely, and up to the mountainous heights, where the course of life on the forgotten planet will be changed forever....
Leinster's novel asks the reader to swallow two very implausible propositions as it proceeds. First, the matter of a lost punch card that results in the planet being forgotten for centuries. Putting aside the matter of Leinster's seeming belief that we will be using punch cards rather than computers to store information hundreds of years in the future, I could accept this plot point; after all, there ARE billions of worlds in this galaxy alone, so perhaps forgetting about one of them is not too implausible after all (and I suppose it IS possible that those punch cards are meant to be used with computers). The matter of the giant insects is something else again, and I'm not sure that a mere hothouse environment would account for the 40-foot-wide butterflies, monstrous spiders, 40-foot-long millipedes and other terrors that the author casually dishes out. And then there is this question: If you were seeding a barren world from scratch, why in heaven's name would you want to introduce leeches, mosquitoes, army ants and other such nastiness? Why import poisonous Amanita mushrooms? Anyway, if one can overlook these factors, what is left is one helluva thrilling book, written in the old-fashioned tradition.
And yes, "The Forgotten Planet" IS quite generous in the action department, with any number of exciting sequences. My favorite: Burl, while using his new spear to fight a giant tarantula, falls, along with the monster, into the web of another spider! Talk about your double trouble! In other wonderful segments, Burl shows his tribe how to use weapons in combat (Burl's initial realization of how an animal fragment might be used to kill may resonate with readers who recall the "Dawn of Man" segment in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"); Burl leads his people across a plain filled with thousands of the lethal red puffballs; and the tribe climbs through the planet's perpetual cloud cover, only to see the sun and the stars for the first time. That elusive "sense of wonder," so valued by Golden Age sci-fi, is brought about wonderfully well by Leinster in this final segment. And dog lovers (I know you're out there!) should just eat up the scene in which humans and canines encounter one another for the first time after a 1,000-year separation. Marvelous stuff, truly!
Leinster, it should be said, is often a very effective writer, although some of his descriptions can be a tad vague; for example, when Burl crawls into a "three-foot tunnel," is that three feet high, three feet wide, three feet deep or what? He makes up his own words on occasion, such as "atavar" and "ensmalled" (not that there's anything wrong with that!), is guilty of some ungrammatical turns of phrase ("a busy world which teemed with life" instead of "THAT teemed"), and sometimes contradicts himself (in chapter 1, for instance, the white puffball spores are said to be "deadly poison"; in chapter 6, the author tells us that they are "harmless"). And in the Author's Note, in his listing of entomology books that the curious reader might consider seeking out, he mentions "Edge of the Jungle" by Ralph Beebe; that should be William Beebe. But these are minor matters. As I said up top, readers who are desirous of some exciting man vs. giant bug action could do a lot worse than "The Forgotten Planet," which gives the reader more BEMs than 1950s giant-bug flicks such as "Them!," "Tarantula," "Beginning of the End," "Monster From Green Hell" and "The Black Scorpion" combined! And on a curious note, the sentence "That clicking roar continued, but in Burl's ears it was almost drowned out by the noise made by the halo of flies accompanying him." Could THIS possibly be the source of the famous Alice Cooper song title "Halo of Flies"?!?! If so, I think I’m bugging!
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website, a most excellent destination for all fans of Golden Age sci-fi: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ )
May 1, 2024
Cool concept, lots of gross bug fights. The dogs were the best characters in the book. The end was a bit clunky but fairly enjoyable.
March 31, 2023
This is a strange mashup of three different stories. In the first two thirds the writing was stilted. Sort of like reading the Bible. ‘There was light. And it was good.’ kind of stuff. The cavemen-like humans on this unnamed planet learn to communicate with each other, fight against the giant creatures who roam there, and then hunt them for food. The third part quickly has the humans form a government and start trading with humans from other planets. The story then ends very abruptly.
I can’t say I enjoyed the reading. It was just an experience.
I can’t say I enjoyed the reading. It was just an experience.
April 25, 2021
ENGLISH: A delightful book. While human beings are spreading throughout the galaxy, they find a sterile planet, decide to colonize and seed it with terrestrial life forms (bacteria, fungi, plants and invertebrates). But somewhere around the process, the planet information is mislaid and the planet is forgotten. The ecology is thus left to evolve by itself. When a human ship gets shipwrecked in the area, they save themselves in the planet, which they find infested by giant insects and spiders, the results of evolution. Attacked everywhere by the monsters, the human fall into the lowest grade of savagery. Forty generations later, the plot of the novel starts.
The book contains a perfect description of the monster ecology, with such a richness of detail that the novel sometimes looks like a book by Fabre about the habits of insects. The slow uprising of the savages to a more human level looks like a treatise on anthropology in the form of an adventure novel. I have enjoyed the book a lot.
There are, of course, a few scientific problems:
1. The information about the planet is mislaid because the punched card containing it was lost!!!
2. Evolution is never so fast as it appears to be in the forgotten planet. In a few thousand years all kind of monsters appear, in all the three kingdoms: fungi, plants and animals.
3. Insects with a chitinous external skeleton cannot grow to monster size. If they could, they would have done that here, on the Earth, where they preceded vertebrates by millions of years.
But all these criticisms are secondary to my enjoyment of the book.
This book can also be found in the omnibus volume Planets of adventure, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4..., published by Baen Books.
ESPAÑOL: Un libro delicioso. Mientras los seres humanos se extienden por la galaxia, encuentran un planeta estéril, deciden colonizarlo y sembrarlo con formas de vida terrestres (bacterias, hongos, plantas e invertebrados). Pero en algún punto del proceso, la información sobre el planeta se extravía y el planeta es olvidado. El resultado es que su ecología evolucione por su cuenta. Cuando una nave humana se estropea en esa zona, se salvan en el planeta, que encuentran infestado de insectos y arañas gigantes, como resultado de la evolución. Atacados por los monstruos, los humanos caen en el abismo del salvajismo. Cuarenta generaciones después, comienza la trama de la novela.
El libro contiene una descripción perfecta de la ecología de los monstruos, con tal riqueza de detalles que la novela parece a veces un libro de Fabre sobre las costumbres de los insectos. El lento ascenso de los salvajes hasta un nivel más humano parece un tratado de antropología en forma de novela de aventuras. He disfrutado mucho con este libro.
Por supuesto, existen algunos problemas científicos:
1. La información sobre el planeta se extravía porque se perdió la tarjeta perforada que la contenía (!!!)
2. La evolución nunca es tan rápida como parece serlo en el planeta olvidado. En unos miles de años aparece todo tipo de monstruos en los tres reinos: hongos, plantas y animales.
3. Los insectos con esqueleto externo quitinoso no pueden alcanzar tamaños monstruosos. Si pudieran, lo habrían hecho aquí, en la Tierra, donde precedieron en millones de años a los vertebrados.
Pero todas estas críticas son secundarias respecto a mi disfrute del libro.
The book contains a perfect description of the monster ecology, with such a richness of detail that the novel sometimes looks like a book by Fabre about the habits of insects. The slow uprising of the savages to a more human level looks like a treatise on anthropology in the form of an adventure novel. I have enjoyed the book a lot.
There are, of course, a few scientific problems:
1. The information about the planet is mislaid because the punched card containing it was lost!!!
2. Evolution is never so fast as it appears to be in the forgotten planet. In a few thousand years all kind of monsters appear, in all the three kingdoms: fungi, plants and animals.
3. Insects with a chitinous external skeleton cannot grow to monster size. If they could, they would have done that here, on the Earth, where they preceded vertebrates by millions of years.
But all these criticisms are secondary to my enjoyment of the book.
This book can also be found in the omnibus volume Planets of adventure, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4..., published by Baen Books.
ESPAÑOL: Un libro delicioso. Mientras los seres humanos se extienden por la galaxia, encuentran un planeta estéril, deciden colonizarlo y sembrarlo con formas de vida terrestres (bacterias, hongos, plantas e invertebrados). Pero en algún punto del proceso, la información sobre el planeta se extravía y el planeta es olvidado. El resultado es que su ecología evolucione por su cuenta. Cuando una nave humana se estropea en esa zona, se salvan en el planeta, que encuentran infestado de insectos y arañas gigantes, como resultado de la evolución. Atacados por los monstruos, los humanos caen en el abismo del salvajismo. Cuarenta generaciones después, comienza la trama de la novela.
El libro contiene una descripción perfecta de la ecología de los monstruos, con tal riqueza de detalles que la novela parece a veces un libro de Fabre sobre las costumbres de los insectos. El lento ascenso de los salvajes hasta un nivel más humano parece un tratado de antropología en forma de novela de aventuras. He disfrutado mucho con este libro.
Por supuesto, existen algunos problemas científicos:
1. La información sobre el planeta se extravía porque se perdió la tarjeta perforada que la contenía (!!!)
2. La evolución nunca es tan rápida como parece serlo en el planeta olvidado. En unos miles de años aparece todo tipo de monstruos en los tres reinos: hongos, plantas y animales.
3. Los insectos con esqueleto externo quitinoso no pueden alcanzar tamaños monstruosos. Si pudieran, lo habrían hecho aquí, en la Tierra, donde precedieron en millones de años a los vertebrados.
Pero todas estas críticas son secundarias respecto a mi disfrute del libro.
October 11, 2022
Murray Leinster’s The Forgotten Planet is as perfect an example of classic science fiction as one could hope to find. It’s a 1950s’ ”fix-up” novel of a few stories from the 1920s. In that sense, it is almost a century old.
On the surface it qualifies as pure adventure, and thankfully without the clunky sophomoric (as if teen-imagined) view of romance that used to dominate pulp sf. (You know: pulchritudinous blonde daughter of a bespectacled scientist thrown together with a teen athlete boy or a nerd.) But it is rigorously worked out from a simple premise, and is as “hard science” as this sort of thing can be.
It is, in fact, the best example of a fix-up that I can think of, for it is seamless in its construction. Well, not exactly, I guess: the prologue and epilogue are the most obvious fix-up parts, a tad more elegantly written than the crisply narrated body of the text. But that’s apt, too.
It really is impressive.
And it is an apparent inspiration for Brian Aldiss’s masterwork, Hothouse. Like it, we have non-civilized human being in the future in constant battle for survival on an alien planet. In this case, though, it’s not Earth. The planet is not named. After multiple seedings of life, the barren planet was forgotten by human interstellar civilization, and then a ship crashed on it, and the survivors had to fend for themselves, losing their culture in the process. The story features one young man who begins to develop an ability to think, and to dare to try new ways to survive. Against giant spiders and insects, mainly.
A very few typos in this edition. I have another, early Ace edition of this book, but cannot find it. When I find it I’ll sell one of them. Or both? I hate to get rid of books I may need to refer to again.
On the surface it qualifies as pure adventure, and thankfully without the clunky sophomoric (as if teen-imagined) view of romance that used to dominate pulp sf. (You know: pulchritudinous blonde daughter of a bespectacled scientist thrown together with a teen athlete boy or a nerd.) But it is rigorously worked out from a simple premise, and is as “hard science” as this sort of thing can be.
It is, in fact, the best example of a fix-up that I can think of, for it is seamless in its construction. Well, not exactly, I guess: the prologue and epilogue are the most obvious fix-up parts, a tad more elegantly written than the crisply narrated body of the text. But that’s apt, too.
It really is impressive.
And it is an apparent inspiration for Brian Aldiss’s masterwork, Hothouse. Like it, we have non-civilized human being in the future in constant battle for survival on an alien planet. In this case, though, it’s not Earth. The planet is not named. After multiple seedings of life, the barren planet was forgotten by human interstellar civilization, and then a ship crashed on it, and the survivors had to fend for themselves, losing their culture in the process. The story features one young man who begins to develop an ability to think, and to dare to try new ways to survive. Against giant spiders and insects, mainly.
A very few typos in this edition. I have another, early Ace edition of this book, but cannot find it. When I find it I’ll sell one of them. Or both? I hate to get rid of books I may need to refer to again.
January 25, 2015
I picked this up based on a glowing review from one of my favorite writers, Bruce Jones. I only made it a little over halfway through the book (117/209 pages) before deciding to put it down. There just isn't any overarching plot.
Is it too much to ask of a sci-fi story to include some fantastic contraptions, plot twists and a few memorable characters? Instead we get a study on nearly mute cavemen and their development as a species. This was fun the first time, but the 4th time I read about how "thinking this thought for the first time ever was a huge milestone for the development of this Forgotten Planet" I had to roll my eyes.
And then there's my favorite plot hole / incomplete thought: these primitives were descendants of a marooned spaceship crew, a group of people who were advanced enough to travel through the stars. I can swallow some garbage in a sci-fi story, but I could not accept that in 40 generations an advanced space faring race could devolve so far back that they lose their ability to communicate, use tools, and have even forgotten about fire.
The author has an annoying tendency to end each chapter 4 pages too late. After the main character's action has subsided the author spends several pages just rambling on about what the dangerous giant insects are doing. Maybe this is an attempt to paint a picture of just how dangerous this Forgotten Planet is. Or maybe the insects are actually the main characters of the book. I can't tell. The cavemen were just as boring as the bugs.
I stuck with the book into the second installment hoping for a drastic change, but these cavemen are still just dicking around in the mushroom forest fighting the same 4 species of giant insect over and over. I can't tell where this book is going and I stopped caring a while ago.
Is it too much to ask of a sci-fi story to include some fantastic contraptions, plot twists and a few memorable characters? Instead we get a study on nearly mute cavemen and their development as a species. This was fun the first time, but the 4th time I read about how "thinking this thought for the first time ever was a huge milestone for the development of this Forgotten Planet" I had to roll my eyes.
And then there's my favorite plot hole / incomplete thought: these primitives were descendants of a marooned spaceship crew, a group of people who were advanced enough to travel through the stars. I can swallow some garbage in a sci-fi story, but I could not accept that in 40 generations an advanced space faring race could devolve so far back that they lose their ability to communicate, use tools, and have even forgotten about fire.
The author has an annoying tendency to end each chapter 4 pages too late. After the main character's action has subsided the author spends several pages just rambling on about what the dangerous giant insects are doing. Maybe this is an attempt to paint a picture of just how dangerous this Forgotten Planet is. Or maybe the insects are actually the main characters of the book. I can't tell. The cavemen were just as boring as the bugs.
I stuck with the book into the second installment hoping for a drastic change, but these cavemen are still just dicking around in the mushroom forest fighting the same 4 species of giant insect over and over. I can't tell where this book is going and I stopped caring a while ago.
January 5, 2021
Fun undemanding read, with a lilting narration in the audiobook that felt like a barcarole and somehow added to the feel of Leinster's story.
Harry and Tom would have loved this one.
If you can't imagine how a catastrophically dangerous planet could threaten the existence of a marooned space ship's passengers, so that humans devolve over tens of generations into cave man survival types, this will just drive you nuts. If you do have an imagination, it's a fun diversion that crosses the genres of science fiction and regeneration.
Harry and Tom would have loved this one.
If you can't imagine how a catastrophically dangerous planet could threaten the existence of a marooned space ship's passengers, so that humans devolve over tens of generations into cave man survival types, this will just drive you nuts. If you do have an imagination, it's a fun diversion that crosses the genres of science fiction and regeneration.
July 5, 2023
The stars are for nostalgia. I read so many books like this as a kid, I may have even read this one. This is a bit of fun from an earlier time in life.
The story itself is intriguing. A nightmare world of giant earth-like insects and killer spores threaten a group of humans descended from a crashed spaceship. The interesting part of the whole thing is that the behavior of many of the giant insects is simply that of their real-life counterparts here on earth.
Not a bad read for someone with this sort of stuff in their background, this was a little escapist sort of reading. Enjoyable to me.
The story itself is intriguing. A nightmare world of giant earth-like insects and killer spores threaten a group of humans descended from a crashed spaceship. The interesting part of the whole thing is that the behavior of many of the giant insects is simply that of their real-life counterparts here on earth.
Not a bad read for someone with this sort of stuff in their background, this was a little escapist sort of reading. Enjoyable to me.
Read
August 28, 2023So... I read the beginning and the end and skimmed much of the middle. Leinster's writing remains crisp (for the 1920s and '30s, anyway) and approachable, I think, to a modern reader. It's just that this novel, which is a 1953 fix-up of stories from Astounding and (I think) one or two other pulp magazines 20 and 30 years earlier. Which is to say, the pulp factor is high. Also, the plot deals largely with giant insects on an extrasolar planet, which is just not one of the sub- sub- sub-tropes that does it for me, personally. Therefore, I won't rate it because I think that The Forgotten Planet is probably pretty good.
April 10, 2023
I’m glad this book is no longer as forgotten as the planet it writes about! A fun read that holds its own for one written so long ago!!
November 15, 2023
This book was very disappointing. Very repetitive, not much going on... I've read the words 'mushroom', 'spider', 'tarantula' and 'ants' so many times that they lost all of it's meaning. Very boring reading, not much on the world building front. It was entertaining though.
March 4, 2023
While this was a dry read, it was also an entertaining read. The story is of adventure and has a feel of a history book as well.
December 28, 2017
This book contains three novelettes: THE MAD PLANET, THE RED DUST, and NIGHTMARE PLANET, collected from the pulps. The story takes place thirty thousand years after the 20th century, and into the second Carboniferous Period. Insects are now giants, even larger than they were in the first Carboniferous Period. Our hero is Burl, a simple man little more than a savage.
In THE MAD PLANET we meet Burl as he forages in the large toadstools looking for food, a naked human who only exist for food. He’s about twenty years of age, and has notice Saya, a beautiful female among the tribe, who causes strange feelings within him. While hunting for food he accidentally falls into the river and is swept forty miles from his little tribe. The story is all about his dangerous tract home, and the many near tragedies that come upon him; giant spiders, army ants, fires, and other dangerous insects. Returning to Saya, he is no longer naked, but wrapped in the soft wing of a giant butterfly, and toting a slain spider on his back. Naturally, Saya decides he’s the man for her. This was a fun yarn.
THE RED DUST finds Burl in a quandary over the sudden appearance of red toadstools that emit poisonous red particles into the air. His people must leave and find new land if they are to survive, and there is much hardship and danger along the route. But in the end he leads his tribe to safety in the mountains far from the deadly toadstools, and finally takes Saya for his mate. A sequel to THE MAD PLANET.
Nightmare Planet is a bit different from the first two. Actually, it doesn’t seem to fit with the other two stories. It is still Burl and Saya, but they’re not lovers yet, and their valley (not where the second story left off) has been over-run by a giant spider with her egg sack. The babies hatch and start eating everything in the valley, including humans. Burl kills one of the spiders as he goes for food. H thene tells them he’s leaving the valley. He pulls Saya along, and then the rest follow. They climb a mountain reaching high above the clouds where they find fresh air, and small insects, plus view the stars and sunrise for the first time. Then they find a pack of dogs and instantly become constant companions. In the first two stories we were led to believe their world is Earth thirty thousand years after the 21st century, but now we’re given a new history. The planet had been seeded many times in the past by a highly advanced race of aliens. One ship crashed, and that’s where humans and dogs came from. At the end of the story the aliens return once more and find Burl and his people, and subject him to an educator machine, and they build a city on top of the mountain, where the president of the aliens come to hunt with Burl. This story brings a final conclusion to the short series, even f it is hard to fit it in with the previous two stories.
Okay, the stories were definitely fun. I love anything with giant insects and spiders. We never see a scorpion in the stories, but thirty-foot long centipedes, spiders with a thirty-foot leg spread, and mammoth-sized tarantulas. Beetles the size of tanks, and enormous moths and butterflies. There were some minor formatting problems, but I highly recommend the book for lovers of science fiction and adventure.
In THE MAD PLANET we meet Burl as he forages in the large toadstools looking for food, a naked human who only exist for food. He’s about twenty years of age, and has notice Saya, a beautiful female among the tribe, who causes strange feelings within him. While hunting for food he accidentally falls into the river and is swept forty miles from his little tribe. The story is all about his dangerous tract home, and the many near tragedies that come upon him; giant spiders, army ants, fires, and other dangerous insects. Returning to Saya, he is no longer naked, but wrapped in the soft wing of a giant butterfly, and toting a slain spider on his back. Naturally, Saya decides he’s the man for her. This was a fun yarn.
THE RED DUST finds Burl in a quandary over the sudden appearance of red toadstools that emit poisonous red particles into the air. His people must leave and find new land if they are to survive, and there is much hardship and danger along the route. But in the end he leads his tribe to safety in the mountains far from the deadly toadstools, and finally takes Saya for his mate. A sequel to THE MAD PLANET.
Nightmare Planet is a bit different from the first two. Actually, it doesn’t seem to fit with the other two stories. It is still Burl and Saya, but they’re not lovers yet, and their valley (not where the second story left off) has been over-run by a giant spider with her egg sack. The babies hatch and start eating everything in the valley, including humans. Burl kills one of the spiders as he goes for food. H thene tells them he’s leaving the valley. He pulls Saya along, and then the rest follow. They climb a mountain reaching high above the clouds where they find fresh air, and small insects, plus view the stars and sunrise for the first time. Then they find a pack of dogs and instantly become constant companions. In the first two stories we were led to believe their world is Earth thirty thousand years after the 21st century, but now we’re given a new history. The planet had been seeded many times in the past by a highly advanced race of aliens. One ship crashed, and that’s where humans and dogs came from. At the end of the story the aliens return once more and find Burl and his people, and subject him to an educator machine, and they build a city on top of the mountain, where the president of the aliens come to hunt with Burl. This story brings a final conclusion to the short series, even f it is hard to fit it in with the previous two stories.
Okay, the stories were definitely fun. I love anything with giant insects and spiders. We never see a scorpion in the stories, but thirty-foot long centipedes, spiders with a thirty-foot leg spread, and mammoth-sized tarantulas. Beetles the size of tanks, and enormous moths and butterflies. There were some minor formatting problems, but I highly recommend the book for lovers of science fiction and adventure.
December 16, 2019
Wonderful adventure, with nice people who have dignity and behave like decent people. There are powerfully horrifying scenarios of what the humans are up against in their ecosystem, but they all have happy outcomes, and the book has a very nice ending. A universe where people are good and decent. It's older scifi, but riveting.
September 10, 2012
Good adventure story with a savage alien world marvelously imagined and richly described.
January 10, 2023
What I most enjoyed about this book, was the author's descriptions of the insects that inhabited this planet. Due to the lack of birds and mammals, the insects had no natural predators, and so grew to enormous times their that of their ancestors.
"There were colonies in the Milky Way. There were freight lines between star clusters, and the commercial center of human affairs shifted some hundreds of parsecs toward the Rim. There were many worlds where the schools painstakingly taught the children what Earth was, and where, and that all other worlds had been populated from it. And the schools repeated, too, the one lesson that human kind seems genuinely to have learned. That The Secret of peace is freedom, and The Secret of freedom is to be able to move away from people with whom you do not agree. There were no crowded worlds anymore. But human beings love children, and they have them. And children grow up and need room. Some more worlds Had to be looked out for. They weren't urgently needed yet, but they would be."
" The inhabited planet were all members of a tenuous organization which limited itself to affairs of space come up without attempting to interfere in surface matters. That tenuous organization moved the ecological preparation service files to algorithm for as a matter of convenience. In the movie and, a card file was upset. The cards it contained were picked up and replaced, but one was missed. It was not picked up. It was left behind.
So the planet which had no name was forgotten. No other ship came to prepare it for ultimate human occupancy. It's circled it's sun, unheeded and unthought of period cloudbanks covered it from Pole to Pole. There were hazy markings in some places, Where high plateau's penetrated its clouds. But that was all period from space the planet was essentially featureless. Seemed from Afar it was merely a round white ball - white from its cloud bank's - and nothing else."
Imagine having space liners and populating other planets, I'm not going digital. Laugh out loud.
One space liner called the Icarus
"Suffered shipwreck in space and its passengers and crew were forced to take to a life raft. The lifeboat's range was limited. They landed on the planet that the Tetris had first examined, that the Aurora and the Ludred had seeded, and of which there was no longer any record in the card files of the Ecological Service. Their fuel was exhausted. They could not leave. They could not signal for help. They had to stay there. And the planet was a place of nightmares."
This crew that escaped their shipwrecked liner, and their few dogs, stayed on this planet, and stayed forever. They lived in a nightmare of huge insects, endless mists, and practically nothing but fungus and huge cabbages to exist on. They forgot their knowledge, they forgot almost but the most basic language. Until we come to the generation, nearly 2000 years later, where Burl Became the leader of his tribe.
The protagonist, Burl, learns what politicians and social media influencers learn. Or don't...
"no human being who has known triumph is ever quite the same again, and anybody who has once been admired by his fellows is practically ruined for life - at least so far as being independent of admiration is concerned."
By a quirk of serendipity, or fate, he became the leader of his tribe.
The bees, among other insects that had been seeded on this planet,
"… had no possible chance of fulfilling their intended role as parasites on insects of the order hymenoptera. They were simply and matter-of-factly doomed by the blindness of instinct, which had caused them to be placed where they could not possibly survive."
Burl discovers that insects that had been killed by other insects, and lay on the ground being scavenged by yet other insects, could be useful in that their broken-off legs and antennas could be used as weapons.
"Instantly the thing was limping. A beetle does not use its legs like four-legged creatures. A beetle moving shifts the two end legs on one side and the Central Leg on the other so that it always stands on an adjustable tripod of limbs. It cannot adjust readily to crippling. A dog snatched at a spiny lower leg and crunched - and darted away. The machine-like monster uttered a formless, deep bass cry and was spurred to unbelievable fierceness. The fight became a thing of furious movement and joyous uproar, with Burl striking once at a multiple eye so the pain would deflect it from a charge at Saya [Burl's mate], and Saya again deflecting it with her cloak and Once breathlessly trying to strike it with her shorter spear.
They struck it again, and a third time, and it sank horribly to the ground, all three legs on one side crippled. The remaining three thrust and thrust and struggled senselessly - and suddenly it was on its back, still striking its gigantic jaws frantically in the hope of murder. But then Burl struck home between two armor plate where a ganglion was almost exposed. The blow killed it instantly."
This has a happy ending.
In the author's note at the end, he credits his knowledge of the insects in history to the author Fabre, a professor of entomology And science.
"There were colonies in the Milky Way. There were freight lines between star clusters, and the commercial center of human affairs shifted some hundreds of parsecs toward the Rim. There were many worlds where the schools painstakingly taught the children what Earth was, and where, and that all other worlds had been populated from it. And the schools repeated, too, the one lesson that human kind seems genuinely to have learned. That The Secret of peace is freedom, and The Secret of freedom is to be able to move away from people with whom you do not agree. There were no crowded worlds anymore. But human beings love children, and they have them. And children grow up and need room. Some more worlds Had to be looked out for. They weren't urgently needed yet, but they would be."
" The inhabited planet were all members of a tenuous organization which limited itself to affairs of space come up without attempting to interfere in surface matters. That tenuous organization moved the ecological preparation service files to algorithm for as a matter of convenience. In the movie and, a card file was upset. The cards it contained were picked up and replaced, but one was missed. It was not picked up. It was left behind.
So the planet which had no name was forgotten. No other ship came to prepare it for ultimate human occupancy. It's circled it's sun, unheeded and unthought of period cloudbanks covered it from Pole to Pole. There were hazy markings in some places, Where high plateau's penetrated its clouds. But that was all period from space the planet was essentially featureless. Seemed from Afar it was merely a round white ball - white from its cloud bank's - and nothing else."
Imagine having space liners and populating other planets, I'm not going digital. Laugh out loud.
One space liner called the Icarus
"Suffered shipwreck in space and its passengers and crew were forced to take to a life raft. The lifeboat's range was limited. They landed on the planet that the Tetris had first examined, that the Aurora and the Ludred had seeded, and of which there was no longer any record in the card files of the Ecological Service. Their fuel was exhausted. They could not leave. They could not signal for help. They had to stay there. And the planet was a place of nightmares."
This crew that escaped their shipwrecked liner, and their few dogs, stayed on this planet, and stayed forever. They lived in a nightmare of huge insects, endless mists, and practically nothing but fungus and huge cabbages to exist on. They forgot their knowledge, they forgot almost but the most basic language. Until we come to the generation, nearly 2000 years later, where Burl Became the leader of his tribe.
The protagonist, Burl, learns what politicians and social media influencers learn. Or don't...
"no human being who has known triumph is ever quite the same again, and anybody who has once been admired by his fellows is practically ruined for life - at least so far as being independent of admiration is concerned."
By a quirk of serendipity, or fate, he became the leader of his tribe.
The bees, among other insects that had been seeded on this planet,
"… had no possible chance of fulfilling their intended role as parasites on insects of the order hymenoptera. They were simply and matter-of-factly doomed by the blindness of instinct, which had caused them to be placed where they could not possibly survive."
Burl discovers that insects that had been killed by other insects, and lay on the ground being scavenged by yet other insects, could be useful in that their broken-off legs and antennas could be used as weapons.
"Instantly the thing was limping. A beetle does not use its legs like four-legged creatures. A beetle moving shifts the two end legs on one side and the Central Leg on the other so that it always stands on an adjustable tripod of limbs. It cannot adjust readily to crippling. A dog snatched at a spiny lower leg and crunched - and darted away. The machine-like monster uttered a formless, deep bass cry and was spurred to unbelievable fierceness. The fight became a thing of furious movement and joyous uproar, with Burl striking once at a multiple eye so the pain would deflect it from a charge at Saya [Burl's mate], and Saya again deflecting it with her cloak and Once breathlessly trying to strike it with her shorter spear.
They struck it again, and a third time, and it sank horribly to the ground, all three legs on one side crippled. The remaining three thrust and thrust and struggled senselessly - and suddenly it was on its back, still striking its gigantic jaws frantically in the hope of murder. But then Burl struck home between two armor plate where a ganglion was almost exposed. The blow killed it instantly."
This has a happy ending.
In the author's note at the end, he credits his knowledge of the insects in history to the author Fabre, a professor of entomology And science.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2019
2 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
An alien planet, partially terraformed, is forgotten, the records list. A ship crashes there, and the descendants of its crew live squalid, primitive lives among giant spiders, ants, wasps, and more.
Review
I've mostly read Murray Leinster's short fiction, and enjoyed it. This was my first voyage into his (sort of) longer fiction, and I'm glad it wasn't my first encounter. This is as pulp as pulp can get, but not in a good way.
Leinster seems to have revisited this series several times, restructuring with each addition. I first came to this via "Mad Planet", a novella first published in Argosy in 1920. I found it interesting, but rough going. Lots of repetition, some continuity errors, and overall on the dull side. The story seems to have been followed by "The Red Dust" and "Nightmare Planet", with changes each time. I skipped instead to The Forgotten Planet - a novelized version of the series. Between Mad and Forgotten, the action has moved from Earth to another planet - not greatly important, but I liked the change. Where Mad ended rather abruptly and without much resolution, Forgotten ties everything up very carefully.
Overall, in either version, this is a somewhat standard 'man becomes tiny'-type story - lots of battling with giant ants, beetles, spiders, etc. It's mildly interesting, but it's also very much on the gruesome side - lots of details of cold-hearted killing and eating alive. Let's just say that I've liked Murray Leinster, but not because of this story, and I'm glad I didn't start with him here.
Summary
An alien planet, partially terraformed, is forgotten, the records list. A ship crashes there, and the descendants of its crew live squalid, primitive lives among giant spiders, ants, wasps, and more.
Review
I've mostly read Murray Leinster's short fiction, and enjoyed it. This was my first voyage into his (sort of) longer fiction, and I'm glad it wasn't my first encounter. This is as pulp as pulp can get, but not in a good way.
Leinster seems to have revisited this series several times, restructuring with each addition. I first came to this via "Mad Planet", a novella first published in Argosy in 1920. I found it interesting, but rough going. Lots of repetition, some continuity errors, and overall on the dull side. The story seems to have been followed by "The Red Dust" and "Nightmare Planet", with changes each time. I skipped instead to The Forgotten Planet - a novelized version of the series. Between Mad and Forgotten, the action has moved from Earth to another planet - not greatly important, but I liked the change. Where Mad ended rather abruptly and without much resolution, Forgotten ties everything up very carefully.
Overall, in either version, this is a somewhat standard 'man becomes tiny'-type story - lots of battling with giant ants, beetles, spiders, etc. It's mildly interesting, but it's also very much on the gruesome side - lots of details of cold-hearted killing and eating alive. Let's just say that I've liked Murray Leinster, but not because of this story, and I'm glad I didn't start with him here.
December 27, 2017
My last read of 2017 happens to be a good one. It concludes the series that started with The Mad Planet and The Red Dust. I enjoyed it but was a little disappointed and confused that they retconned the planet being Earth and instead made it a planet that was being terraformed and just wasn't completed. This time the humans got there when a large spaceship crashed. We never get more detail and are only told that it happened 40 generations ago. It starts with the tribe having to flee the valley they found when The Red Dust ended. This time it's a huge spider that had a egg sac that carried hundreds of it's young. Soon their home would be full of deadly giant spiders and the tribes' number has been reduced to 20 already. This time the leader takes them up the mountain and they discover a totally different environment above the clouds where giant insects can't survive. They also meet another kind of creature that helps them survive in a new way. After a while the tribes' life changes yet again when something comes from the sky; this happens in the last few pages. Then it does a time skip to where our main character is now a middle-aged man and ends the story. The end is rushed and it feels like the author was pressed to end it. It's a good definite end but I really wish he had written more before the time skip or had written a followup before his death. If you read and liked the two previous works then you will like this too.
March 31, 2023
Nu aveam mari sperante de la aceasta carte, cumparata aproape pe nimic de la anticatiat. De obicei cartile astea ieftine de la edituri obscure, aparute si disparute in aceeasi vara prin anii '90, sunt bune pentru aprins focul. Mare mi-a fost uimirea cand am inceput sa citesc si am ramas cu ochii lipiti de carte din primul capitol. Este adevarat ca povestea e batrana, scrisa initial sub forma de 3 povestiri scurte si publicate in reviste, in anii de inceput ai revistelor pulp SciFi, cand majoritatea povestilor SF erau cu monstri extraterestri cu ochii bulbucati, doar ca aici monstrii sunt de fapt ganganii terestre duse sa populeze "planeta uitata" si, din cauza mediului propice, au crescut incontrolabil la dimensiuni gigantice.
Nu spun mai multe ca nu vreau sa stric farmecul povestii pentri cine vrea s-o citeasca. Daca o gasiti prin vreun anticariat, cumparati-o, cititi-o si multumiti-mi dupa :)
Nu spun mai multe ca nu vreau sa stric farmecul povestii pentri cine vrea s-o citeasca. Daca o gasiti prin vreun anticariat, cumparati-o, cititi-o si multumiti-mi dupa :)
January 11, 2021
Et bien, ce fut un livre difficile à lire. J'aime la science-fiction, mais pas celle-ci je le crains.
Si l'écriture est intéressante et fluide, j'avoue que je me suis ennuyée et que ma logique m'a posé quelques soucis. L'auteur a utilisé ses connaissances et recherches sur le monde des insectes et araignées pour écrire ce livre. Intéressant en soi si on aime ses petites bêtes ce qui n'est pas mon cas. Ensuite, j'ai du mal à croire que les hommes qui habitent cette planète sont les descendants de passagers d'un vaisseau qui s'est écraser. En fait, j'ai du mal que l'on puisse revenir à l'âge néandertalien aussi simplement, même après des années ou siècles.
A lire pour les curieux. J'ai mis trois étoiles plus parce que je me suis ennuyée que par l'idée que c'est un mauvais écrit, cela serait présomptueux de ma part.
Si l'écriture est intéressante et fluide, j'avoue que je me suis ennuyée et que ma logique m'a posé quelques soucis. L'auteur a utilisé ses connaissances et recherches sur le monde des insectes et araignées pour écrire ce livre. Intéressant en soi si on aime ses petites bêtes ce qui n'est pas mon cas. Ensuite, j'ai du mal à croire que les hommes qui habitent cette planète sont les descendants de passagers d'un vaisseau qui s'est écraser. En fait, j'ai du mal que l'on puisse revenir à l'âge néandertalien aussi simplement, même après des années ou siècles.
A lire pour les curieux. J'ai mis trois étoiles plus parce que je me suis ennuyée que par l'idée que c'est un mauvais écrit, cela serait présomptueux de ma part.
February 12, 2021
I read it as a kid, never forgot it, always would have loved to have written it myself, and am now in the midst of rereading it. I'd love to see somebody do a movie of it, but one that would do it justice. I noticed someone wrote a review and couldn't believe the regression of the species. I guess the planet of the apes wasn't his cup of tea, either. By the way, i read that, planet of the apes, myself when i was a teen i guess, a short paperback, only i remember it starting with two apes in a spaceship, not men. I guess maybe i'm mistaken about that. But reading this one again, even though i've grown older, by a lot, it still doesn't disappoint and i'd still like to see a movie, a good movie, made of it.
March 4, 2023
Not for the die-hard science aficionados, the accuracy of the biology and physics is definitely up for question, and I imagine could infuriate some. If that can be ignored then this classic fix-up (two-parts 1920's and one part 1953) sci-fi romp is great, even inspiring. It is shy of spaceships and ray guns but instead gives us humanity in both it's physical survival mode and it's psychology and emotional growth and evolution. I enjoyed it a lot and as a short novel I recommend this to any sci-fi fans who wants to increase their exposure to classic sci-fi literature.
March 13, 2023
Yes it's sci-fi just not lasers and Tie fighters sci-fi. I thought it was a most well crafted , drawn up piece of writing, with some of the best descriptive lines in fiction that really brings the reader along on a most valuable ride through this land were humans are not at the top of the food chain they are out competed by insects and arachnids ( and outsized by them as well as being smaller than a lot of the plants on this planet) . I would recommend this book to anyone interested in how to write descriptive language well
June 26, 2025
So the overarching theme is really Great, and I liked the story and “sci- fi “ ness of the book, but it’s more akin to a pulp adventure story a la Jules Verne(not a bad thing to be clear). The main thing holding this back from a strong recommendation is that it is a fix up novel, and as such the repetition can be a bit cumbersome. Which in context can be forgiven, but it does hinder a seamless reading experience. So I can say if your a golden age sci fi die hard, you will enjoy this, but for the casual sci fi person, an edit down to 100 pages would have been more desirable.
June 27, 2018
This is a childhood read and I really liked it.
A few disclaimers : this is adventure ! pure and simple. totally unrealistic. But it is fun. Do not read it if you are looking for serious fiction because it is not. the author takes an idea and goes all the way to see everything he can build based on this.
Certainly, no one would write such a novel nowadays. Maybe a slightly bad news for people who wanted a bit of flying away from reality
A few disclaimers : this is adventure ! pure and simple. totally unrealistic. But it is fun. Do not read it if you are looking for serious fiction because it is not. the author takes an idea and goes all the way to see everything he can build based on this.
Certainly, no one would write such a novel nowadays. Maybe a slightly bad news for people who wanted a bit of flying away from reality
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