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Planets of Adventure
Two complete novels by the critically acclaimed science fiction master includes the Hugo Award-winning The Planet Explorer, in which the fate of the colonies across the galaxy rests in the hands of a single man, and The Forgotten Planet, in which the crew and passengers of a marooned planet struggle to survive in a world populated by deadly giant insects.
560 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 30, 2003
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266 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 - 20 of 20 reviews
October 24, 2021
Interesting collection of a few novels and short stories by Leinster, first published between 1920 and the 1950s. The first novel, the Forgotten Planet, is from the 20s and concerns people marooned on a planet for 1000s of years. The planet was 'seeded' twice by humanity, first with fungi and then with 'higher' plant and animal life. We start off on the lowlands, which is basically the habitat of huge insects and fungi, with small bands of people reverted to basically stone age scavenging for existence. Leinster must of had fun writing this and it is full of snide humor and such. Basically, the leader of one band-- a genius-- decides one day that he is sick of running from trouble and decides instead to become a warrior. He leads the band through various trials and tribulations...
The second novel is really four themed short stories all published in the 40s/50s and our main character here works in the survey service. Basically, when a new planet is opened up for colonization, after the ground work is done, a survey service member must certify it as safe before the new colonists can start arriving. Leinster was a 'hard' science fiction author for the most part, and each story our fearless survey team member is suddenly stuck between a rock and hard place. Some serious thinking and problem solving ensues. These were pretty good and one, "combat team," won a Hugo.
After the two novels, we have four more short stories, all situated on a planet somewhere. That really is the theme that holds this volume together-- each story is basically an adventure on a strange planet. These stories definitely have a nostalgia feel to them and while Leinster is better with female characters than many of his contemporaries were, expect some latent sexism none the less. Pure escapist fun.
The second novel is really four themed short stories all published in the 40s/50s and our main character here works in the survey service. Basically, when a new planet is opened up for colonization, after the ground work is done, a survey service member must certify it as safe before the new colonists can start arriving. Leinster was a 'hard' science fiction author for the most part, and each story our fearless survey team member is suddenly stuck between a rock and hard place. Some serious thinking and problem solving ensues. These were pretty good and one, "combat team," won a Hugo.
After the two novels, we have four more short stories, all situated on a planet somewhere. That really is the theme that holds this volume together-- each story is basically an adventure on a strange planet. These stories definitely have a nostalgia feel to them and while Leinster is better with female characters than many of his contemporaries were, expect some latent sexism none the less. Pure escapist fun.
April 29, 2018
This omnibus book contains one full novel (The forgotten planet, very good), one short novel (The planet explorer, quite nice too), plus five short stories. The best of these for me was "Assignment on Pasik," where a space cop must make a crash landing on a planet with his possibly sabotaged ship, and finds there precisely what he was looking for, plus an unexpected romantic interest.
February 27, 2025
The stories in this anthology were -
The Forgotten Planet
The Planet Explorer
Sand Doom
Combat team
The Swamp Was Upside Down
Anthropological Note
Scrimshaw
Assignment on Pasik
Regulations
The Skit-Tree Planet
My favourite story was The Forgotten Planet, which is surprising because I’m a bit of an arachnophobe, so vicious giant insects and spiders would usually scare me off. But I was very engaged by the ideas in this story.
The Forgotten Planet
The Planet Explorer
Sand Doom
Combat team
The Swamp Was Upside Down
Anthropological Note
Scrimshaw
Assignment on Pasik
Regulations
The Skit-Tree Planet
My favourite story was The Forgotten Planet, which is surprising because I’m a bit of an arachnophobe, so vicious giant insects and spiders would usually scare me off. But I was very engaged by the ideas in this story.
September 7, 2014
Planets of Adventure is an anthology of short stories. It contains one almost full-length story and several shorter stories, all of which are based on the theme implied by the title. The quality of the stories was pretty consistent – they weren’t terribly engaging, but they did hold my interest well enough for short bursts of time.
The first story in the book, The Forgotten Planet, was the larger story, taking up about a third of the book. It was about a planet that had been forgotten in the middle of the terraforming process, and it ended up populated with gigantic insects and dangerous plants. A small group of people crashed on the planet and survived the harsh environment, barely. Apparently the survivors though it would be a great idea to have children so that they too could suffer through a life of terror on this harsh world. The story followed a small group of their distant descendants who, by this point, were quite primitive and knew nothing of their origins.
The story was basically a survival story with a great deal of detail about insect behavior. Although insect behavior isn’t high on the list of things I find fascinating, I found the story surprisingly interesting and I liked it the best of the bunch. However, the main character, Burl, was obnoxious. He made a discovery, which led to more discoveries, and this resulted in improvements to the lives of the small tribe of humans he lived with. Burl then became quite full of himself, wanting glory and admiration for everything he did, and he made dumb decisions as a result. Most of his accomplishments were a combination of dumb luck and of seizing his opportunities. When the people from his tribe learned from his accomplishments and accomplished significant things on their own, he showed jealously rather than pride. I guess this behavior may have been expected given the culture of his people, but it still annoyed me.
The next four short stories in the book were related to each other but not to the first story – they followed the same main character, a man responsible for surveying planets that were nearly ready for colonization. His job was to make sure everything was up to specs and that the planet was safe enough for a larger population to move to. In each story he went to evaluate a different planet, and in each story there was some sort of catastrophe on the planet that he had to solve so that everybody didn’t die and so the colony could be salvaged. Unlike the first story in this collection, I found the main character in these stories to be pretty likeable. The stories themselves were also pretty interesting. However, they contained quite a lot of technical details, some of which I didn’t find very interesting, so I had more trouble getting through parts of these stories.
The remainder of the book consisted of standalone short stories, none of which were particularly memorable to me, but all of which held my interest while I was reading them.
The first story in the book, The Forgotten Planet, was the larger story, taking up about a third of the book. It was about a planet that had been forgotten in the middle of the terraforming process, and it ended up populated with gigantic insects and dangerous plants. A small group of people crashed on the planet and survived the harsh environment, barely. Apparently the survivors though it would be a great idea to have children so that they too could suffer through a life of terror on this harsh world. The story followed a small group of their distant descendants who, by this point, were quite primitive and knew nothing of their origins.
The story was basically a survival story with a great deal of detail about insect behavior. Although insect behavior isn’t high on the list of things I find fascinating, I found the story surprisingly interesting and I liked it the best of the bunch. However, the main character, Burl, was obnoxious. He made a discovery, which led to more discoveries, and this resulted in improvements to the lives of the small tribe of humans he lived with. Burl then became quite full of himself, wanting glory and admiration for everything he did, and he made dumb decisions as a result. Most of his accomplishments were a combination of dumb luck and of seizing his opportunities. When the people from his tribe learned from his accomplishments and accomplished significant things on their own, he showed jealously rather than pride. I guess this behavior may have been expected given the culture of his people, but it still annoyed me.
The next four short stories in the book were related to each other but not to the first story – they followed the same main character, a man responsible for surveying planets that were nearly ready for colonization. His job was to make sure everything was up to specs and that the planet was safe enough for a larger population to move to. In each story he went to evaluate a different planet, and in each story there was some sort of catastrophe on the planet that he had to solve so that everybody didn’t die and so the colony could be salvaged. Unlike the first story in this collection, I found the main character in these stories to be pretty likeable. The stories themselves were also pretty interesting. However, they contained quite a lot of technical details, some of which I didn’t find very interesting, so I had more trouble getting through parts of these stories.
The remainder of the book consisted of standalone short stories, none of which were particularly memorable to me, but all of which held my interest while I was reading them.
July 25, 2020
{listened, audiobook from Audible}
The novel the Forgotten Planet was fun and creepy, a sort of Conan the Barbarian with scifi roots on a horrifying insect world (what would in Warhammer 40k be called a "death world"). The Planet Explorer was tedious with its stock pulp characters, the main stoic guy and an idiot sidekick for each adventure. Interesting premise of a colonial space MacGuyver, but just not quite inventive or gripping. After that the stories became consistently less interesting for me for a variety of reasons I'm not entire sure of, though the narrator's voice (Daniel Henning) may have had something to do with it also.
The novel the Forgotten Planet was fun and creepy, a sort of Conan the Barbarian with scifi roots on a horrifying insect world (what would in Warhammer 40k be called a "death world"). The Planet Explorer was tedious with its stock pulp characters, the main stoic guy and an idiot sidekick for each adventure. Interesting premise of a colonial space MacGuyver, but just not quite inventive or gripping. After that the stories became consistently less interesting for me for a variety of reasons I'm not entire sure of, though the narrator's voice (Daniel Henning) may have had something to do with it also.
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February 1, 2022The Forgotten Planet: rated elsewhere
The Planet Explorer:
Sand Doom:
Combat Team:
The Swamp was Upside Down:
Anthropological Note:
Scrimshaw:
Assignment on Pasik:
Regulations:
The Skit-Tree Planet:
The Planet Explorer:
Sand Doom:
Combat Team:
The Swamp was Upside Down:
Anthropological Note:
Scrimshaw:
Assignment on Pasik:
Regulations:
The Skit-Tree Planet:
December 2, 2021
How would you like to be marooned on a planet lost to memory, a planet with monstrous insects and giant spiders? Sound like fun? No?
March 2, 2019
the book is beautiful, because is very nice
October 17, 2011
The first third of this is the novel "The Forgotten Planet", more gross-out horror than hard science fiction. Found myself slogging through the first chunk, and then it picked up rapidly. The biology of an all-fungus planet doesn't really make sense. Wikipedia tells me that it was originally published as short stories starting in the early 1920s -- so perhaps we should cut Leinster some slack for biological missteps.
The rest of the anthology is mostly stories from the 1950s that show off the cleverness of the protagonists and the author. Interesting particularly for how sex and race looked to forward-thinking people in the early 1950s.
Freely available as an e-book from Baen's free library.
The rest of the anthology is mostly stories from the 1950s that show off the cleverness of the protagonists and the author. Interesting particularly for how sex and race looked to forward-thinking people in the early 1950s.
Freely available as an e-book from Baen's free library.
December 15, 2015
To me, the more interesting stories in here were the ones about the planetary survey engineer who troubleshoots all kinds of problems that threaten to wipe out civilization on various planets. Sort of like his Med Ship stories (which are also very good), but about geophysics instead. Pretty good hard science fiction, actually, though it certainly feels a bit dated now.
The other reviewers seem to have their attention focussed on the story with the giant mushrooms and insects, which was actually a pretty good story (and it's longer than the others), but I didn't find it nearly as absorbing as the engineering ones. Maybe that's because I'm an engineer.
The other reviewers seem to have their attention focussed on the story with the giant mushrooms and insects, which was actually a pretty good story (and it's longer than the others), but I didn't find it nearly as absorbing as the engineering ones. Maybe that's because I'm an engineer.
September 4, 2024
The first part of this collection is a novel set on a planet where humans have been stranded for hundreds of years, allowing for a zany adventure about a man who must survive against whacky monsters (e.g., giant spiders). I actually found this to be delightful fun that holds up even to this day (it was written in the 1920s). It's full of wry humor and double entrendres. It's honestly quite enjoyable, especially if you have a fondness for classic science fiction.
September 24, 2010
I really enjoyed this books. It's a collection of short stories with twists to a lot of them. I will say the first story repeats details over and over and over. This may be due to it being serialized before being published but I'm not sure. Overall I recommend it if you like popcorn sf (something you don't read to deep and just enjoy the ride with.)
March 2, 2014
Product Description
In the first novel, "The Planet Explorer", the fate of the colonies scattered across the galaxy rests with one man, who races against the looming interstellar disaster. And in "The Forgotton Planet" a ship is marooned on a planet whose ecology has gone wild.
February 20, 2008
An ok read of a collection of stories from thew "Golden Age" horribly dated in its treatment of women, and the propensity for the author to come up with a deus ex machina in some situations is annoying...good read on the bus or train...
August 11, 2010
A series of short stories all of which seemed to end before they began as a result of which I did not enjoy the book very much.
I read the e-book version, a free download from WebScription
I read the e-book version, a free download from WebScription
March 29, 2011
I really enjoyed the stories in this rather humourous book written along the same lines as Chris Anvil's Interstellar Patrol.
August 13, 2007
A selection of short, classic sci-fi stories and well worth reading. Full review here - [http://thejumbledbox.blogspot.com/200...]
July 30, 2011
How can you go wrong with giant insects? Although a tired theme in sci-fi. It was written in 1920 and a facinating read even today.
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September 26, 201210
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews