Ships to the Stars / The Million Year Hunt

by Fritz Leiber, Kenneth Bulmer

Ships to the Stars (123 p.)
Something had thrown Earth's scientists into an uproar - or rather, nothing had. Because suddenly there was absolutely nothing where something very definitely should have been. Phobos and Deimos, the two moons of Mars. had disappeared.

And that was just the start of it. Before long, more of the solar system's moons were gone...people on Earth were sinking out of sight into the ground...and Earth's telepaths kept having strange dreams, full of foreboding....

A collection of 6 short stories by Fritz Leiber

The Million Year Hunt(133 p.)
Thrill seeker Arthur Ross Carson finds himself in more trouble than he bargained for.

Genres: Science Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was one of the more interesting of the young writers who came into HP Lovecraft's orbit, and some of his best early short fiction is horror rather than sf or fantasy. He found his mature voice early in the first of the sword-and-sorcery adventures featuring the large sensitive barbarian Fafhrd and the small street-smart-ish Gray Mouser; he returned to this series at various points in his career, using it sometimes for farce and sometimes for gloomy mood pieces--The Swords of Lankhmar is perhaps the best single volume of their adventures. Leiber's science fiction includes the planet-smashing The Wanderer in which a large cast mostly survive flood, fire, and the sexual attentions of feline aliens, and the satirical A Spectre is Haunting Texas in which a gangling, exo-skeleton-clad actor from the Moon leads a revolution and finds his true love. Leiber's late short fiction, and the fine horror novel Our Lady of Darkness, combine autobiographical issues like his struggle with depression and alcoholism with meditations on the emotional content of the fantastic genres. Leiber's capacity for endless self-reinvention and productive self-examination kept him, until his death, one of the most modern of his sf generation.

Used These Alternate Names: Maurice Breçon, Fric Lajber, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Fritz R. Leiber, Fritz Leiber Jun., Фриц Лейбер, F. Lieber, フリッツ・ライバー

Reviews

[Craig]

This is one of the classic Ace Double books, where two books were published back-to-back and in opposite orientation to one another in tete-beche format, each with its own cover, so there are two fronts and no back. The Million Year Hunt is a novel by Kenneth Bulmer that was originally published in two issues of Science Fiction Adventures magazine in the U.K. in 1962 under the titles Scarlet Denial and Scarlet Dawn and under the pseudonym Nelson Sherwood. This Ace first book edition has a very striking Ed Emshwiller cover. It's a pretty good YA quest story with an excellent symbiotic relationship described. The flip side is a collection of stories by Fritz Leiber, Ships to the Stars, which I had previously read in a later stand-alone edition. This one has an okay but uninspiring cover from Jack Gaughan. I ended up buying another copy of it because I wanted to read the Bulmer. My comments about it were: "Ships to the Stars is a collection of six stories that was first published by Ace in 1964 as half of one of their Double books. ... The stories were all reprinted from science fiction magazines from 1950 - '62; there's one each from Fantastic Stories, Galaxy, F & SF, Astounding, Fantastic Adventures, and If, which strikes me as kind of unusual. They're good and entertaining work, but none that I'd rank as his very best. My favorites here are The Enchanted Forest and The Ship Sails at Midnight."

[Kris]

4 for Ships to the Stars

A good short collection of stories from Fritz Leiber, showing a nice blend of his history in the fantasy, horror and science fiction genres.

2.5 for Million Year Hunt

A freely written but not particularly well made science fiction adventure.

[Beth]

Sometimes I don’t understand how some books are best sellers and others get forgotten. This is a corny sci-fi novella stacked onto a collection of short stories so well-written I’m in awe. They’re each spectacularly imaginative and beautifully written and I’m going to think about them for years. And the sad thing to me is that they’ve been lost to time. I know this book is out of print and untalked about. But I’m so happy I found it lying in a goodwill last chance bin. Even the corny side, I loved. It was like watching an original episode of Star Trek. But the stories by Fritz Leiber, gosh. Mid-century sci-fi treasures.

[PC]

Read this as a child and enjoyed it very much. The Million Year Hunt was my first encounter with/understanding of a symbiotic relationship of any kind. I believe this book formed my perception quite well with its handling of the characters...

[SciFiOne]

Ace Double Novel F285
Ships To The Stars, Fritz Leiber, grade C
Million Year Hunt, Keneth Bulmer, grade B+