The Forgotten Planet (Hardcover)

I read The Forgotten Planet on an off chance years ago, it was one of those "two-in-one" deals that you flip over & there's another novel on the other side. Between that & the title, it didn't seem promising, but what the heck.

The author Murray Leinster was an entomologist & he brought a scientific perspective & also a remarkable literary talent to the descriptions of those giant bugs & the buggy, mushroomy environment, including many vivid fantastic scenes. He even brings a scientific perspective to his picture of the humans & makes it natural & interesting, as one of the other reviews here describes. And it feels like your reading SCIENCE fiction.

Having read much genre science fiction when I was young, & much literary fiction since, I have to say that I can't recall a novel that was so truly both. And, at the same time, a third thing-a work reflective of a scientific sensibility.

If I grade it as literature, I give it four stars (if two or three to Updike, Mailer, etc., & five to Hemingway, Paul Bowles, etc.). That's really good. As science fiction, there's no way for it not to deserve five stars.

Whether Heinlein or Hemingway is more to your taste, this novel is for you.

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The first Murray Leinster story I read was the Hugo winning "Exploration Team." It is a story about human triumph over a hostile environment through decisive, determined effort and teamwork. Reading it made me curious about other works by Mr. Leinster. I went looking and found The Forgotten Planet at the Largo Public Library.

Forgotten Planet's human inhabitants arrive forty generations before the time of the story action. Shipwrecked on a nightmarish planet more suited to gigantic mushrooms and behemoth insects, humanity becomes little more than prey for larger, more prolific, better-armed predators. Human survival is in doubt by the time the prologue ends and the story begins.

By a happy accident or fate, the central character, Burl enters into a series of situations that helps him to marginally improve the circumstances of his fellows. He develops the habit of leadership, and his people learn to work together in new ways under his leadership. Through strong leadership and by working together, his people learn to overcome adversity and prosper.

The setting of The Forgotten Planet is ingenious in its imagination and yet plausibly set up in the prologue. Mr. Leinster takes the commonplace and makes it extraordinary. But the Lowland ecology is more than an exercise in sci-fi imagination. It is a metaphor for that which prevents humans from reaching their full potential individually and collectively. Once Burl's followers escape from the limitations of the Lowlands, they are able to assume their rightful place in the universe.

This story is refreshingly positive in its outlook. Too much sci fi second guesses or whines about our role in the universe as humnas and as Americans. Forgotten Planet was written in a time when Americans felt good about their country and themselves. It is a story worth remembering.

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