The Wanderer

Join us as we discuss the eleventh Hugo Award winner: Fritz Lieber's The Wanderer.

Host: Christine D. Baker, a historian who lives in Vancouver, BC. You can find her at @klaxoncomms.com‬ on Bluesky or follow what she's reading at her website: https://klaxoncomms.com/reading/

This month's guest is Roseanna Pendlebury, who is an incredibly prolific fan writer and nominated for the Hugo for BEST Fan Writer this year. She writes for Nerds of a Feather, Ancillary Review of Books, and on her own blog. You can find her on Bluesky at @chloroformtea.bsky.social.

From about 7:30 to about 37:58, Christine is recapping the book, which has A LOT of spoilers. The rest of the episode isn't spoiler free, but that section goes through the plot in detail. 

Intro sound by Breakz Studios!

Come find us on patreon for more info: https://www.patreon.com/cw/hugohistory/posts (Sign up for the free tier and I try to send out extra details, links to references, and images of primary sources!)

Corrections:

• At some point in the beginning, I am talking Fritz Lieber's other Hugo-winning novel and I accidentally call it The Time War. It's actually called The Big Time.
• We refer to the pot smoking New Yorkers as Arab Pete and friends, but their names were Arab Jones, High Bundy, and Pepe Martinez.

Other nominees this year: 

• The Whole Man (alt: The Telepathist) by John Brunner [Ballantine, 1964]
• Davy by Edgar Pangborn [Ballantine, 1964]
• The Planet Buyer (alt: The Boy Who Bought Old Earth) by Cordwainer Smith [Pyramid, 1964]. 

Some things we mention: 

• You can vote for Hugos! 
• John Scalzi, When the Moon Hits Your Eye
• Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary
• Lieber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series
• Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, E.E. "Doc" Smith
• Anne McCaffery, Dragonflight, Book 1 of Dragonriders of Pern series (I have now read this book!)
• spume
• Black Dahlia murder
• They'd Rather Be Right (the second Hugo award winner)
• Jo Walton's Hugo restrospective 
• James Nicoll
• John Scalzi: Redshirts; The Interdependency series; Old Man's War series; Starter Villain