Review of The Green Millennium by Fritz Leiber

Golden Age, sure; laser pistols, damsels in distress, slavering aliens, and of course, unitards. New Wave, yeah; experimental diction, political agendas, and challenging any and every norm. Metamodern, we can already see it; old tropes trotted out in a new light, uncontroversial prose, and emphasis on diversity, natch. But cyberpunk? Is it something more than an aesthetic. Bruce Sterling would, or at least did, have an answer to that question, and when looking at a specific scope of fiction, he'd be right. But is it really something more than dystopian corporations, augmented biology, and a society thrown into a deeper degree of flux by technology? I don't know. Regardless, I don't think we can think of Fritz Leiber's 1953 The Green Millennium as anything but—and waaaaay ahead of its time for it.

Phil Gish wakes up one day to find a strange, green cat playing in his home. Not everything right with the cat—it's fur not seeming quite fur and its structure not quite bone, he nevertheless finds himself attracted to the cat. And when it walks out of his house, he follows it. The start of a wild adventure, it ain't no white rabbit, and Gish is no Alice. But what a wonderland it is.

I still find it hard to believe The Green Millennium was published in 1953. It's far ahead of its time (and likely another reason it is unheard of today). It's not the greatest novel ever written, but it has a sensibility, an aesthetic, an unrighteous worldview. And risque scenes (at least for the era)--nothing lewd and pornographic, but a testing of the limits of what sexuality can be in a world where human physiology is mutable. If I didn't know any better, you could convince me it is a Bruce Sterling novel.

The Green Millennium gets very little if any press time these days. I can see why, and not why. Foremost, it's a tight package. Not overstaying its welcome, Leiber builds a tight setting and gonzo story in minimalist style. It has sensawunda, which for a lot of readers is enough. Cyber cats, male-female professional wrestling, psycho-psychologists, modified people—the list goes on.

But, like some of the 'proper' cyberpunk of the 80s, the train of The Green Millennium threatens to go off the rails. It doesn't have the cohesion of direction or purpose some readers are looking for. They spend almost all their time in Gish's shoes, who himself spends most of the time wondering what the hell is going on.  It can feel like being tossed from the frying pan, into the fire, into the kaleidoscope, into the purple pinwheel, into the... Matters do receive a explanatory conclusion which answers the novel's questions, but it's the journey to that point which some readers may get lost along.

And I think that's a good point to recommend The Green Millennium on. If you are a reader who needs handholding and a clear path forward, the novel may not be for you. If, however, you are open to an ever-widening setting and experience, Leiber offers the reader that. He also offers you a subtle kind of humor making your way through his green candy cane world.