Book Review: Land of the Giants by Murray Leinster
In the near future of the 1980s, the Spindrift, a suborbital plane, is getting ready for takeoff. It will be Flight 703 from Los Angeles to London with an expected duration of 41 minutes. The crew is Captain Steve Burton, pilot; Dan Erickson, co-pilot; and Betty Hamilton, flight attendant. The crew is small today as the passenger list is tiny.
Braving the skies despite two other suborbital planes going missing are Mark Wilson, astronomer; Barry Lockridge, an orphaned 14-year-old and his dog Chipper; Valerie Scott, a wealthy young heiress; and Alexander Fitzhugh, a former atomic engineer.
Once aloft, the Spindrift encounters some sort of space warp that deposits these people on a distant planet they will come to know as the Land of the Giants.
This novel is based on the unaired pilot of the same named television series created by Irwin Allen which ran 1968-1970. As such, while the plot is similar to that of the series, there are some differences.
The big similarity is that our small group of humans have landed on a planet very similar to Earth, but where everything is ten times larger. Grass, insects, humanoids, all huge. The giant civilization appears similar to human ones, with some cultural differences. The humans explore their surroundings a bit, and one gets caught by what appears to be a human-sized house on the outside, but is actually a live trap. Rescue mission time!
Most of the novel is told from Steve’s point of view as he’s the default leader of the castaways and makes most of the decisions about what actions should be taken–as well as carrying most of them out. Characterization and backstory are minimal. Barry’s the most nuanced character as his love of science fiction and imagination are treated as positive characteristics.
We do get a paragraph of infodump on Fitzhugh’s history when it suddenly becomes relevant; in the novel his cowardice and selfishness are played for drama, as they’re connected to what we’d now call post-traumatic stress disorder. In the TV series, they were written more comically and part of his innate character, as he’s a petty criminal.
The square-cube law is mentioned several times, but the characters have to accept the evidence of their eyes, and there are some indications it is somehow in effect. The sounds of the giant world are deeper in tone than those made on Earth by equivalent creatures, and the humans’ voices are too shrill to register on the giants’ ears.
There’s also some technobabble stuff that was dropped from the TV series as it would prevent some of the plotlines.
Content note: Several Earth humans are killed in the backstory. The castaways have to fight off giant animals. Interestingly, Dan is in the series African-American (the first such actor in a major role in an Irwin Allen production); in the book he’s described as “dark” and his race never comes up at all.
This is an okay science fiction action story of its time, with an emphasis on what’s happening rather than its effect on the characters or their relationships. I don’t know if it’s been reprinted recently. Recommended primarily to fans of the TV series and Sixties science fiction fans.
