The Green Millennium

by Fritz Leiber

Hugo and Nebula award-winning Fritz Lieber is a science-fiction grand master with an unparalleled ability to discern the stranger side of the universe. The Green Millennium is set in a futuristic human society based on our own. The regimented, regulated and bureaucratized lifestyle led by the misanthropic Phil Gish leaves him feeling vaguely dissatisfied and emotionally cut off from other people. He is surprised when a pure green cat appears in his room, a cat who makes him feel happier and more alive than he has ever felt. Phil decides to call the cat Lucky, hoping his life will take a turn for the better. If you consider different as change for the better, then Gish really has got something in Lucky -- something that everyone else wants -- including the Mob, the FBI, some nude aliens, and a gorgeous mystery woman. When Lucky seems to vanish into thin air, Phil will do anything to get him back, even if it means challenging the very powers that rule his world.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Cats, Time Travel, Weird Fiction

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

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

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

One night, long ago, I couldn’t sleep, and I scrolled through thousands of dust jackets on dustjackets.com. This book was one that I simply couldn’t live without because of the cover!

The other one was The Good Earth if you were curious.

So the cat with the sunglasses made me read this book!

Alright so…..when I read the first chapter, I wasn’t sure how this book even got published. It reads like really bad fan fiction.

This book was published in 1953, and it is set in the future. So this is what a 1953 author envisioned the future to be. In the first chapter, the narrator describes all kinds of history and devices, and the author was lost in the world building (and not in a good way). It is interesting to see how some of the author’s predictions came true (such as the US and Russia still have strained diplomatic relations).

The prose was also so awkward. Really awkward. A character can’t just say anything. And then it hit me. The prose has somewhat of a rhyme, and this book is a form of poetry. Will this book be the next Paradise Lost? Perhaps in 400 years we will see.

At least I got my first printing with the cat in the sunglasses.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $31.80 on eBay

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[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and quirky 1950s "sci-fi" by Fritz Leiber (1910-1992). He was one of the best of the SFF writers from the 50s and I began reading stories by him in my teen years, particularly his short stories. This one is a satirical look at the America of the early 21st Century ( from the perspective of the Eisenhower Era of the 50s). Everyone is driving electric cars and the cities are built on different levels. As with other stories from the 50s and 60s, no one has a cell phone or a personal computer. The Cold War is still going on between America and Russia; it went "hot" at least once as there is a mention of World War III ( but no mention of its effects, although I suppose there would have been a loss of population). A Midwestern puritan, Robert Barnes, is the president of the USA and wants to crack down on sinful behavior, such as male-female wrestling.
Robots are everywhere and pose a problem for society. The hero of the story is Phil Gish, who loses his job to a robot. Understandably enough, he is depressed and feels purposeless. Then, one day, he sees a green cat perched on his window sill. The cat changes Phil's life, giving him a feeling of happiness such as he hadn't known for years. When the cat goes missing, Phil searches for him/her and encounters a host of bizarre characters while in search of the feline.
I enjoyed the story, although it's certainly not one of Leiber's best. It was a good fast read. And why isn't everyone driving an electric car by now?

[Lizz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

I’m surprised that this story isn’t more well-known. It’s decidedly charming. I found it warm and fuzzy just like Lucky the cat.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Green Millennium is about a man, Phil, (and Arthur Dent type but without all the charm, i.e. audience surrogate almost no personality) who has a brief encounter with a magical green cat. Lucky (the cat) makes everyone around him feel connected and loved. In this world of conservative politics (I was going to type hyper-conservative politics, but then I realized that the religious-right fictional president and his Bureau of Loyalty isn't that far off from what our current Republican candidate for president would like) contrasted against hyper-sexualized consumerism there are a lot of interesting characters and circumstances, so the story is mostly Phil being pulled through the story on a quest to reclaim the feeling of wellbeing and confidence that he had while around Lucky.

I suppose that calling Phil a charmless Arthur Dent is a little unfair. The book opens with Phil waking up to the sight of Lucky having come in his window. Phil thinks he's hallucinating becuse he took too many sleep pills while trying to kill himself. He's unemployed, having been replaced by robots in every job he's had (a little bit of an outdated theme, but as a person who just got replaced by someone who lives across the world who will, in turn, be replaced by automated processes, the theme is surprisingly relavent again), so I understand where he's coming from. This opening scene is easily forgotten in the coming shenanigans, but when taken into account, makes Phil much more understandable. He is bland, but any person who has suffered from depression can tell you that blandness is his pleasant outer shell. Phil's sudden field-trip (via magic cat) out of depression and into confidence could have done nothing else but to cause him to seek and crave that feeling again. I don't have chronic depression (though I have suffered from moderate depressions before), but I do have social anxiety, and I can tell you that my experiences with ecstasy, in which my anxiety went completely away and I felt like everyone was my best friend, were some of the most enlightening of my life. It makes me empathize greatly with Phil.

There are some outdated themes in the book, particularly around US attitudes towards Russia and Russian communism. But how was Leiber to know that it wouldn't last? Besides that, he builds a world that is, if not actually representative, at least relavent to our own. "Morals" vs hedonism/consumerism is a timeless theme. Here's my favorite bit of world-building: a predominant entertainment in this world is the "handie", which are installed in homes, diners, and bars. It's is a hand-like devise operated by a woman who works a paired devise while singing a "sex song". I don't know why this amuses me so thoroughly. The idea of men getting hand jobs in diners while a cam-girl gives a hand job to the air while singing makes me giggle.

Less amusing, Leiber does seem to only take male sexuality into account when constructing the hyper-sexed side of his world, but it's far from the worst I've seen in a 1950s novel and the women in the book are fairly well fleshed out and are real characters, even if they are mostly foils for the men. My favorite of the three major female characters is Juno Jones. She's a wrestler for Fun Inc in the male-female wrestling matches. At one time she was considered beautiful and married a fellow wrestler, but after years of hormone treatment to make her bigger and stronger, she's lost her feminine softness. But the character is treated as a woman anyway, one who wants affection, who has complicated feelings about her husband, one who is willing to stand up for what she wants, who takes amusement where she can get it with her fans. I loved any scene Juno Jones was in.

I can't say that I recommend the book to everyone, but it is well written and fun. As a cat book specifically for my cat quest, it was great. I'm partial to its pro-domestic-cat attitude. :)

P.S. Also, every edition of the book has hideous/nonsensical covers, don't let them fool you. For example, mine clearly has a cover that was picked out from generic fantasy art only because it has a cat (a full grown tiger) on the cover. They then went and tinted the whole thing green and said "good enough!".

[Joel Flank · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun, quirky book set in a dystopian future from the point of view of 1950s McCarthy Era. There's lots of issues in the world with a conflict between the debauched liberal US with a strong undercurrent in politics for more puritanical values, still facing off against the Soviets. At the same time, the common everyday man has a spirit crushing job, and resorts to all sorts of escapism, from VR, exotic performance shows (like male-female wrestling!!!) and all sorts of pornography, while hoping their job isn't made obsolete by a new kind of robot.

Phil Gish is one such poor schlub, but his world is transformed when unemployed (due to the previously mentioned robots), and a strange green cat saunters into his apartment. His world view suddenly and dramatically changes, and he dubs the cat "Lucky". With his newfound confidence, he takes a walk on the wild side, and even when the soon looses his new cat, the confidence that has been awakened in him remains, and he begins an epic quest to find the strange green cat (who likes raspberry jam). Along the way, he encounters the seedier side of life, dealing with thugs, mobsters, businessmen (hard to discriminate from the mobsters at times), a female wrestler, federal agents, and scientists. He also begins to question his sanity as to what's real and if he's imagining everything, since no one else he meets sees the cat....but they might have just missed it. Adding a psychotherapist into the mix only complicates things further, especially when he meets the therapist's simultaneously sweet and violent cat burglar daughter.

By the end of Phil's series of adventures, he just might be able to change the world.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE GREEN MILLENNIUM generally seems to be regarded as a minor Leiber novel - not without reason, although it's full of good (and certainly odd) things, and involves themes that Leiber also used elsewhere, usually to better effect.

The society Leiber describes is febrile and unpleasant - and now seems rather familiar: '...Not that this current social madness is a deep secret or anything to be startled at. What other results could have been expected when American society began to overvalue on the one hand security, censorship, and imagined world-saving idealism and self-sacrifice in war, and on the other hand insatiable hunger for possessions, fiercely competitive aggressiveness, sadistic male belligerance, contempt for parents and the state, and a fantastically overstimulated sexuality?'

But there is the chance for things to be made better.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Green Millennium is a Leiber novel that was published in 1953 and is an amusing and satiric look at the (relatively) near-future world that's firmly grounded in that perspective. It has a very large cast of quirky characters, including a lady wrestler (who knows what kind of hijinks they may get up to in the future?), a psychoanalyst and his daughter, some no-nonsense government agents, an aging physicist named Opperly (who does that remind you of?), Phil Gish (who just wants to take care of the green cat he's found), and, as the cover of the Lion Library paperback edition proclaims: "Satyrs from outer space on a lusty Earthbound spree"! It's like if Philip K. Dick had written Guys and Dolls, but with more feline fun and an invisible flying saucer. It is dated, with sexist descriptions of the female characters, but it's clever, it's entertaining, and well-written. The Lion edition has the best cover, a very 1950's-era wrap-around masterpiece that's uncredited, but I enjoyed re-visiting the story via the fine folks at LibriVox.

[Steve Rainwater · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy quest for a green cat in a steam punk world populated by a host of strange characters.

Best book I've read this year and I found it very funny. It was written in the 1950s, well before steam punk was a thing, but the best way I could describe the setting is a dystopic, cold war world with a retro steam punk like vibe.

A down on his luck Phil Gish wakes up one morning to find a strange green cat purring at his open bedroom window. The cat somehow fills Gish with a sense of peace and well-being that makes him believe he can turn his life around. About the time Phil decides the cat is his and will be his constant companion, kitty wanders off.

The rest of the book is Phil's mad search for the cat. One after another he meets a host of bizarre characters who are also after the cat for one reason or another; a gun-wielding psychologist, a female ex-wrestler, an artist with a wife who makes voodoo dolls, various underworld characters, a punk rock girl and her three man "gang", a pair of aliens from Vega, religious crackpots, a crime syndicate armed with deadly orthos, and at least one government agency. Some become Phil's enemies and some his allies.

Along the way they stumble into amusement parks with coin operated sex-bots, seedy bars, a weird old mansion converted into a para-psychology research lab run by a quack doctor and an ex-nuclear physicist, a mafia kingpin's headquarters and assorted private homes.

The plot is minimal; it reminded me a bit of films by the Coen Brothers or Terry Gilliam. In fact, it boggles my mind that in all the time this book has been around, no one has made a movie from it. The writing is very theatrical or cinematic and it really feels almost like a movie script. Recommended.

[Kris Sellgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this Fritz Leiber science fiction novel, set in the 21st century as imagined from the mid-20th century. Mild-mannered Phil Lesh wakes for the first time ever feeling happy and adventurous, after a green cat appears in his apartment. But the green cat is soon kidnapped, and Phil’s efforts to rescue it land him in a tangle of professional wrestlers, mobsters, religious nuts, sinister government organizations, Soviet agents, and aliens. The only word to describe the plot is wacky. Phil, who is too shy to talk to any women in his apartment building, finds himself involved with four. Leiber’s future is off-base in some ways (the US-Soviet Cold War continues, there are no computers or cell phones or globalization) and prescient in others (humans losing jobs to robots and automation, the government being hand-in-hand with corporations, the continuing tension between making money off people’s vices and Puritanical values). There are no dull moments, and the mix of characters gets stranger with every chapter. I found this on a list of SF/F novels with cats, but it should be entertaining for any science fiction fan.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love Leiber! Here's one where bemused everyman Phil Gish meets a miraculous little green alien with the power to make everyone kind, happy and peaceful. Those in power, including the US government, the Soviets (at their cold war worst)and the local gangsters are very, very worried - natch - and much amusing mayhem follows. Think Guys and Dolls with Cats.

[Stifynsemons · Rating 2 out of 5]

[1.8 stars=ok, won't read again]

The story is about a cat and its mysterious soothing effects on groups of people that drives them to frenzied action to possess the cat. It is at times a confusing tale, and the future depicted is a cynical extension of events in the author's time of the conflict between debauchery and religious prohibitionists. But sporty electric cars do rule the roads...

[Robert Woford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super hippie-ish, but it was green cats and you can't beat that. Is peace on Earth possible without alien intervention?

[Aileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delicious story that had me guessing at every turn. When I think the story is coming to an end, another twist is spilled in. You won't want to put this one down.

[T.S.S. Fulk · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was crazy! Can someone please give Putin, Trump, Rocketman, and Zelensky a green cat?

[Devero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certo è un gatto non di questo mondo quello che arriva a portare serenità e armonia, e certo, la storia è una buona storia ma tutto sommato nulla di che. Se non fosse per il gatto, per l'essere supremo del cosmo.
Mi è piaciuto questo vecchio romanzo, e credo che piacerà a tutti gli amanti dei gatti, nostri signori e benevoli padroni.

[Corum Belladonna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phil is our vehicle for this plot, but most of the time he isn't even driving it. Infinitely more interesting characters keep hopping in, and pushing him out of the way, while he rides shotgun, and whines about his cat.

I need to put Phil in park for a second, and talk about the world. It's literally bananas, this is the most outlandish work of speculative fiction I've ever read, there's a dizzying amount of concepts on display here, any of which could encompass their own book. Normally it would feel too packed with ideas, but it actually serves to flesh it out in a unique way, more or less all of these puzzle pieces fit together to create a very tangible, if alien setting. I felt like Leiber was boxing me with concepts instead of fists, and he ended this book with an uppercut that launched me into deep space. Really buckle up towards the end of this if you read it, get ready for some weird.

Although I thought this was fun, it also represents my core problem with the worldbuilding. Because he spends so much time throwing darts at the board, he doesn't expand upon anything enough, just kind of driving by it at incredible speed. Like you're taking a museum tour in your 96 corolla, looking out the window, saying oh that's cool, before it's in your rearview never to be seen again.

I would've probably rated this book a 4, were it not for Phil himself. Why do so many works of fiction have weak, and boring protagonists? Everyone else in the cast is so cool, and fun, and interesting. In my opinion, his love interest would have made a far more engaging main character, especially since a lot of her decisions end up driving the plot forward in engaging ways. Phil's primary character trait is that he's pathetic, they really call attention to it, and it's realized in such a way that he is actually really sympathetic. But, then he never moves past that point, and just gets pushed around, or dragged around by way cooler characters. By the end of the book he's learned no lessons, and changed in no perceivable ways.

A note. I listened to an Audiobook of this, as it was one of the free ones that comes with Audible, and oh dear lord the narrator is abysmal. Doesn't place emphasis on anything, doesn't give you a second to think about what he's just said, just keeps droning on, do not recommend. I plan to pick up a physical copy of this book, and read it to see if that improves it for me at all.

[Casey Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy oh boy what a Cold War classic by my boy Fritz. Our last minute hero, Phil, meets a magical green cat named Lucky that turns in his life around. In 24 hours he grows a pair, falls in love, interrupts a kidnapper and USSR spies, and ends up uniting the world in a beatific radiance. Oh - did I mention some alien satyrs disguising as Italians make a brief, but pivotal appearance? This novel was so ridiculous that I had to control my laughter and read certain passages to my partner. Granted, I deliberately chose this novel as a palate cleanser after some of the heftier and headier novels that I've read in the past month. It was not a good but, but it was entertaining and served its purpose. Perhaps Fritz loved cats so much that he believed they could truly create world peace. I feel that way about pontoon boats.

"Then Lucky came out from under the bar and jumped on it and walked up and down in a very lordly way but with a definite lurch. After a bit he jumped down in front of the bar and the crowd parted for him. The drunken green creature zigzagged with dignity towards an exit.

[Jeffrey Powanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satirical science fiction novel from grandmaster Leiber, originally published in 1953. It's similar to the screwball novels of Robert Sheckley from the Fifties. It's set in the early years of the 21st Century, in other words, today. The Korean War has been going on for 50 years. The protagonist, a working class fellow named Phil Gish, wakes up to find a telepathic green cat in his room. He's suddenly overcome with a sense of joy and well-being. He immediately names the cat Lucky. Thus begins a fast-paced, unpredictable adventure with many strange people, including physicists, professional wrestlers, mobsters, and amateur witches, all vying for the alien feline. It's a jaunty, stylish read, but ultimately not very engaging. I breezed through it quickly.

I can't believe they misspelled Leiber's name on that cover. What a travesty!

[Emma Zucati · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of felt like a fever dream. Very odd, and a lot of the characters felt like the same person. Interesting point that corporations and government are similar, bad entities, but as a result confusing as hell. Ending was weird and the book is super sexist. Quick read though so if you want to see what 1950s sci-fi is without caring about whether you understand every facet of the plot, it'll be a fun ride. Otherwise, easy enough to skip it.

[J S · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of people don't get Fritz Leiber. He was an immensely creative man with a nearly peerless command of the English language, but even as a lifelong fan, I will freely admit that he had a great many strange ideas and, frankly, kinks. These traits can make much of his fiction difficult to approach and digest; thus, he remains underappreciated.

The Green Millennium is an oft-hoisted example Fritz's weirdness, and believe me, I get it. TGM can very well be described as bizarre; it features a turgid morass of pinstriped gangsters, professional wrestlers, underworld hoodlums, witches, mystics, legendary physicists, shady psychiatrists, sociopathic love interests, suspiciously Satyrine "Argentinians" as well as a small but scrappy guy named Phil, all swirling around one green cat dubbed "Lucky"who marks his territory with peace and love, and whom everybody wants, whether to possess or eliminate.

Sounds like quite a mess, right? A sourpuss would call it that. To me, for starters, The Green Millennium is one big, manic road movie; the story and the characters tumble from one zany scene to the next, chasing or being chased, often via electric car getaways or wilder conveyances, all against a backdrop of Fritz's unique, resonant vision of dystopian, multi-tiered urban America.

And that's another reason I cherish the book: I love painting pictures in my head, and Leiber provided rich visual and aesthetic details deftly, almost effortlessly. I can see sleek electric sports cars streak though his vast, dark, neon-blurred retro-futurist cityscape like I lived there. I can see Juno Jones and Mitzie Romadka and all of the rest of the eccentric panoply of characters as if I knew them. Leiber built vibrant worlds, and The Green Millennium is no exception.

It's also weirdly prescient and seminal at times. TGM's Wasps anticipate Dune's Hunter-Seekers by more than ten years, and are easily more menacing. At one point, Leiber details the aliens' navigation system as being able to track their (the "Dinghy"'s) location in (above) the City in real time, as well as vehicles and pedestrians, all through what was described as something very much like a vector graphic display system. That was very heady stuff for 1953. The Green Millennium is full of little details like that; many ridiculous, quite a number striking.

But, at the end of the day, I love The Green Millennium because it's a (ultimately) harmless romp with a happy ending. Although Leiber was too old to participate directly in WWII, the horror of that great, dark global conflict, particularly the advent of atomic weapons, seemed to scar his artist's soul and color his literary work for decades after. Many of these stories were predictably grim ("The Foxholes of Mars", "Coming Attraction", etc), but quite a number of others were basically literary prayers for peaceful utopianism, such as "Bread Overhead" and "The Big Holiday", to name a couple I can immediately think of. The Green Millennium is one of the latter; aliens show up at the fervent plea of a small band of intellectually and spiritually enlightened souls to save Humanity from itself. Most of the characters are (or end up) quite likeable, amiable folks, and the very few irredeemable ones are disposed of without particular fanfare.

So anyway, lots of people have a curated selection of books that they re-read periodically; The Green Millennium is one of mine. It's quirky and madcap and optimistic and fun, and I simply need that from time to time.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been trying to formulate a review that would do this one justice for ages, and I just cant!

I have been re-reading this book since I was in my teens and it is as much as a joy to read EVERY single time I have ever picked it up.

I actually did a better job reviewing this in youtube I think, here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tg6u...

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic and fun piece of 50s sci-fi that no one ever told me about. Slap the named Fritz Leiber on the cover and I’ll read it. I personally enjoyed this more than The Big Time. It has cats, and crazy things, and witchcraft (seemingly), robots, punks (not quite cyber yet), and much more!

[Fil Garrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A kind of proto hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. I liked it, but man Douglas Adams has a stranglehold on my sci Fi comedy heart.

But it's pretty good, if a bit dated. I think what was missing is the real sense of absurdism.

[Josh J-Raff Carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

So uh, the book starts with a guy named Phil whose life has gone to shit and then a mysterious cat crawls through his window and instantly makes him feel happier and more confident, and then he loses the cat and his life goes to shit again.

It's very relatable.

[Carl Palmateer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting little book but not one of his best.

[Craig Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 1950's style "future' vision, with a little noirish attitude. Fritz Leiber is Always(!) a Great choice for something to read - Always entertaining and different than most other things.

[Cal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A repetitive plot protected by delightfully strange world building.

[Bob Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to follow and lots of junk. Very unusual for this author.

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 🌟

[Adam Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, frenetic, new age-punk, oddball characters, confusing situations, and a little green alien cat.