THE FORGOTTEN PLANET

Leinster (1896-1975) was a pulp pro whose writer's skills rarely matched his inventive talents--a paradox on ample display in this 1954 novel (paperback only) drawn from stories written between 1926 and 1953. On a remote planet previously seeded with fungi and arthropods, a shipload of humans are lost and for a thousand years devolve into mindlessness. Then, in the damp jungles of giant fungi populated by huge insects and spiders, young genius Burl is driven to reinvent courage and bravery, tools, weapons, clothes, and leadership skills. And he eventually inspires his tribe to do battle with the enormous, insectile predators, ultimately to emigrate to an insect-and-fungi-free temperate upland--where a visiting spaceship promptly spots them and helps them back into civilization's fold. Sometimes exciting, more often implausible and creaky--with pulp prose and pulp science detracting from a vivid, vigorous telling of a popular, oddly fascinating scenario. (Cf. Hollywood's numerous ""giant insect"" sagas.)