The Green Odyssey

There follow several fairly standard adventure plots with cannibals, pirates, floating islands (that turn out to be giant lawnmowers), and the deus ex machina, a female black cat named Lady Luck.

Floyd C. Gale wrote that The Green Odyssey seemed "a routine space opera" and that Farmer "almost makes a mishmash of the ending, but doesn't".

While that story was almost universally regarded as unique and excellently written, The Green Odyssey was frequently criticised for being clichéd and generic.

For instance, author and critic Damon Knight said in the November 1957 issue of Infinity that the book was a "pastel pastiche, superficial and generic, of Tarzan, Conan [...] and heaven knows what else".

However, in hindsight, The Green Odyssey was perhaps a deliberate pastiche of pulp novels, similar to Farmer's later A Feast Unknown and, to a lesser extent, his fictional biographies Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.