Mission Earth Volume 1: The Invaders Plan
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Earth does not exist. . . . Or so they want you to believe. Who are they? What do they want? And who do they think they are? They are the Voltarians of Voltar—an empire 110 planets strong.
They are already among us. And the invasion is about to begin . . . in a hundred years or so. Or is it? The truth is far more sinister. Undercover, underground and out of sight, the invaders plan what may in fact be a massive diversion. In the darkest recesses of Voltar’s Coordinated Information Apparatus (otherwise known as the CIA), a tyrant of terror sets out to exploit the invasion in order to seize power. All that stands in his way is a planet that doesn’t exist.
Discover a world where corporations rule and political corruption is rife. Where governments are driven by oil and controlled by drugs. Where global warming is getting hotter by the minute . . . and a scorching love affair could determine the fate of millions. Where a cosmic conspiracy is about to hit home and the intergalactic intrigue knows no bounds.
They call it Blito-P3. We call it Earth.
You can’t afford to look the other way. It’s the end of the world as you know it . . . and the beginning of one of the most spectacular, thought-provoking, and wildly inventive works of science fiction and espionage of our time
“You will lose sleep. You will miss appointments. If you don’t force yourself to set it down and talk to your family from time to time, you may be looking for a new place to live. Reading The Invaders Plan is simply the most fun you can have by yourself.” —Orson Scott Card
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hubbard (1911 1986) was one of the great pulp writers, and this brief SF novel, initially published in two parts in 1950 by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction, is one of his finest works. In it, Hubbard embraces one of SF's deepest goals, to explore the emotional consequences of technological advance, by imagining the effect upon star-faring humans of the "basic equation of mass and time.... AS MASS APPROACHES INFINITY, TIME APPROACHES ZERO." That is, as those who travel to distant stars at near light speed experience, say, the passing of a year, those left behind will experience the passing of decades, centuries. And so young nobleman Alan Corday responds in horror when, on Earth, he's kidnapped to the interstellar trader Hound of Heaven by order of its notorious Captain Jocelyn, who needs a new officer. Alan resists joining starship society, but when he returns home from several adventures in hopes of rejoining his fianc e, he finds her an ancient amnesiac and himself a man out of time, with no real home but that of the cursed starship. In heated prose ("The quivering Hound of Heaven hurled herself on course, blazing bow to bridge with particle flame..."), Hubbard brilliantly evokes the vastness of space and the tragedy of those who would conquer it. The novel's turning point Alan's reckoning with time's implacability is narrated suspensefully, but comes as no surprise; what does impress immensely is Hubbard's handling of the bitter consequences of Alan's realization, as well as his believable detailing of starship society. Readers used to today's bloated SF tomes will appreciate Hubbard's ability to pack an epic into relatively few pages this is indeed golden SF from the Golden Age.
