This was an awful book, just awful. I remember liking Christopher’s No Blade of Grass, so I was looking forward to this. After the first day of reading I was of the opinion that I should move on, but I had only about 80 pages to go so I stuck with it for another day. It was a big mistake.

Planet in Peril wanders about with nothing much happening. The characters are very polite to each other, even the villains. There seems to be very little motivation for any of the action. The main  character (I hesitate to call him a protagonist as he never actually does anything), who is a failed researcher is assigned to do research and seems to make no progress. He is continually fooled by competing powers in a 21st century stagnant society, but easily wanders out of one well guarded place into another well guarded place. There is a comet coming and a religious group called The Cometeers, but they don’t really have much to do with the plot. This future state is composed of economic management units rather than political units. It turns out that the project that the researcher is supposed to be working on has already been finished by the only capitalist political group on earth, which is going to take over the world. Ho-Hum. By the end of the book, you are just glad that it is over and that the endless wandering around is over with. They guy gets the girl, but you don’t really care.

This was first published in 1955 as The Year of the Comet. My copy of Planet in Peril has a copyright of 1959.