Customer Reviews

Xeno

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read all of DF Jones end-of-civilization novels, starting with the extremely dreadful "Colossus Forbin Project" (the film adaption is immeasurably better, just as "The Graduate" film was known for improving upon it's source). Of all his books, "Earth Has Been Found" is by far the most entertaining, filled with impending doom and fascinating sci-fi ideas. Jones usually takes a simple hypothesis and follows it to it's logical conclusion. In this case, what if some minor alien pest was accidentally left on our planet? It happens all the time when people travel, accidentally taking along a plant or pest to another part of the globe which eventually decimates plants or animals that have no evolutionary resistance. In this novel, each time the protagonists think they have a handle on the situation, the author turns the screw again. While there are many similarities to "Andromeda Strain," the creepy, grim plot reminds me more of John Campbell's classic "Who goes there?" which both "The Thing" films were based on.

The book is bracketed by a brief prolog & epilog from someone in the future, the same literary device used in "Monkey Planet" (aka "Planet of the Apes"). Naturally it has the same effect - to quickly extrapolate what kind of sociological result has occurred since the main story has taken place. Jones sees civilization as a thin mask hiding the primitive in humans - whether it's about women being sex-bimbos or people holding godlike awe to anything they don't understand and believe to be superior to them. The latter boils down to being superstitious. He foresees the end result of the novel's unnatural catastrophe to be a pragmatic but dogmatic religious dictatorship. Would a modern skeptical world see a predatory extraterrestrial as God's wrath? There are fundamentalist minorities in the West which see every event as heaven sent; non-secular governments elsewhere; and conservative religious movements using violence to radically change (or take over a destabilized) society. This outcome seems quite possible, though it doesn't have much to do with the bulk of the novel (the alien pest infestation).

One annoying drawback throughout all of Jones' novels is his persistent depiction of women as conniving sex-bimbos, except for a couple older women (the implication being that post-menopausal women are no longer dominated by hormones and can become thinkers and doers like men). Ironically, the reader needs to suspend disbelief more for his female characters than for his monsters.

If one can tolerate the simplistic female characterization, the novel remains a very unnerving story that unfolds with a grim inevitability, and remains effective in later re-readings. One of my favorite books.