American science fiction writer Kris Neville (1925-1980) enjoyed some early success but his output slowed considerably during the 1960s.
I would guess that the setting is supposed to be about a quarter century in the future.
Julia is a slightly odd young woman who has just come into a great deal of money. She has some ideas about how to use this money but her first priority is to buy herself a husband. She’s confident that she’ll be able to afford one who will be satisfactory.
Then some odd things start happening to her. She cuts her finger rather badly and discovers that she can heal the would instantly. That’s rather puzzling. Even more puzzling is her new-found ability to walk through walls. She also discovers that she can learn things very quickly. She has a perfect memory. Given that she’s always been a very ordinary girl these abilities come as quite a surprise to her.
She also hears a man’s voice in her head. She quickly figures out that she is not going crazy. It’s a real voice. It appears that telepathy is among her new skills.
The explanation may have something to do with the space station currently orbiting the Earth. It’s an alien space station and nobody on Earth knows of its existence. It has a kind of cloaking device. It’s the spearhead of an alien invasion and the invasion should be successful thanks to the Lyrian mutants. They possess some very formidable powers such as teleportation and telepathy. And Lyrians look remarkably similar to humans.
The aliens are very disturbed to learn of Julia’s existence. No-one on Earth could possess the powers that she possesses. And those powers might well enable her to discover the invasion plans.
One of the mutants, Walt, is sent down to the planet surface to kill her. There’s no problem motivating him to do this. He has been taught since birth that the inhabitants of Earth are evil and are deadly enemies to the Lyrians. Walt is anxious to kill these enemies.
This is the basic setup. The novel then becomes a hunt. Walt has to find Julia in order to kill her. Julia has to stay alive until she can figure out how to convince the government of the danger. She doesn’t know the exact nature of the danger but she knows it’s real and it’s extreme.
The things that Julia doesn’t know (and there are lots of things she doesn’t know) are important, and there are also many very important things that Walt doesn’t know.
The aliens have a somewhat interesting weakness. Other than that the plot is fairly typical of alien invasion tales.
Earth Alert! is certainly pulpy but it’s weird enough to be interesting. There’s a certain amount of paranoia but it’s not the usual 1950s paranoia. It’s a more wide-ranging paranoia. It does tap into the flying saucer craze of that era. The space age was just beginning to dawn and the idea that other inhabited worlds existed elsewhere in the galaxy and might potentially be a threat had gained momentum.
Modern readers might consider that the outlandish elements such as telepathy and teleportation and invisibility make this novel fantasy rather than science fiction. In the 50s however paranormal abilities had at least a vague fringe kind of scientific almost-respectability. On the other hand the author seems to have limited interest in scientific plausibility. There’s some amusing technobabble. There’s also a certain goofiness to the story at times.
You don’t want to take this novel too seriously. Actually you don’t want to take it at all seriously. If you like your pulp science fiction frenetic and a bit silly it’s enjoyable enough.
Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with Poul Anderson’s enjoyable sword-and-planet adventure novella The Virgin of Valkarion in a two-novel edition.
I’ve only read one other of Kris Neville's books, his 1967 novel Special Delivery. Based on these two books I’d describe Neville as a writer of seriously offbeat but quite intriguing science fiction.
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