/lit/ - Literature

The Silent Invaders - Robert Silverberg (1963)
This is very much a Cold War novella, even though it doesn't have anything to directly do with the Cold War. Two alien races are having a propaganda battle with each other to manipulate the media and politics of Earth so that Earth will join their side in the war. A lot of times the alien bit seems entirely irrelevant and is plainly seen as an artifice of the plot to provide a veneer of being sci-fi. Takes place in 2520, though advancement has apparently been very uneven.
The protagonist, one of the aliens, has to decide where he's loyalties truly life. It's all resolved in the end by a deus ex utero as the other race has actually been cultivating mutant humans to create a super race who will challenge the universe at a fundamental level and the aliens hope by helping that they will take pity on them and allow their race to survive once they come to dominance.
Rating: 2/5

I plan to continue reading the Silverberg novellas every Monday and Tuesday, when able to do so, until I run out of them I have and then I may or may not get more of them, for no other reason than that's what I feel like doing. I have to say I've been rather disappointed so far though. Also, these are more book summaries rather than reviews, but that's more because I didn't like them enough to go into more detail of that sort.