The Girls from Planet 5

Large spaceships from the Planet 5 have arrived on Earth. There are some who would welcome them, and others who are suspicious. America is split between a female-lead, pacifist Washington DC and a male-chauvinist, tobacco-chewing, crotch-scratching Free America (ie Texas). Each side thinks it's doing the right thing. Tempers flare and hijinx ensue when a journalist captures one of the super-strong beauties “manning” the ships.

An awesome classic sci-fi novel that will tickle the funny bone and give an interesting insight to what was “hot” in male-marketed science fiction at the time. A well-planned, fun novel with a great storyline, characters to care about, and a mystery as to just who THE GIRLS FROM PLANET 5 really are and what they want.

I had no idea what this book was about before I started it. I picked it up because it had a monochrome cover and was one of those old “science fiction book club” editions, which were sometimes unexpected gems.

This is not a gem. I had to push myself to finish it.

In the distant future of 1998, women control the world, and men are relagated to “home engineering” duties. This is generally seen as a good thing, because women are obviously driven by love and are good at organising things, but it does have its downsides, such as the US president having to run off to cry during meetings.

Every man in this book looks down on every woman. Every woman looks down on every man. The author clearly thinks they're being clever, and showing up a bunch of sexist stereotypes, but the result is exposing how pervasive they were. There is literally no paragraph I could pluck from anywhere in its pages that I could use to pretend this was acceptable satire.

Give it a miss. I wish I had.