Book Review: Planet of the Damned

Book Review: 'Planet of the Damned' by Harry Harrison

2 / 5 Stars

'Planet of the Damned' originally was serialized in Analog magazine in 1961. A paperback edition (135 pp.) was published by Bantam Books in January 1962. The cover artist is uncredited.

The opening chapter introduces us to the novel's hero, Brionn Brandd, a resident of the planet Anhvarian, and the exhausted victor of the grueling multi-event competition known as the 'Twenties'. As the victor of the competition, Brandd is looking forward to a life of leisure and planet-wide acclaim when he is visited by a former winner, Ihjel. It seems that Ihjel is an operative in the independent organization known as the 'Cultural Relationships Foundation', or CRF. 

According to Ihjel, a potentially disastrous conflict is looming elsewhere in the Federation, a conflict between the hardscrabble desert planet Dis, and its neighbor, the more affluent planet Nyjord. Tensions between the two polities have reached the point where an exchange of nuclear weapons is imminent.

The CRF has been working to defuse the conflict by discovering, and eliminating, a cache of  missiles secreted somewhere on Dis by the mysterious ruling class known as the magter. Unfortunately for the CRF, their effort has failed to gain much information about the whereabouts of the cache. 

Unless the missiles are discovered within the next five days, the Nyjordians will attack Dis and exterminate all life on the planet. Hoping to save Dis from its imminent fate, Ihjel has a proposition for Brion: join the CRF, travel to Dis, and do what an entire CRF detachment could not do: find the weapons cache.

Intrigued at the thought of traveling to another world and performing a life-and-death mission, Brandd agrees to accompany Ihjel. Joining them is a biologist from Earth, a swell dame, and a patent Love Interest: Doctor Lea Morees.

When the team arrives on Dis, they discover that their well-laid plans are for naught, and they will have to improvise. This will not be easy, for Dis is a Hell world of excessive heat, adversarial natives, and a local CRF office that is dispirited and defeated. Brion Brandd will have to call on all of his considerable physical and mental resources if he is to survive long enough to unravel the true nature of Disian society.........

'Planet of the Damned' is not one of Harrison's better novels, and deserves no more than a two-star Rating. Stylistically it obviously is modeled on Harrison's 'Deathworld' novels, which were quite popular in the 60s. However, compared to 'Deathworld', the action in 'Damned' suffers from slow pacing (Brion Brandd doesn't arrive on Dis until page 30). Harrison also relies on lengthy sections of dialogue for exposition, often using these dialogues as a vehicle through which he can pontificate to the reader about his personal insights into sociological matters. 

It doesn't help that 'Damned' is devoid of the satiric humor that made Jason dinAlt, the protagonist of 'Deathworld', an engaging character and animated the otherwise solemn narrative of that novel. 

Regarding the conclusion of 'Damned', I won't disclose any spoilers, save to say that the denouement gave Harrison the opportunity to provide an offbeat and imaginative ending, but he instead settles for a predictable resolution.

The verdict ? Even diehard Harrison fans are going to find 'Planet of the Damned' to be underwhelming.