This Island Earth

Blurb

This Island Earth is a 1952 science fiction novel by Raymond F. Jones. It was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine as a serialized set of three novelettes by Raymond F. Jones: "The Alien Machine" in the June 1949 issue, "The Shroud of Secrecy" in the December 1949 issue, and "The Greater Conflict" in the February 1950 issue. These three stories were later combined into the novel entitled This Island Earth in 1952. The novel became the basis for the 1955 science fiction film This Island Earth.
The story revolves around a race of aliens who, in recruiting humans for a group called "Peace Engineers", are actually using Earth as a pawn in an intergalactic war. Both the novel and the film contain some intriguing concepts that had not previously been considered by most science fiction of the time, but while the movie starts out in a very similar manner to the novel, it quickly goes its own way.