This Island Earth

This Island Earth is a 1952 science fiction novel by American writer Raymond F. Jones. It was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine as a serialized set of three novelettes by 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 1952 novel This Island Earth. It became the basis for the 1955 Universal-International science fiction film also titled 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 era. While the film starts out in a very similar manner to the novel, the film's storyline quickly goes its own way.