"The World At Bay" 1953 CAPON, Paul
$250
CAPON, Paul
[199] pp.
William Heinemann Ltd
1953
7 1/2" x 5"
No one believed Professor Elrick of the London Radar Research Laboratory when he announced that Earth was in imminent danger of attack. Ever since his discovery of the dark star, Nero, the Professor and his young assistant, Jim Shannon, had studied the planet and its satellites through the radaroscope with a growing sense of impending doom. There seemed to be positive proof that the third planet, Poppea, had a civilization which was technologically far more advanced than Earth's!
The grim truth of the Professor's warning came upon an unprepared world with a frightful concussion that seemed to rock the planet in its orbit. The space fleet from Poppea had hit Earth's atmosphere! When the English government realized the dire circumstances, the Home Guard was called out, the ack-ack guns manned and plans drawn up for London's evacuation. But the measures that saved the heroic island during World War II proved ineffective against the grotesque Poppeans. Gray-skinned, horny-limbed, they landed in impregnable space ships, releasing bacteria-laden white powder.
His advance knowledge saved Jim Shannon and his associates from the sleep-inducing drug that blanketed Britain, and they lived to see the climax of man's battle with a superior civilization. How they met the Poppean leader, flew with him to the Arctic and watched with relief the slow withdrawal of the deadly Poppean grip make reading THE WORLD AT BAY a supremely exciting experience.
PAUL CAPON (1912-1969) was a British novelist of considerable reputation. He had over twenty novels to his credit and counted film editing and script writing as part of his experience. He traveled extensively in Europe and made a hobby of chess, book-collecting and swimming. His first book for Winston was written in Hythe, an almost-deserted seaside resort on the English Channel - a town steeped in the past, which ironically enough inspired him to write THE WORLD AT BAY, most definitely a tale of the future.