Fifth Planet

by Fred Hoyle

Another star is due to pass close to the sun, close enough for conventional spacecraft to reach it. The first planets observed are four gas-giants, but then an inner 'Fifth Planet' is found. Signs of chlorophyll are detected, suggesting that it supports life. Rival Soviet and US expeditions are launched to visit it.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Professor Sir Fred Hoyle was one of the most distinguished, creative, and controversial scientists of the twentieth century. He was a Fellow of St John’s College (1939-1972, Honorary Fellow 1973-2001), was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1957, held the Plumian Chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy (1958-1972), established the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge (now part of the Institute of Astronomy), and (in 1972) received a knighthood for his services to astronomy.

Hoyle was a keen mountain climber, an avid player of chess, a science fiction writer, a populariser of science, and the man who coined the phrase 'The Big Bang'.

Reviews

[Teemu Öhman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why I didn't read British astronomer Fred Hoyle's Fifth Planet as a teenager. After all, I had enjoyed the Black Cloud, Inferno and October the First Is too Late, and a Finnish translation of Fifth Planet was in my hometown library. Better late than never, though.

Overall, reading Fifth Planet was an enjoyable experience. There were too many things and ideas in too short a space and none of them were really developed fully enough, but despite these shortcomings I liked it. In the beginning the ménage à trois seems somewhat annoying (and given the personality of the main female character, I wouldn't recommed Fifth Planet to feminists) but it becomes perfectly justified later on. However, I'm not sure I liked any of the characters, which is probably one of the reasons for a fairly low rating (according to my positive Goodreads standards). I know people who couldn't stand the ending, but to me it was just perfect and it left me with a good feeling of the book.

Although I liked much of the book, there are a couple of things that I didn't like that need to be mentioned. Foreseeing the development of technology is of course notoriously difficult. However, not having a computer of any kind aboard the western mission to the fifth planet is just ridiculous. Equally stupid and not believable is not having any scientists as crewmembers. Oh well.

If you like Sir Fred's other books or oldish scifi in general, you'll probably like this one too. And if you don't, why would you even consider reading this?

3.5/5

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can put this one next to 2001. It isn't as cosmically imaginative as Clarke's book, but it has a similar vibe. One hundred years in the future, a star with its own planetary system passes near Earth. Four of its five planets are gas giants, but the fifth, dubbed Achilles, is Earth-sized and evidently Earth-like. Two expeditions, one Russian, one American, set out for Achilles, where they discover endless swards of grass and long, shallow lakes. Then things get weird.

To be honest, it's all a little weird from the beginning. Written by astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and his novelist son Geoffrey Hoyle, this book doesn't read like any ordinary science fiction novel. This is a good thing: it's different and it suits the subject matter. It has the deliberateness of the scientific mind and also its leaps forward, as well as its odd digressions. In a way, its characters are digressions. They aren't as colorless as Bowman and Poole (I'm thinking of Kubrick's 2001), yet they aren't quite what one would expect in a science fiction novel, either. The astronauts, for example, are strangely laid-back, largely unmoved by the momentousness of exploring a new, living world. And then there's the hero of the story. He isn't one of the astronauts; he isn't even on the trip. And he's happy about it. This is because his wife's lover is on the trip, and he's looking forward to having her all to himself for awhile. Find me another science fiction book with a cuckold as the hero. There aren't many. I doubt that any of this was intentionally designed this way, but it all dovetails to give this book a slightly off-kilter feel that keeps it surprising -- and eerie, once the explorers begin to realize there's more to Achilles than grass and water.

One reviewer said, "It's at the novel's conclusion where Fifth Planet comes into its own." I mention this less to disagree than to point out that clearly others do not share my opinion. Nevertheless, I was disappointed with the way the book ended, for a number of reasons, none of which I will go into here. That having been said, this is a fascinating novel, one you won't regret reading even if, like me, it's the first 150 pages you will remember, not the last 30.

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the enjoyment of reading 60's sci-fi is the alternative future this era offered us. It is the mid 21st century, there is no internet, mobile phones, and computers are large clumsy machines that use punch cards and do not fit on nuclear powered rockets.
Women are beautiful objects that live to clean and bestow glamour upon male scientists and astronauts. The Soviets and the Americans are still neck and neck in the Space Race and both keen to pit their national pride on a race to a new planet and solar system that happens to be making a close bypass.
Hoyle and son love to point out the predictions they got correct in the forward, so I am not going to let them off the hook on this!
Certainly a plot that proves anything but predictable, but does tend to become one of those preachy books about the stupidity of the human species, which can get a bit tiring.
Like most sci-fi of the era, the strengths of the writing is in the ideas, and putting the 'science' in sci-fi. This book is certainly not about character development, and most particularly not about female characters who seem to be extremely passive and the objects of male conquest. Nevertheless, the main female character (who is said to live only for eating, sleep and sex) does get a good personality makeover worth getting to the end for.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice little story. I had low expectations going in, but it exceeded them greatly. It was well-paced, interesting and didn't get bogged down in too much scientific talk. I didn't really know what to expect for a storyline, and it was nicely surprising. Not wanting to spoiler the story, it's a nice outer space adventure; a most enjoyable read.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

4½. Really fascinating. This is the best thing I've ever read by Fred Hoyle.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read 'Fifth Planet' after thoroughly enjoying 'The Black Cloud'. Overall, I did not find 'Fifth Planet' as thought provoking as 'The Black Cloud', however once the characters reached Achilles, I could not put the book down.

At 224 pages 'Fifth Planet' was a short read, but in its few pages it managed to explore one of the many possible repercussions of space exploration. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I am looking forward to reading many more by Geoffrey Hoyle.

[Xian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Con un poco mas de desarrollo y detalles sería una mejor novela. Transcurre en el año 2087 pero todo remite al año que la escribieron.

[Christopher Hivner · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entire solar system, sun and planets, is hurtling toward our own. There is an earth-like planet and both the Americans and the Russians decide to send a ship to land on the planet they've named Achilles to explore it. The Russian ship cannot take off to come home so the crews collaborate. By the time they leave Achilles, 3 of the combined crew are dead and 2 others are insane because of strange incidents on the planet. When they return home it turns out one of themen was being inhabited by a creature from Achilles. The creature passes into another person and begins to do its own exploring of Earth.

Fifth Planet has an interesting premise and is a good read once the rockets take off and land on Achilles and return. The first part of the book however, is rather dull. Too much talk of politics and sociology. These are things that play into the ending but they're laid out in an uninteresting way. The interplay between the U.S and Russia is also dated. The story takes place in 2087 but the book was written in 1963 so it has a very cold war feel.

[Joel B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to abandon this book a quarter of the way through, but I pressed on. By the time I was halfway through, I really wanted to abandon it. But giving up on things is something I find difficult. In this case it paid off. This book was dreadfully boring until about 60% in when it became interesting. I swear the writing improved in the final chapters too. In the end I actually enjoyed it, it just took way to long to take off but managed to pull together some interesting and entertaining ideas.

[Larry Rolfes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story, but for me the most entertaining part of this book was how wrong it was about predicting life in the future. In particular, attitudes toward women and advances in computer technology were way off even for today, much less 2087 (still using punched cards! LOL).

[Bruce L · Rating 3 out of 5]

can't.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fred Hoyle was a great astronomer who wrote popular science books and science fiction on the side. The popular science books were very good. The science fiction not so much.

Science fiction is supposed to be fiction. That means not only that it is not true, a story, but that it has characters that seem real, grab your interest, and act in ways that you identify with. They have lives you care about and face human problems. In the other books by Hoyle that I have read (The Black Cloud, October the First is Too Late) such characterization is sorely lacking. But here the situaton is much better -- perhaps because his son Geoffrey is coauthor.

The year is 2087. The basic plot idea is somewhat similar to that of The Black Cloud. A visitor of astronomical size is approaching our solar system. Here it is not a huge interstellar cloud but another solar system. A star about the size of our sun with a retinue of five planets is traveling about 70 km per second relative to our sun. This was first realized about the year 2000, and what to do has been discussed all that time. There is no danger of actual collision, as nothing will come closer than about the distance to Uranus. Since there is a planet about the size of Earth (the titular fifth planet) it has been decided to send out a large rocket with four astronauts to land on the planet, if at all feasible and then come back.

The book was written in 1962. In the introduction Hoyle says he has tried to anticipate future trends based on what was going on then. In this he has failed! There are two female characters, one the wife of the main character, the other a Russian female astronaut. Without going into a lot of detail, suffice it to say that male/female relationships and the status of women in society are very much at a 1962 level! Also, he failed to anticipate the enormous growth in the power of computers and their miniturization. To be fair, I don't think anyone else in 1962 did either. Several times he mentions computers using punched cards! How many people reading this review even know what a punched card is?

The Soviet Union still exists. The world is divided politically into a Western block and an Eastern block. Both sides send a rocket to explore the "fifth planet." Both land on the planet, and then odd things start to happen.

This is a well writen book with good character development, a love triangle, and an interesting plot. Again compared to the other two Fred Hoyle books I have read, there is a lot less speechifying. However, like the others, the book is written in the third person, by an omniscient observer who does a lot of explaining. I personally prefer first person books, where dialog brings out background facts.

The first third of the book is about the preparations for the launch of the rocket; the second third is the trip, the landing, and what happens there; and the last third is what happens on Earth after the ship returns. The main character, Hugh Conway, occurs only in the first and last third. His wife Cathy also has a major role in the first and third sections. But Cathy seems to have changed ...

This is a good book, well worth reading.

[SpentCello · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it was off to a rough start, this book definitely improved as it went on... But I still don't think it got very far. It felt a lot like the authors intended to write a book set slightly in the future from where they were (let's say about mid 1970s) and then they mostly wrote a book set then, however, a decision was made at some revision point later that it would only make sense the setting was moved later by 100 years. There's a couple of vague scientific reasons this could be for and some astronomical reasons, however, I don't think any of them come close to justifying the blandness of the future the Hoyles describe. The amount of references to how people would have thought of things "a century earlier" or it was funny how not much has changed "a century on" were tedious and a very lame way to describe a future. There was no convincing reason as to why the entire human race basically stagnated in the 1960s and didn't develop in the next 100 years, and there was just a general lack of nuance in the world of Fifth Planet.

The actual meat of the story in all the aspects of the fifth planet itself and the subsequent plot points were enjoyable and that part of the book was a great example of classic sci-fi such as that from John Wyndham, Frank Herbert, etc. Without going into any spoilers, the key concepts and mechanics that the plot relies on are compelling and intriguing, which allows the Hoyles to successfully explore aspects of human nature in an engaging way. However, this was by far too small a part of the book and the world and characters intruded on these ideas, cluttering up a otherwise engaging novel with poorly thought-out and boring archetypes and clichés.

As a final point, Cathy is practically the embodiment of everything that was/is wrong with science fiction in terms of the portrayal of female characters. I presume that given Geoffrey Hoyle's interest in films (as stated in the short author bio in the book), that they were perhaps envisaging their character being played by Marilyn Monroe and therefore leant as heavily as possible into the ditsy, lust-driven, non-thinking, only-there-as-sex-appeal aspects of the characters Monroe played. Regardless of their motivations, it's awful writing and completely unbelievable, which is in such stark contrast to the equation-driven, hard science fiction style of the main plot.

This book had a good premise but all of the other parts that went into it were severely lacking. A bit like taking a fine wine and putting it in a casserole of partially rotten vegetables... Not a particularly pleasant result, but at least you still have some of the wine left over.

[Dave Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors say in the preface that "the very nature of the plot has forced us to set this story in the more distant future than we would otherwise have preferred", going on to explain that they have made no effort to imagine the society and politics of the 2080s. That makes the novel a curious science fantasy, in which 21st century rocket technology is grafted onto attitudes (and other fields of tech) that were past their sell-by date even in 1962. All serious work is done by men; the sole female astronaut is the first ever. Nightclubs play jazz. People drive petrol-guzzling cars. The population has grown, but not by much. There are no mobile phones, no personal computing, no internet.

As I write this in 2024 we're about halfway between the time the book was written and the time it's set, so it's interesting to wonder what assumptions we might make about the world of 60 years from now that are completely wrong. I expect life will be totally different, transformed by AI among other things, assuming we don't have a global nuclear war in the next decade, but there must be dozens of factors I've never even thought of that will make human society in 2067 unrecognizable to us today.

The plot is a little stretched, though it finds an ingenious way to feature an alien planet without resorting to FTL drive. I suspect the disruption of planetary orbits would be catastrophic, but back in the '60s they probably thought we had a highly stable ecosystem that would correct itself against small perturbations rather than running off into a new configuration.

There are similarities with Solaris which must be coincidental as the two books were written at almost the same time, and Solaris hadn't been translated into English by the time Fifth Planet came out.

A passage I liked: "It was rather like the way atoms changed in your body. Their identity was never quite the same two minutes running, and over the years they changed completely. But it didn't make any difference to the structure, it didn't make any difference to you. Why should it? After all, one atom of oxygen is exactly the same as another. It didn't matter in the least swopping them round as long as you didn't change the pattern. It was of course the pattern that really counted."

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a distinctly old-fashioned SF novel. In the preface, the authors acknowledge that they cannot possibly predict the shape of society 100 years into the future, so they extrapolate the strongest trends in their present. The resulting society is an amalgam of the 1950's Organization Man, and Cold War hysteria. In the year 2060, the protagonist stops by a shop to get change to make phone calls. Data is transferred on punch cards. There are 10,000 men working on the space project which is the center of the book--no women, just men. The first women in space is a female Soviet Cosmonaut picked for propaganda value and not capability. The protagonists spend five pages toward the end of the book discussing the science behind what they had experienced. The main function of the women is to serve as objects of sexual desire.

And yet, the novel does have a naive 1950's idea-centric sense of wonder about it.

I was glad to read the book, but I probably won't keep my copy.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm resisting the urge to dock this points because of it's ingrained misogyny, but it's absolutely dyed-in-the-wool stuff. The rest of this though, has that nimble plotting that manages to pull in lots of ideas rather effectively. The astro-physics-heavy opening offers some nice satires, and surprisingly accurate predictions, on politics and bureaucracy. The alien planet is weird and reminiscent of Solaris and The Book of Strange New Things. And the final third act touches on ideas later used in Watchmen, amongst other things.

[Benedict Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

The science and ideas around lifeforce being a wavelength are amazing, well worth reading just for these elements. Even if it is partly based on an inaccurate 1960s view of the distances between stars.
The cold war paranoia, and stereotypical US and Russian characters are amusing elements which highlight how much Sci Fi is really about the times they were written.
The constant sexism and "adult" elements around sex are shocking to a modern reader. Amazing what was publishable in the early 60s.

[Jay Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written in 1962 and other reviews got hung up on the fact that it failed to guess at some of the innovations and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 62 years since its publication. The concept is a good one. A solar system is passing close to ours and it provides an opportunity to explore the other solar system. The problem is they stumble upon another civilization of beings much different than us. The concept is good, but character development is poor.

[Elise · Rating 2 out of 5]

8/10 on the “yikes” meter. Sexy silly Woman is replaced with smart sexy alien. Many cases of sexual assault. 9 pages from alien to making out with alien. Very good suspenseful and scary part. Interesting social ideas.

[Alan Nguyen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps one day I will actually get to the scifi part, but 40 pages of how the MC's wife is so hot and dumb and cheating on him all the time was too much for me.

Another L for Fred Hoyle. Shoulda believed in the Big Bang instead of writing bad books.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vintage Hoyle. Some good stuff about 60s nuclear paranoia, some strange scenes on another planet, and his musings about the nature of time and consciousness.

[Guillaume · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ce n'est pas forcément mauvais, mais cela quand a même beaucoup vieilli.

[Graham Stevenson]

I forget how many times I've read this, it's that good. Though provoking and classically Hoyleesque in its scientific treatment of 'sci-fi'.

[Pinko Palest · Rating 4 out of 5]

surprisingly readable, and the science bits are informative and realistic. Suffers from some of the common failures of scifi, but all in all a good read

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Het begin van net boek begon wat saai. Maar naarmate ik verder in jet verhaal kwam werd het steeds beter.

[Maximilian Gunnarsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Väldigt bra!

[David Moth · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. Very much of its time and not a book to be taken too seriously

[Robert Lomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a combined effort by Fred Hoyle and his son Geoffrey. Sir Fred is logical and systematic scientist who always gets the detail of the physics correct but in his solo writings his characters are perhaps a little two dimensional or even autobiographical. Hugh Conway, the hero of this book, really does have an emotional life of his own and you get sucked into his difficult relationship with his wife Cathy.
The theme, one which Sir Fred has written about a great deal in his non-fiction, is the question of the origins and dispersion of life in the Universe. The story, of an expedition to a planet of a nearby star, is well-paced with many unexpected twists and turns that always stay within the bounds of the possible.
You may read it for the story but will find that you learn quite a bit about extraterritorial biology and the mechanics of space flight, almost as an aside.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published way back in 1963, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyles Fifth Planet is well written SF novel about a voyage to the fifth planet of another solar system that is passing through, or colliding with, the Sol system. The science of the story is very unconvincing and at times poorly thought out, which is surprising considering the astronomer credentials of Fred Hoyle. The human relationships are well portrayed, which was where the writing style paid off.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Penguin SF edition.

1ST PUBLISHED DATE in the book is 1933, which MUST BE WRONG - BUT THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS!. FRED HOYLE IS THE ASTRONOMER, GEOFFREY IS HIS SON. - SAYS IN PREFACE IT WAS WRITTEN IN 1962...