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The Green Planet
Exiled from Earth, thirteen refugees find themselves fighting for their lives in a poisoned paradise.
- GenresScience Fiction
143 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
About the author
J. Hunter Holly
22 books17 followersJoan Carol Holly was a science fiction author who wrote under the pseudonym J. Hunter Holly in the late 1950s until the mid-1970s. Joan Holly also contributed stories for Roger Elwood's series of books and sci-fi magazines, under both her real name(Joan C. Holly) and her pseudonym (Joan Hunter Holly).
Joan died of lung cancer in 1982.
Joan died of lung cancer in 1982.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 7, 2020
A group of 13 men are exiled to Klorath, a distant but green planet where the members of a rebel group, their wives and children can make a new life for themselves. Rebels have been sent here for years, but when this batch arrives, there is no welcoming committee, and instead, they find a pile of bones covered in pockmarks and a warning that there is no survival. Twelve of them are unwilling to give up, and when they stumble upon a former colony, they decide to claim it for their home and get to work planting crops and building more shelter.
Of course, the corrupt government that exiled these men lied about the conditions of Klorath and the colonists soon discover why their predecessors were reduced to bones.
This is a fun example of a quick sci-fi read published in the 1960s that dates very well because of the excitement of exploring this totally new environment with the characters. Earth's new government could be likened to communism, but this story isn't heavy on politics, so it can be enjoyed as an adventure story more than a social commentary.
Of course, the corrupt government that exiled these men lied about the conditions of Klorath and the colonists soon discover why their predecessors were reduced to bones.
This is a fun example of a quick sci-fi read published in the 1960s that dates very well because of the excitement of exploring this totally new environment with the characters. Earth's new government could be likened to communism, but this story isn't heavy on politics, so it can be enjoyed as an adventure story more than a social commentary.
May 23, 2025
J. Hunter Holly's 1960 The Green Planet is an intriguing yet also somewhat frustrating science fiction novel full of common mid-century tropes: a big bad Earth government smug and soul-crushing, plucky individualistic rebels we can't help rooting for, an exile planet--and damn the expense of interstellar transport, I guess--of mysterious circumstances and even more mysterious aliens.
The book opens with Jason Tolliver, his girlfriend, and eleven other rebels against The League finally being released from their quarters "for the first time in three months" (1961 Monarch paperback, page 5), about to be sent down to the essentially unknown world of Klorath. The captain of the transport cannot understand "[w]hy The League should pamper its enemies" with exile and "the chance to begin again, any way [they] want"; after all, "[b]efore The League [they] would have been killed--as traitors!" (page 7). Jason explains, rather stagily, with his compatriots' "heads nodd[ing] agreement around him," that "The League is corrupt... It owes its existence to propaganda and manipulation, not to any inherent righteousness," so they "couldn't stand by and watch it any longer" (page 6).
And as to why exile rather than execution, Jason tells his girlfriend, Kathy, that "the penalty is so attractive" because then "[i]t's much easier to catch people who can be careless because they have little to lose" (page 8). The League's "crie[s]" are " 'The League Is Always With You,' and 'One League--One Will--One People,' and 'Everything for Everyone,' " but "[u]nder the cover of slogans, the true goal [is] to get rid of the sub-normals and the super-normals until there [is] a stable population of nothings" (page 9). Jason's "father saw it and hated it and fought it" (page 9), but fought how ? we might wonder. Presumably not with assassinations and pipe bombs. Just talk-talk, perhaps, about whatever "the hope of a better life" (page 9) is?
Regardless, it's all wonderfully vague, yet it's equally clear that these exiles are Right and the government is Wrong. The rebels are sent down by robot shuttle because, as the transport skipper reports, he dares not "risk exposing" any of his crew to the rebel colonists of Klorath: "There is a story that some years ago crewman were so completely taken in by the people who met the shuttle that they needed months of intensive reconditioning to bring them back to sense" (page 6). Mm hmm. So they go down to step out of the airlock into a paradise of "sun...gold and warm in a pure blue sky, bluer than Earth's," with "great trees stretch[ing] up...on every side," and "bird songs and insect buzzes, grass and red flowers that sen[d] spice through the breeze, and over all, a clarity of the air that their lungs ha[ve] never known" (page 10).
Except... Well, no colonists have met them at the landing site. Where is Jason's "tall and dignified" (page 9) father? Where is the expected "welcoming party" (page 11)? After waiting a couple of hours, two pairs of men head out looking for answers, and Jason and his buddy stumble upon "a vacant-eyed pile of clean-picked, human skeletons" (page 12). Dum dum dummmm... This is no plot-spoiler, by the way, for the book's back blurb has already told us of this, along with the giant predatory birds with "great leathery wings," "leather-scaled body," and "long whip of a leather tail" (page 36) whose appearance we wait and wait for until about a quarter of the way through the piece, and the enigmatic natives of "gold-bronze skin" (page 77) that do not appear until halfway through.
So we have a lost-colony mystery with a message of "NO COLONY--NO CHANCE" (page 14) rather than "Croatoan," we have monstrous man-eating birds, and we have alien Noble Savages. Facing these are Jason and the "young and vibrant" Kathy of the "shiny black hair and silken skin" (page 8), the Staunch Friend, the Weak Man, the Old Codgers, the Whining Woman, the Tough Guy, the Sweet Innocent Children, and whatnot. I won't touch on any of the actual plot, because I don't want to spoil any twists and turns here and there. I will comment, though, that sometimes motivations are a little iffy and that although the question of the bronze-skinned aliens is an interesting one, albeit with a solution we probably will guess at beforehand, the author at the end finally leaves us with a number of crucial open questions--and not purposefully, I think.
J. Hunter Holly's The Green Planet is decently entertaining SF of a solid 60-plus years ago, sometimes fuzzy, and not quite as deep as it seems to want to be by the end, a piece I thus can't quite bring myself to round up and hence will consider juuuust short of 3.5 stars.
The book opens with Jason Tolliver, his girlfriend, and eleven other rebels against The League finally being released from their quarters "for the first time in three months" (1961 Monarch paperback, page 5), about to be sent down to the essentially unknown world of Klorath. The captain of the transport cannot understand "[w]hy The League should pamper its enemies" with exile and "the chance to begin again, any way [they] want"; after all, "[b]efore The League [they] would have been killed--as traitors!" (page 7). Jason explains, rather stagily, with his compatriots' "heads nodd[ing] agreement around him," that "The League is corrupt... It owes its existence to propaganda and manipulation, not to any inherent righteousness," so they "couldn't stand by and watch it any longer" (page 6).
And as to why exile rather than execution, Jason tells his girlfriend, Kathy, that "the penalty is so attractive" because then "[i]t's much easier to catch people who can be careless because they have little to lose" (page 8). The League's "crie[s]" are " 'The League Is Always With You,' and 'One League--One Will--One People,' and 'Everything for Everyone,' " but "[u]nder the cover of slogans, the true goal [is] to get rid of the sub-normals and the super-normals until there [is] a stable population of nothings" (page 9). Jason's "father saw it and hated it and fought it" (page 9), but fought how ? we might wonder. Presumably not with assassinations and pipe bombs. Just talk-talk, perhaps, about whatever "the hope of a better life" (page 9) is?
Regardless, it's all wonderfully vague, yet it's equally clear that these exiles are Right and the government is Wrong. The rebels are sent down by robot shuttle because, as the transport skipper reports, he dares not "risk exposing" any of his crew to the rebel colonists of Klorath: "There is a story that some years ago crewman were so completely taken in by the people who met the shuttle that they needed months of intensive reconditioning to bring them back to sense" (page 6). Mm hmm. So they go down to step out of the airlock into a paradise of "sun...gold and warm in a pure blue sky, bluer than Earth's," with "great trees stretch[ing] up...on every side," and "bird songs and insect buzzes, grass and red flowers that sen[d] spice through the breeze, and over all, a clarity of the air that their lungs ha[ve] never known" (page 10).
Except... Well, no colonists have met them at the landing site. Where is Jason's "tall and dignified" (page 9) father? Where is the expected "welcoming party" (page 11)? After waiting a couple of hours, two pairs of men head out looking for answers, and Jason and his buddy stumble upon "a vacant-eyed pile of clean-picked, human skeletons" (page 12). Dum dum dummmm... This is no plot-spoiler, by the way, for the book's back blurb has already told us of this, along with the giant predatory birds with "great leathery wings," "leather-scaled body," and "long whip of a leather tail" (page 36) whose appearance we wait and wait for until about a quarter of the way through the piece, and the enigmatic natives of "gold-bronze skin" (page 77) that do not appear until halfway through.
So we have a lost-colony mystery with a message of "NO COLONY--NO CHANCE" (page 14) rather than "Croatoan," we have monstrous man-eating birds, and we have alien Noble Savages. Facing these are Jason and the "young and vibrant" Kathy of the "shiny black hair and silken skin" (page 8), the Staunch Friend, the Weak Man, the Old Codgers, the Whining Woman, the Tough Guy, the Sweet Innocent Children, and whatnot. I won't touch on any of the actual plot, because I don't want to spoil any twists and turns here and there. I will comment, though, that sometimes motivations are a little iffy and that although the question of the bronze-skinned aliens is an interesting one, albeit with a solution we probably will guess at beforehand, the author at the end finally leaves us with a number of crucial open questions--and not purposefully, I think.
J. Hunter Holly's The Green Planet is decently entertaining SF of a solid 60-plus years ago, sometimes fuzzy, and not quite as deep as it seems to want to be by the end, a piece I thus can't quite bring myself to round up and hence will consider juuuust short of 3.5 stars.
February 28, 2026
I'm not sure why this book isn't considered a first contact classic. At times very painful to read because of the hubris, arrogance, and stupidity of the human colonists ... but then initial culture contact on earth follows the same pattern.
November 27, 2014
1987 grade B-
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews