Tourist Planet/The Secret Visitors.

The Secret Visitors. (Ace D-237, August 1957: doubled with Master of Life and Death by Robert Silverberg. Words 56000 Dr. Lockhart encounters an old man in Paris, one of thirty-odd 'dying grandfathers' who commit suicide rather than answer the simplest questions about themselves or their origins. Lockhart has been retained by the World Security Organization to find some connection between these men and the threat of nuclear war hanging over the world. Before dying, this broken down old boulevardier 'converses' with him in a language not available on the Berlitz syllabus. Then things go galactic. The Interstellar Tourist Agency is organizing package holidays to terrible, decadent Terra as part of its fell scheme against the Galactic Federation. A bit like the 1956 film version of Raymond F. Jones 1952 fix-up novel, This Island Earth -- only different. Synopsis by Graham Andrews   First Published: NEW WORLDS Nos 52-54,October-December 1956 3-part Serial Novel titled Tourist Planet.   First Book publication: Ace Pocketbook D-237, August 1957, retitled The Secret Visitors.   Publication History: Digit Books No R479, June 1961 Ace Pocketbooks G-675, 2nd ed, December 1967 White Lion, London-New York, ISBN 85617 567 6, April 1974   Foreign Publication: HAPNA, May to August 1958 as Touristplaneten Terra Utopische Romane No 7, 1958 as Die Auberidischen FUTURIA No 2, Lira 200, mid-1965 as Il Visitatori Occulti Terra Extra No 149, 80phg, August 1967 as Die Auberidischen Erich Pabel Verlag No 1, DM80, February 1979 as Die Auberisischen

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