Sometime in the near future, the twin forces of overpopulation and environmental depletion have led the nations of the world to form three major economic blocs, each named after the resources they still possess in enough abundance to supply the rest of the world. Kept at peace by runaway nuclear proliferation, which has given even some of the smaller nations the bomb, the Food Bloc (which feeds the world), the Energy Bloc (which still produces fossil fuels) and the People Bloc (which exports cheap labor) all exist in an uneasy truce, fueled by their mutual economic need. But the resentments simmering beneath the surface are so strong that the stalemate cannot exist for long.

Possible hope arrives when astronomers discover a habitable planet circling a distant sun. The world, which they initially name Kung, is rich in natural resources and is inhabited by three separate sentient species. The political maneuvering begins immediately, with the Food Bloc determined to send its expedition first. The journey is proposed by scientist Danny Dalehouse and arranged by Captain Marge Menninger in record time, but the People Bloc still manages to launch its own crew first.

It's an exciting prospect: the chance to rebuild mankind's future on a brand new world. But mankind also brings the same arrogance, the same recklessness and the same savagery—and for all their good intentions, the members of the various expeditions quickly replay all the mistakes that made such a mess of Earth. Jem, as the new world is soon renamed, is corrupted in record time, with the natives taking the brunt of it.

Saner heads do not always prevail

Science fiction is often divided into the pessimistic (nightmarish views of the futures that await us if current trends continue) and the optimistic (far-reaching tales of spacefaring adventures). Jem is proof that the two strains aren't mutually contradictory. Indeed, it's one of the darkest, most despairing views of the human capacity for destruction that science fiction has ever produced. It reads like a slow-motion train wreck, with every single protagonist (human and alien) acting in reasonable self-interest, and their inevitable collision rapidly turning this otherworldly paradise into an extreme version of the hell they left on Earth. At no point is it possible to point to a plot development and say, no, sorry, people wouldn't do this; every single descending step toward the abyss arrives with a terrifying inevitability that renders the introduction on this planet of slavery, genocide and nuclear war even more horrifying for the awareness that, given the political forces at play here, it couldn't have happened any other way.

It's even more powerful because the planet Pohl's protagonists ravage is SF worldbuilding at its best. It's fully realized, persuasively alien, and in its own way wonderful. The native sentients, who exist in a balance as fragile as the truce among Earth's three blocs, have both personality and wills of their own; the ones known as the balloonists are even cute. They all suffer when human beings move in. And even if the human colonists do discover a way to build a peaceful future together, Jem as it existed is doomed.

Frederik Pohl presents all this with a dark and angry humor, in prose dense with scientific detail. He makes the closest thing to a sympathetic viewpoint character, Danny Dalehouse, totally ineffectual in tempering the actions of his colleagues. And he creates some of the most frightening alien invaders in science fiction history—by making them us. It's a genuine tour de force.