This month, I would like to recommend the excellent Hugo award-nominated 1962 novel "Planet of the Damned," by Harry Harrison. The plot of this enjoyable read centers around Brion Brandd, a young man from the icy world of Anvhar, a planet where it is winter most of the year. Because of his empathic abilities and athletic skills, he is recruited by a mysterious stranger called Ihjel, to accompany him to the planet Dis, to help attempt to save it from destruction by the inhabitants of a neighboring world who want to launch a pre-emptive strike on that world because of the threat that the Disans pose because of their possession of nuclear weapons. The mysterious Magte, who govern this inhospitable, extremely hot planet, may not even be human.... I won't reveal spoilers.

 The underlying theme is just as relevant today as it was when the novel was published in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  However, the novel is written in a pulpy Flash Gordon-style action adventure with interesting scientific concepts. 

Harry Harrison was an American science fiction writer. Though he never won any major award ("Planet of the Damned" and "Deathworld" are to my knowledge the only two of his novels to have been nominated for the prestigious Hugo award), he was nonetheless a very popular author among fans of the genre. I recently also read "Deathworld", which is likewise an enjoyable read.