Reading progress update: I've read 171 out of 319 pages.
I started the second novel, which is Invaders from Earth, and though I'm only 21 pages in it has a far more interesting opening: a 21st century expedition to Ganymede finds both an inhabited world and one with valuable minerals, and an advertising firm is hired to pave the way for exploittaion. For a premise like that it seems to be developing in a far more anti-imperialist direction than I've come to expect from novels from the period; usually they're only anti-imperialist when Americanized humans are the ones being subjugated.