A theory is set forth in this book which suggests that there is a relationship between events upon this earth and certain, if not all, astronomical cycles, namely the time periods between alignments of the planets in whatever geometric configurations. It suggests that such a relationship is caused by concomitant periodic disruptions of the interplanetary electromagnetic fields.

The views expressed therein rely heavily upon the views of Nicola Telsa, who suggested the planets were electrically charged bodies, as well as Velikovsky's subsequent ideas that possibly electrical discharges between the planets had occurred in historically recent times, and finally, a subsequent article in a technical magazine attempting to relate the disruption of radio communications on earth with planetary alignments. The book suggests that if the thesis that the planets are electrically charged bodies is correct, then their constantly changing positions in the solar system give rise to a fluctuating spatial environment of the static and other electrical fields enveloping the earth, an environment so complex in its variation that it seems to be a random process, and that events upon earth, correspondingly seemingly random in process but in actuality not, are actually influenced by the variations in the earth's electromagnetic environment.

The author is a graduate of one of the nation's top liberal arts colleges and one of the nation's top technical institutions, from which he received a B.A. degree and a B.S. degree respectively. Later he received a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from yet another private university in the East. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of California and a Senior Life Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and has spent his professional career in the engineering and scientific environment. He counts bridge and chess among his intellectual hobbies and was chess champion of his preparatory school in his senior year. He is eligible for membership in MENSA, although, regarding it as an attempt to establish some sort of elite intellectual class, he has never joined it. The ideas set forth in the book were developed slowly over the author's lifetime as his interest in astronomical events matured.