"The Automated Goliath" is a 1962 science-fiction novel by William F Temple. It is the other half of an Ace Double along with another word by Temple, "The Three Suns of Amara". While "The Three Suns of Amara" is one of the shortest Ace Doubles, at 80 pages, "The Automated Goliath" is one of the longest, at 143 pages---I wonder if the author was given the choice of which book to edit down.
"The Automated Goliath" is a story in three parts. The first part tells the story of a small-time charlatan named Charles Magellan, who makes his living in a heavily automated world pretending to be a medium. One day, the mandatory television screens broadcast a hypnotism message, and those who are immune, such as Magellan, are put in prison. As a fake medium, Magellan has learned a lot about picking locks, and he quickly frees and rallies his fellow prisoners against an alien invasion. The second part of the book, told through the vantage point of another character, tells the history of the alien subterfuge and how they centralized the world's technology in able to seize power, and of the war between humans and aliens. The third part of the book describes...humanities (in the person of Charles Magellan's) attempt to bring the war to the aliens, via a journey to Alpha Centauri, where an entirely different group of aliens lives on an egg-shaped planet...and then...resolution.
Although longer than average, 140 pages was not really long enough to fit in what is basically three different ideas: a story about societal automation, a story about a covert alien conquest, and a story about humans exploring space. All tied together with a figure that existed more in later reconstructions than in contemporary science-fiction: the two-fisted, hard boiled loner fighting off aliens with fisticuffs. This is especially interesting because, as I learned last year, occurrences of "alien invasion" stories were not as common in 1960s pulp science-fiction as people might remember. Especially in contrast to the other side of the Ace Double, which was rather fanciful, "The Automated Goliath" looked like someone trying to write a science-fiction novel that covered as many bases as possible. And while it was good enough, it failed to find a unique voice or theme.