A
science fiction novel by the late
Avram Davidson, pubished in
1965. The first premise is that
Earth has been nearly
emptied by emigration, and then forgotten; the few people remaining have no metals, because the metal was all made into
space ships which left and never came back. So
the population is sparse, primitive, and agricultural. Second, there is a race of aliens, the
onomatopoeically named Kar-Chee, who specialize in exploiting "mined out" planets:
They chew up the whole planet bit by bit, playing
clever tectonics games and so forth. The inhabitants don't appreciate it, but there doesn't seem to be much they can do.
Naturally, there wouldn't be any story if somebody didn't think of
something to do about the mess the aliens are making of
Earth, and so somebody does. It's something cool, too.
The whole damn book is just flawless.
It's a fine and rare thing to read SF by somebody who can actually write.