Holy Moly, this was one weird book.
Not so much the fact that the planet the story takes place on is one big living organism, no, the weird part is that the characters are completely incompetent in communication or working inside an organisation.

It is mind blowing that they weren't supposed to give daily reports back to Earth, or that they didn't set an alarm when they where clearly invaded by this creature.

Sure, the book was written decades before we set foot in space. But come-on, in what world are people going to bring a library of books into space. The writer clearly didn't know anything about science or math to calculate payload.