Fear of a Blank Planet is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling before 2009's The Incident.

Steven Wilson has mentioned that the album's title is a direct reference to the 1990 Public Enemy album Fear of a Black Planet; while the former tackled race issues, the latter is about the fear of losing the current generation of youth to various common threats to their mental and social wellbeing, including broken homes, excessive "screen time", and narcotic overuse (prescribed and otherwise) to the point of mental and spiritual "blankness".

The Blackfield album was finished in June, so Wilson travelled back to London and met the other band members to work on the material he had been writing.

The band started a short tour in September to promote it, during which the six new songs selected for the forthcoming album were performed at the first half of the shows.

[7] Around the time of the recording, Wilson read an interview in Classic Rock magazine in which Rush's guitarist Alex Lifeson had mentioned he was a big fan of Porcupine Tree.

It also deals with other common behaviour tendencies of youth like escapism through prescription drugs, social alienation caused by technology, and a feeling of vacuity—a product of information overload by the mass media.

[10] He described Fear of a Blank Planet as a homage to 1970s records, whose moderate length helps the listener maintain focus: "It was very much conceived in the way bands used to conceive records in the '70s, where you've got two sides of vinyl, and you can lay down a piece of music which is around the 50-minute mark, which plays in a continuous way, and deals with the same subject matter, and tried to kind of immerse you in a world for that time.

Additionally, there was a third pre-release listening party without the presence of Steven Wilson in the Club Phoenix of Brisbane later on 14 April, organised by OzProg.com along with Roadrunner Records.

[14] On 6 August, on their official website, Porcupine Tree announced a new EP was going to be released on 17 September the same year named Nil Recurring, featuring four tracks (just under 30 minutes of music) that were written during the Fear of a Blank Planet sessions, including the title track featuring Robert Fripp on guitar, and "Cheating the Polygraph".

The song "My Ashes" was featured in the American television series The Shield in episode #81, entitled "Animal Control", which originally aired on 7 October 2008.

[15] On 18 April 2007, two days after the European release of the album, the band embarked on an extensive tour until the end of the year, with a short break during August and September resuming in October.

[23] Alternative rock band Anathema joined them on tour from November as support for the European gigs[24] that lasted until December (except for Finland were Hidria Spacefolk opened the show).

[37] Q magazine regarded the album as "a dramatic, wide-screen, expertly executed, even genuinely thrilling rock record worthy of an audience way beyond nu-prog's regular constituency.

"[37] AllMusic, which gave the album a 4.5 out of 5 score, assured that "While there is no "radio single" on the disc most songs transcend their complex structure and feel as provocative as any traditional rock tune".

[38] David Fricke from Rolling Stone perceived Porcupine Tree to have evolved into "an aggressively modern merger of Rush’s arena art rock, U.K. prog classicism—especially Pink Floyd’s eulogies to madness and King Crimson’s angular majesty—and the post-grunge vengeance of Tool".

[40] Sound and Vision praised the album as the band's finest work: "Porcupine Tree is at the height of its powers"[41] and voted it #3 CD of 2007.

[47] Dan LeRoy from Alternative Press announced it "as heavy as P-Tree have ever been" but "wistfully, sprawlingly melodic as well-sometimes in the same tune" and concluded that "if Wilson's vision of today's kids as overmedicated, overstimulated robots seems like a blatant appeal to the over-30 crowd, it's still worth setting the Xbox aside to listen".

With Fear of a Blank Planet, the band broke the selling mark established by Deadwing, and reached the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 for the first time, debuting at #59.

"[62] All tracks are written by Steven Wilson, except where notedIn addition to the regular issue, a special two-disc edition was released, containing both Stereo and 5.1 Surround Sound mixes plus a forty-page booklet.

There is also a special pink vinyl edition limited to 500 copies released on 1 May 2008, to coincide with the band's recent appearance at the Pinkpop festival in the Netherlands.