Review: Wildly Imaginative Romp with Goofball Aliens
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 23, 2014
This novel is an absurd, funny, satirical science fiction tale that takes a dim view of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Its premise is that a congress of advanced aliens has been monitoring human behavior from afar, concluded continued human existence is undesirable, and decided to exterminate the lot. The question then is: Will humanity survive?The tale unfolds from alien and human perspectives. First, the aliens. We meet several who live and work aboard a gigantic spaceship for a bureaucratic company called Zycorp, rife with office politics and run by idiots (echoes Intech in the movie Office Space). Key players are N and N2 (N’s clone), a pair of renegades  who hate their boring lives as cubicle workers. Paradoxically, these guys jabber like hipster earthlings, love Elvis, Tesla, Marilyn, and blue denims, and have many other odd attributes not usually associated with fictional aliens. (Imaginative, reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ fiction.)We also meet several human characters. The main one is Hank, a depressed former scientist who drinks too much, survives on junk food, lives in a trailer, and works as a janitor.Now, the plot. As the alien congress prepares to exterminate humanity, N & N2 use  a Zycorp device to give Hank a quantum mind jump that transforms him from a slob to a sort of demigod. They abandon the spaceship, travel to earth, transform themselves into the images of Elvis and Marilyn, and try to track Hank down, having several adventures along the way. Zycorp operatives follow N & N2. Alas, by the time N & N2 reach Hank’s trailer, he has left to present himself at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Hank eventually gets there and makes a splash. Telling what happens next would be a spoiler, so you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens to humanity, Hank, N & N2, and everyone else.The book is well written, consists mostly of dialogue, and moves at a good pace. The dialogue is witty, the descriptions colorful and evocative. Beside the humor generated by the absurd characters and plot, I was amused by some of the unique problems the aliens encountered; for example, the difficult relationship between N and his clone, the unexpected effects shape changing can have on identity, the complexity of providing bathroom facilities for multiple alien species on the same spaceship.