Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi

There actually was an upside to being assaulted in my own home and held at gunpoint while thugs ransacked my house.  By being a victim of crime, I met neighbors I had not encountered in the seven years I’ve lived here. Oh, I’ve known the neighbors who live immediately next to me. Jean, who lives across the street, was my friend long before I moved here.  But beyond one house on all sides of me, and the dread Townhouses in the Park below me, I really haven’t encountered any other of my neighbors.

Until disaster struck, of course. Then I met all kinds of great people I didn’t know I shared a neighborhood with. One of these new friends, Andy, happens to be a reader. A couple of nights after the robbery, we had a conversation on Facebook that ended up with me over at his house and us talking about books. He thrust three into my hands before I left a couple of hours later. I’m very glad to have met this neighbor, because his taste in fiction is wonderful. I can’t wait to find more books from his shelves.

The three books he gave me were Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi, The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross, and Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I’m about to give up on the nonfiction Godel, Escher, Bach – which is fascinating, but I’m getting bogged down because I don’t know enough about music, and I keep taking breaks to listen and learn more. It’s taking me forever to read, and I’m not sure I’m taking it all in. The other two I finished in really short order – they were both so good I couldn’t put them down.

The first of the three that I read was Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi. Scalzi wrote this book on his website in 1999, just to see if he could actually write a book. In 2005, a literary agent found it and offered to publish it. The original version is still available online.

The story is a campy take on first contact between humans and alien intelligence. I have never bought the notion that alien life forms are going to resemble us or any living creature we think of as having sentience. Enter John Scalzi and his eminent good sense. (He agrees with me.)

The aliens in this book are described essentially as amorphous gobs of snot. No, make that morphous gobs of snot.  The snot morphs into the shape of an aquarium, the shape of a water bottle, the shape of … other things. Its morphability (is that even a word?) and its uncanny resemblance to that which comes out of our runny noses (or what is left behind in the wake of a snail) form the backbone – the completely invertebrate backbone, yes – of the plot of this story. The aliens recognize that we humans will find their appearance disgusting, so in the interest on good inter-species relations, they decide to hire an image consultant to break the news to humanity of their existence.

Not just any image consultant will do, of course. As we all expect, the aliens have learned all about our species and civilization from the cacophonous roar of radio waves and television signals emanating  from our planet. They already speak idiomatic English fluently, they know how our culture is organized, they know how we interact with each other, and they know how we are likely to react to them. These aliens are smart.

Being beings of higher intelligence, the aliens have recognized that the very best image consultants are those who successfully sell vacuous people to the rest of the world. These consultants expertly package their clients in such a way as to persuade the public to overlook their flaws. Knowing that they will appear to us a snot-based life forms, these aliens decide to hire the best for their public relations. The aliens bypass Madison Avenue for the true experts in the field. The aliens bypass Madison Avenue for the true experts in the field: Hollywood agents.

I can’t talk too much about the story without giving away important plot points that, when revealed through the natural course of the book, will literally leave you laughing out loud and searching for someone to share it with.

What I can do is tell you to find this book and read it. It will buoy your mood, make you think about things as heady as the ethics of eugenics and things as light as the stuff encrusting the tissue of your winter cold. And when you blow your nose while reading it, you will suddenly find yourself examining the results for sentience.

The story is original, mind-bending, heartwarming, and hilarious.

Seriously, find it. Read it.

Last Updated on January 28, 2013 by Anne