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Alien Perspective | Rating | |
| F | |||
| David Houston | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
In the near future, some aliens are in dire trouble. They are explorers, sent to find new worlds to colonize, and they found a wonderful place. But it was in fact a death trap: an organism there permeated the place, infecting anyone who went outside the ship and causing massive tumors and pneumonia-like symptoms. The organism is so simple that any means used to kill it will kill the host as well. Unfortunately, all this isn't discovered until after they leave the planet, and by the time the aliens discover this fact the entire outer sphere of the ship is contaminated. The inner command sphere is free of the stuff, but the ship was built like a two-layered onion; they can't get out without going through the dead zone. So they head to Earth, hoping we humans can come up with something to help.
Humanity, of course, is eager to get inside the ship, but is unaware of the danger. And a second alien ship, one that does know, is on its way to Earth to stop the infection from spreading - even if it means destroying our biosphere so we can't infect other worlds.
It sounds good, but Houston manages to make it just plain boring. He spends way, way too long setting up the problem, showing it to us from the other starships perspective as first they wait for the other ship's message, then worry over its tardiness, then find out what went wrong. Then we cut to Earth as it sees one, possibly two ships in its telescopes and heading out way. It would have been far better to start with the ship's landing and work on the drama of a First Contact that readers know for a fact will be a calamity.
The other problem is that the characters are just not right. The aliens are never objectively described, either physically or socially. We have to learn everything by what they do or say, and it ends up coming across about as alien as Star Trek: humans with a wierd quirk or two. As for the actual humans, well, I didn't see much of them before I quit reading, but what I saw dropped my jaw. NASA held a press conference to announce that this thing may or may not be an alien ship, but they really have no idea. I rather doubt that they would make an announcement so liable to blow up in their faces until they are absolutely positive they know it's alien. I also doubt that NASA would actually invite one of their cost-cutting critics onto the podium at the press conference. Meanwhile, a reporter is trying to get the dirt on an astronaut who is probably having an affair.
But despite the crowded plot, the book is barely over two hundred pages long. Yet halfway through, the aliens haven't even landed or otherwise made contact! It's just a awful, boring start to what might have been a decent plot.
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