Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi
Tor, $14.95, 365pp, tp, 9780765317711. Science fiction.
Best-selling author, John W. Campbell Award-winner, and massively popular blogger John Scalzi’s first novel was originally published as shareware on his web site. He stopped counting the money that came in for it after $4,000, and went on to write novels such as Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, The Android’s Dream, and Zoe’s Tale. He’s also matched and exceeded that output with nonfiction books, essays, film and music reviews, and more.
But through it all was Agent to the Stars, a science fiction novel drawing heavily on his early writing days as a newspaperman in southern California. And now it’s widely available as a paper book.
This book was Scalzi’s attempt to see if he could, indeed, write a novel. As he quotes his long-suffering wife in the introduction (who read the book knowing that she’d have to live with him no matter what): “Thank god, it’s good.” And it is. It’s nice a stunning award-winner, but it is a serviceable novel. It held my attention, read easily, and had enough surprises to keep me reading. It’s also a different take on the problem of first contact: how, precisely would an alien race introduce itself to humanity if it had the benefit of having listened in on our electronic transmissions all these years?
Well, with Hollywood-esque sensibility, the aliens would of course seek out the most powerful people on the planet for a low-key introduction to the wider world. And that’s where Hollywood agent Tom Stein comes in. If you’re not coming as an invasion force, you definitely need to sway public opinion.
The book does show some of Scalzi’s inexperience (he tells us a great deal about the aliens’ unappealing nature, but we don’t really feel it), but overall, it’s a good read. And hey, who’s to say he isn’t right? There may really be aliens among our actors, but would we know?