A fun farce that eventually loses its way.

The Yherjak are an alien race that has traveled for many years across the galaxy to reach Earth with a plan to make first contact with us. Being a benevolent people they decide take it slowly and they spend time monitoring our communications in order to figure out how best to proceed with reaching out. After careful study of our culture they realize that their appearance, a translucent gelatinous mess, combined with the fact that they communicate through smells, bad ones at that, will likely result in a poor first contact scenario. Since the Yherjak have dedicated many years of their lives to making successful contact with us they are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure it goes well. Of course that means that they hire a top Hollywood agent to represent them and plan for their introduction to the rest of the planet. :)



This is actually the first novel written by John Scalzi and one that he initially self published as an unknown author asking for donations from readers that liked the book. After he became a best-selling author for his Old Man's War series this book was eventually republished in a more traditional fashion and rightfully so. It shows off Scalzi's ability to tell a science fiction story with humor at its core and how he creativity brings together multiple disparate satirical plot points.



I enjoyed this one but it wound up feeling a bit disjointed when the latter half of the book included some rather serious topics including the Holocaust, depression, and a person's right to die. None of that is bad in and of itself but the humor of the book was lost as the serious subject matter took over and that just felt out of place for this type of story. That aside it was still an interesting read and I do enjoy experiencing an author's first work so I can see how they have grown in their craft over time.



Once again Wil Wheaton teams up with John Scalzi as the narrator and while Wheaton is not one of my preferred narrators I must admit that he does a good job with this one. This is worth picking up just to see how Scalzi's writing career got started but do so knowing that the humor gets put aside towards the end, for better or worse.



