‘Agent to the Stars’ – John Scalzi (Tor Books)

I’ve been trying to get into ‘Zoe’s Tale’ just recently but keep putting it down. This is mostly due to the fact that (despite a different viewpoint) it basically retells the events of ‘The Last Colony’ and I finished that book not so long ago...
I’ve really enjoyed the ‘Old Man’s War’ books and will certainly be back for another look at ‘Zoe’s Tale’ in the near future. In the meantime I realised that I had another Scalzi book, ‘Agent to the Stars’, and I thought I’d give that a go instead.
I’m glad I did because I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much at a book and I was a little bit sad when the time came to put it down...
In the foreword, Scalzi describes ‘Agent to the Stars’ as “the book which just won’t quit”. It began life as Scalzi’s ‘practice novel’ and then became part of an experiment in internet marketing. If that wasn’t enough for it ‘Agent to the Stars’ then found itself being published as a Subterranean Press limited edition and now finds itself due to be published by Tor at the beginning of next month. What next? Well, I’m hoping that its next incarnation will be on the big screen. I reckon it would be worth seeing...

The space faring Yherajk have come to planet Earth to meet humanity and offer their hand in friendship. There’s a pretty big problem with that though, for ‘hand’ read ‘gelatinous tentacle’ and if that wasn’t bad enough the Yherajk have a horrendous odour problem... Getting humanity’s trust is going to be a tall order, the Yherajk need someone to smooth the process and close the deal. Enter Thomas Stein, one of Hollywood’s hottest young agents... Thomas has just closed a twelve million dollar deal for his top client, now he has to negotiate a deal for an entire alien race...

Any ‘first contact’ novel that quotes Yoda (‘away put your weapon, I mean you no harm’) immediately scores bonus points as far as I’m concerned! It also raises a pretty good point for those of us who are wondering why the aliens haven’t landed just yet, why should they? As the Yherajk point out, our SETI project spreads the word that we want to make friends with alien races but the TV signals that we bounce into space show a human race that’s scared of aliens and liable to nuke any visitors! I for one can understand why the skies are relatively clear at the moment...

‘Agent to the Stars’ starts out with a shot of life in the Hollywood entertainment industry and with no clue (other than the blurb on the back of the book) as to what is coming next. We’re introduced to the main players and their relationships with each other which makes for some pretty funny reading all by itself. Arrogant ‘stars’ such as Tea Reader provide the spark, that lights things up, and the circuitous routes that Tom has to take (to placate certain people while scamming money out of others) never fails to be entertaining. Reading this had me in mind of a P.G. Wodehouse plot where everything gets tangled up in a huge comedy of errors.

And then you add an alien race to the mix...

In some ways this shakes up the plot less than you would think, merely adding another potential crisis to the pile of potential crisis’ that are constantly bubbling under. As the story goes on though, this changes as things start to happen that could only take place as a result of alien influences...
Having monitored Earth’s media output, the alien Yherajk are able to communicate with Tom very easily, to the point where I sometimes forgot that they were actually alien. This didn’t happen very often as Scalzi not only has them saying a lot of stuff that marks them out as very definitely alien but also places Tom in awkward (but quite funny) situations where he is the only thing stopping the Yherajk from being discovered prematurely. For example, how do you get a predominantly liquid based alien life form from your boss’ office to your car? What do you do when your alien housemate takes the dog out for a walk and then doesn’t answer his mobile phone? Throw in some special effects that could have come straight from ‘The Thing’, and an investigative reporter that just won’t quit, and you have a story that made me laugh and just wouldn’t let go for a second.

It’s not all laughs though as a client’s desire to act in a film about the Holocaust leads the Yherajk to learn some unpleasant truths about Earth history. Why is it that whenever aliens come to Earth (to make friends) they always end up going through a phase where they find out about humanity’s nastier tendencies and wonder if they still want to be friends with us? I can understand their reasoning but it’s starting to feel like this ‘twist’ is just being rehashed over and over...
Luckily, in this case, Scalzi wings it by proving once again that he can switch gears really smoothly with the scene where the Yherajk Joshua meets Tom’s Jewish Grandmother. This was really sombre stuff...

The story ends just how you would expect which would be anti-climatic except for the fact that I was enjoying it so much that I would have been disappointed if it had ended any other way. If you’re a fan of John Scalzi, and you haven’t already read ‘Agent to the Stars’, then you could a lot worse than seek this book out. If you haven’t read anything by John Scalzi then ‘Old Man’s War’ is still the place to start but you should really give this book a go as well.

Nine out of Ten