Well Everyone Is A Little Alien, Aren't They

Leo Brett's The Alien Ones is a book I borrowed from the library last week and finished before I left for the weekend. The story deals with Safron and Celeste Wilde reaching the planet of Orkol flat broke, all their money spent on purchasing the lousy spaceship they got there in. They were lured by the promise of land grants, money grants, and the idea that it would be a way out of their rut of a life. Upon reaching Orkol they learn there is no more money being handed out, and it's at least 1800 miles to their plot. Faced with limited options they head out.

They meet some hostile locals, in terms of both other settlers and indigenous lifeforms, but are aided by some robots (following the First Law that says they can't let humans come to harm, naturally). They reach the property of the top dog on Orkol, and opt to forget about farming, and take jobs in Mr. Haldane's research laboratory. This is a bit amusing, since Safron came out here to escape from his life as a research chemist, so i guess all it took was some distance for that to look pretty good.

Turns out studying the properties of the mysterious Orkolite is where the money is, as Orkolite functions as essentially Silver Age Kryptonite. There are tons of varieties, and each one's radiation can do something different. Kill you, rejuvenate you, turn you into a 15-foot tall lizard beast thing, which is Safron's fate. Once he successfully fends off attempts by Haldane and his top researcher, Gray Hawkins, to kill him, he and Celeste decide to return home, as the doctors there can grow Safron a new body, and transplant his brain (which somehow didn't grow or change at all). They experience a few difficulties along the way, and Safron seems to enjoy smashing things a bit too much, but it ends well for them.

This reminds me vaguely of The Stars Can Wait, which I read last year. I liked this better, but it has that same sense of careening from one thing to the next. First it appears to be about Safron and Celeste struggling to survive in a frontier, so space-age Western. Then Safron takes the job with Haldane, and learns Hawkins has found a form of Orkolite to power a vibratory resonance machine. basically, the machine can determine the frequency of anything, the emit the proper vibration to shatter it. This can be a pebble, a human, or an entire planet (I'll come back to this). Then it shifts to Safron becoming a monster, and demonstrating that it isn't the exterior that matters, it's what's inside (this point is supplemented by another helpful robot). Considering some of Safron's actions in monster form, the book could be arguing everyone has a little monster in them (I'll come back to this as well). Then the quick wrap-up happy ending. It's a lot of focus shifting for a book under 200 pages. It's not bad, as it kept me uncertain what was going to happen, but it also doesn't leave much time for character development.

One curious bit is that going by the book jacket, the story is supposed to be about Grey Hawkins discovering the liquid isotope which can be manipulated into the frequency required to destroy a planet, and what he decides to do with it. Except Hawkins is only in the book for 20, 30 pages tops. By then he's decided what he wants to do, and he's asking Safron to work with him, while being paid by Haldane. It isn't even about Safron's decision, because he argues with Hawkins for about five minutes before being convinced there's no way he can stop him, and going along with it. Which makes me wonder who wrote the book jacket, and why they presented the book that way. Did they receive mixed signals? Did they think Gray Hawkins' story was more interesting? Were they just messing with us?

As to Safron and the change he undergoes, while he is probably entitled to be angry, he has a tendency to go overboard. Not in the sense of not understanding his own strength, but making conscious decisions to just wreck everything in a given area for revenge. His wife enters a saloon to get some food, and because this is still a frontier area, there aren't many women so surprise!, the patrons try to assault her (second time that happens in the book). Safron to the rescue, and he doesn't kill any of the guys, just scares the beejeezus out of them, and that's fair. Then he destroys the town, because he's really angry. Well that's swell. There were probably plenty of people who had nothing to do with the assault, may not even have known it was happening if they were off in the fields, and he destroyed their homes. What are they gonna do now? There's no more government money to help them rebuild, so they're screwed. If they can't rebuild, they probably can't go home, either. Thanks, you monstrous asshole.

Then Safron decides to wreak a little revenge on the first guy who tried assaulting Celeste, even though they beat him (barely), and left him tied up in his own house. At least there he nearly pays for his focus on petty vengeance, and the fellow has a bulldozer and knows how to use it. That might have been an interesting finish, actually. The attempted rapist had earned their trust by agreeing to let them stay the night, then attacked in his sleep. Outward friendliness concealing hidden dangers. It sometimes seems that being changed into this creature with incredible power has unlocked something similar in Safron. Not to the same extent, as Safron uses the blessings of the change to help people as well at times, but he also enjoys being able to smash anything that draws his ire, which wasn't a possibility in the past.

One bit I liked was the robot truck driver that gives them a lift back to the spaceport. There's a suggestion it's evolving, becoming closer to human, even if most people would never look past the metal exterior. It's meant as a comparison to Safron, but I like the idea that if it's a continuing trend, humans won't be able to regard robots as so expendable anymore. See, on Orkol (and probably throughout the inhabited worlds) the robots do the dangerous stuff, and if they get smashed, so what, they're just robots? If they still operate, but can't do heavy labor, give them another job, like driving trucks or desk work. Otherwise, shut down, bring in the next one. Perhaps this is the point where all that has to change, though.

The positives of the book are that it moves quickly, and keeps throwing ideas at you, so if one doesn't grab you, perhaps the next will. The downside is it does this so frequently, there probably won't be much exploration of ideas you like, at least not until the transformation.