Sift Book Reviews: Starship Invasions by Barbara Custer and Tom ...

Title: Starship Invasions
Authors: Barbara Custer, Tom Johnson
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 260 pages (110,000 words)
Reviewer: Pearson Moore
Rating: 2 Stars

Summary

This book contains nine short stories (average length 12,000 words) revolving around a theme of alien contact.

From the Publisher

Barbara Custer and Tom Johnson bring their respective experiences to the printed page, blending it into tales of intergalactic adventure. Johnson introduces us to Eddy Edwards, a UFO hunter searching for alien life. In the process he meets Stuanofu, the pilot of a flying saucer! Plus, return to the 1940s, when three young men discover that dinosaurs have found an opening to the world above... All of [the characters] struggle with painful pasts as they compete in cutthroat work environments. They must seek help from aliens when an exploding star threatens to incinerate the earth. These aliens challenge their world views, and the lessons come hard when they learn that sometimes humans make the worst enemies.

Review

This collection contains a mixture of stories focussing on contact with aliens. Some of the short works consider the question of first contact, while others look at well-established human/alien relationships.

I found several facets of the stories enjoyable. Aliens were presented as characters in their own right, and in many cases they projected a multi-dimensional quality that allowed them to act as bona fide protagonists or antagonists. To my mind, this reflected the authors? skill in character development and constituted a genuine strong point in most of the stories. I enjoyed the diversity of character voice and situational atmosphere from one story to another.

My overall impression, though, was not favourable. On the very first page, I found the telltale signs of a poorly-written and less-than-engaging story. On Page One, a minor character informs the heroine that ?Refusing any assignment is grounds for insubordination.? Now, it is possible that the minor character is abbreviating, or using jargon understood by both characters. However, there is no contextual evidence of this. Nor is there any narrative commentary. I also considered the possibility that this illiterate statement indicated the use of an unreliable narrator, but again context provided no indication of any such complex storytelling style. The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is the author?s misunderstanding of word meaning or word usage.

In the first short, ?Pegasus in Outer Space?, the heroine acquires early in the story a rare and powerful ability. There was virtually no narrative discussion regarding the sudden acquisition of this power. Worse, the protagonist?s husband and friends were not surprised and offered no input regarding their feelings about this strange ability. I found many instances of this acceptance of strange abilities and events throughout the stories. While we might expect easy acceptance of paranormal abilities in some situations, the setting in ?Pegasus? and several other stories?mid- to late-twentieth century United States?did not allow any such casual acceptance of abilities such as these.

The problem with the easy acceptance of rare abilities is plausibility. The entire point of the human/alien story, in my experience, is the imaginative development of human and alien responses that jibe with our innate understanding of the human psyche and spirit. The fear-inspired killing of innocent, helpful aliens and the unwitting hope-based invitation to malevolent beings are both plausible human responses to alien contact. Most of the stories about first contact provided no narrative indication of shock, surprise, or fear regarding the landing of aliens, even when some of the aliens did indeed prove to be malevolent. This again seemed entirely implausible to me. In one sequence in the first story, the local police department sent officers to investigate the alien ship. When the officers were killed, the local police just sent in a couple more officers, who were likewise killed. A more plausible scenario would have had federal officials involved immediately upon recognition of the ship as alien.

In the second story, ?What Goes There?, a tired nineteenth century trick is used as the primary source of mystery. However, the prop is used in such an implausible manner that it detracts even more than it otherwise would have from the story. The alien, masquerading as a hiker, calls himself ?Stuanofu?. I thought immediately of the 1943 film, ?Son of Dracula?, in which the title vampire claims to be ?Count Alucard?. Wartime audiences were more willing than ever to suspend disbelief for a couple hours of entertaining diversion from rationing at home and news of Hitler?s advances overseas, but they were not willing to go so far as to embrace the weak trick of a name spelled backwards. As Uncle Mike wrote in his review of ?Son of Dracula? (http://untitledhorrorincorporatedproject.blogspot.com/2010/06/november-29-1969-son-of-dracula-1943.html), ?DON'T simply spell your name backwards. It's not that clever an idea, and even worse, it won't work.? Uncle Mike noted the film itself more or less made fun of the idea: ?In fact, from the opening scene in Son of Dracula, people are constantly saying things like, ?Hmm, that's funny....Alucard....when you read it backwards it says....nah, it couldn't be!?? If it didn?t work in 1943, in a simpler time, when audiences yearned more than they ever have for an escape from reality, the trick surely will not work in the much more jaded 21st century. But the real problem is that the alien chose a reasonable alibi (?I?m just an innocent hiker?) and an improbable, self-revelatory name. It just doesn?t work, and so completely distanced me from the story that I derived no pleasure from reading.

The stories in this collection are not without merit, as I noted above. However, I believe most readers will find these stories too simplistic, poorly written, and not worth their time. So many good stories are available; this collection, unfortunately, is not among them.

Two stars

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Source: http://www.siftreviews.com/2011/07/starship-invasions-by-barbara-custer.html

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