Preliminary Scan:
“A polite race of telepathic killer aliens, a ten-second world conquest, and one teenage boy collide in this wry, gutsy adventure.
Jesse is in history class when a formidable, efficient race of aliens quietly takes over the earth in less time than it takes him to brush his teeth. Most humans simply fall asleep and never wake up. In moments, everyone Jesse knows and loves is gone, and he finds that he is now a slave to an inept alien leader. On the bright side, Jesse discovers he’s developing telepathic powers, and he’s not the only one. Soon he’s forging new friendships and feeling unexpectedly hopeful. When a mysterious girl appears in his dreams, talking about escaping, Jesse begins to think the aliens may not be invincible after all. But if Jesse and his friends succeed, is there anywhere left to go? Brian Yansky offers a funny, grim novel packed with everything boys and sci-fi fans love: aliens, humor, action, and a healthy dose of triumph.
-cover and description courtesy of goodreads
Atmospheric Analysis: Suddenly–aliens!
I can’t decide if I love this cover or find it incredibly bland. It’s whimsical and pulpy, sure, but it’s also pretty nondescript and doesn’t do a great job selling Alien Invasion . . . to a teen audience. I wouldn’t have even known this was YA, as opposed to, say, an ironic adult novel or a collection of short stories, had I not stumbled across it one afternoon on a book-buying spree at Barnes & Noble.
Planetary Class: This is a pulpy alien invasion story. I suppose it’s got a post-apocalyptic bent to it, too, like John Wyndham’s classic Day of the Triffids.
Mohs Rating: Yansky’s novel weighs in as a 2 on the Mohs scale. This world of talking aliens and psychic powers is a classic World of Phlebotinum, though the idea that human evolution would be fast-tracked in response to a new environmental pressure (namely, mass extinction caused by an alien species) actually has some basis in biological science, which is pretty nifty!
Viability Rating: Not only are the psychic powers displayed by the humans here explained in a somewhat believable way (you know, for psychic powers), but the alien race of invading Sanginians were fantastically well-developed, from their corporate philosophy to their caste system to their religious beliefs. Yansky did some nice work here with the worldbuilding, considering Alien Invasions‘s pulpy roots.
Xenolinguistical Assessment: The novel is told in an easy-going, chatty first-person. This was some of the most natural and believable teen narration I’ve read in a long time–though I must say that Jesse’s speech fell a bit short when pushed to explain his growing psychic powers in a believable way.
Expanded Report: Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences opens like a fairly typical lower-YA/upper-MG novel, with our hero sitting, bored, in class. This lasts all of a few seconds, because he soon hears a voice in his head apologizing for his imminent loss. Initially, Jesse is puzzled–until he realizes that everyone around him has just dropped dead. The world has just been conquered by little green men, and it’s taken all of a few seconds.
He’s shuffled off to a sort of human internment camp, and it’s here that the real story begins. Jesse is considered “product” by the silent, psychic Sanginians. He forges friendships with another boy, Michael, as well as two girls. Soon the quartet are gossiping and flirting with one another, finding solace and some modicum of normalcy in their relationship. As Jesse muses:
I admit on our way back to the library that Addyen isn’t so bad for an alien. We find Michael and Lindsey and talk for while, almost like friends at school. I feel almost, I don’t know, normal.
Lindsey and Lauren even agree that women shouldn’t wear fur. Lauren is a dog person and Lindsey is a cat person, but they both feel that wearing animal fur is wrong and gross. (49)
Most of the novel is told this way, in the same sort of natural, easy, authentically adolescent voice. But it’s in the interchapters that Alien Invasion . . . becomes truly interesting. In these communiques between Lord Vert (alien master of the household in which Jesse is a slave), and his father, we learn of the man’s petty insecurities, his anxiety over forging a new colony, and his desire to prove himself to his dad.
It’s a double-edged coming-of-age story, then–one that’s not afraid to even mildly humanize the antagonists who have swiftly murdered all of humanity, in violation of even their own moral codes. Yansky raises subtle comparisons between the Sanginian occupation and other political massacres. There are the obvious parallels between the enslaved humans here and throughout history (“Good masters,” Jesse quips, “That’s the best we can hope for now”), but also more subtle, underlying thematic comparisons between occupied Earth–green and peaceful and without pollution or war–and, say, Nazi Germany, where the trains always ran on time.
It’s heavy. But Yansky doesn’t lecture his audience. Instead, these ideas are communicated subtly, through a sort of mournful tone beneath the classic, pulpy alien invasion stuff. But there’s a heady dose of hope here, too. The human teenagers slowly come into their own psychic powers, powers capable of raising resistance, no matter how meek, to the forces of their alien overlords. More importantly, Jesse comes to terms with the death he’s faced and the losses he’s experienced. This is a grounded, human story.
The closest comparison would be Vonnegut. There’s a similar tone here, a similar sense of the inherent goodness of humanity even amid all this mess. That gives Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences a very broad appeal, potentially. While the novel’s blurb would have you believe that this is an action-packed, wacky story aimed squarely at teenage boys, there are a host of characters here (three strong girls! it even passes the Bechdel test) who are vividly drawn and relatable. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to any sci-fi fan, male or female–including adult fans who are fond of deep books in pulp settings. Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local indie bookstore.
