Rating: 
Summary: This is a very funny, wise,witty and short book
Review: -----------------------------------------------------------
First Contract is a very entertaining update of a classic SF question:
what happens if the aliens arrive, and WE become the Aztecs or Incas
or South Sea islanders? Costikyan's answer: a business collapse that
makes the Great Depression look like a 'rolling readustment',
bringing 50% unemployment, shantytowns & soup lines to Silicon
Valley -- and to every industrial country. After all, who's going to buy
a Lexus, when you can buy an alien aircar that goes from zero to
Mach 1 in 60 seconds -- for $30,000?Johnson Mukerjii, the fabulously wealthy founder of Mukerjii Data
Systems, quickly becomes a statistic as he loses his company, his
mansion, his Jag -- and his trophy wife, the treacherous but practical
Maureen, who, noting it was "sweet, but possibly unwise" of him to
have given her power of attorney, cleans him out of everything but
his underwear & pocket change: $17.41. Mukerjii finds a certain satisfaction in cooking 'thon pour chat, avec
une sauce tomate' for his fellow down-&-outers in Sludgetown. But
you can't keep a good entrepeneur down, and with an unwitting
grubstake from a wealthy, right-wing SF author -- the galactics find
his human-supremacist novels a hoot -- he introduces the Mukerjii
Drink Valet: an improved drink-bulb for zero-gee travel. It's a hit
with the alien tourists, but there are *trillions* of potential customers
out there -- so it's off to the Carina Arm Travel Accessories Trade
Show, once Mukerjii surmounts the minor difficulty of raising $85
million for starfare, registration and travel expenses.... One of many nice touches is the rate-of-exchange disparity: one
gozashtandu is worth about US$5,000, so power, air, gravity &
radiation shielding for Mukerjii's booth will set him back 6500 gosh,
or a cool $32 mill American. But the flipside is -- to a galactic, a gosh is a negligible sum, so he can
retail the Drink Valet, which costs maybe a quarter to manufacture,
for $5,000 apiece! Even after shipping and sales commissions, this will
leave a 'substantial' profit.... But the biggest customers will be the zdeg warrior-traders, who regard
breach of contract as a capital offense. And limited-liability is a *truly*
alien concept to the zdeg.... This is a very funny book -- I lost track of the number of times I
laughed aloud. Plus it's economically-literate, clever, brisk, wise,
witty and short. Some of the exaggerations-for-effect border on
cartoonish, and I've given up on predicting other people's reaction to
humor. But if you know the world of IPO's and trade shows, big
business and burn rates, schmooze, booze and sales -- First Contract is
your kind of book. 4.5 stars. ....
Rating:
Summary: Entrepreneurs LOVE this book
Review: As a member of the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization (affiliated with YPO), I come into contact with people like the main character of this book all the time. It's a true and valid beating of the whole dot-com concept, and proves that businesses that actually sell something do much better. Truly excellent. My only problem with it was what seemed like a mild latent antisemetism for about 10 pages. But maybe I'm reading into it too much. Regardless, I've given it to all my business-owner friends and they've passed it around to theirs...
Rating: 
Summary: Erratic aim but scores often
Review: First Contract is a well timed book. As I was reading it, whenever I started thinking, "This economic model is just too ridiculous," I was stopped short by the realization that it wasn't any more ridiculous than actual economic models of actual public companies on the actual US stock exchanges. And, while exaggerating to ridiculous proportions, it nevertheless made me think about globalization and "comparative economic advantage". That's more than I expect from most SF books, and especially from an over-the-top satire. I do think the book could have used some editing. There are lots of consistency problems, especially if you keep track of the actual numbers that are used throughout the book. And some of the early chapters are neither especially humorous nor essential to the story. But, overall, it's a success.
Rating:
Summary: Erratic aim but scores often
Review: First Contract is a well timed book. As I was reading it, whenever I started thinking, "This economic model is just too ridiculous," I was stopped short by the realization that it wasn't any more ridiculous than actual economic models of actual public companies on the actual US stock exchanges. And, while exaggerating to ridiculous proportions, it nevertheless made me think about globalization and "comparative economic advantage". That's more than I expect from most SF books, and especially from an over-the-top satire. I do think the book could have used some editing. There are lots of consistency problems, especially if you keep track of the actual numbers that are used throughout the book. And some of the early chapters are neither especially humorous nor essential to the story. But, overall, it's a success.
Rating:
Summary: Very funny book
Review: For everyone who dreams of alien contact and how great it would be, there is "First Contract." Aliens arrive and the economy crashes almost overnight. A brilliant premise, executed well. He knows what he's talking about, too. You aren't just told that things went to pot. You see why, and you don't get bored in the process. A thoroughly enjoyable book. It made for great for reading at the beach.
Rating: 
Summary: Business, Ideas, and Venture Capital
Review: For most of us, business is the thing that dominates most of our waking hours. We go to work at a business, we deal with business issues--and yet, there's very little fiction that deals with business. This, it seems to be, is an oddity, brought on, perhaps, by the fact that so many writers are self-employed stay-at-homes with scant experience of business. Surely we need fiction that addresses a common concern of so many people? I tried to write this story first in 1987, when I left West End Games and decided to try to write seriously. "Sales Reps from the Stars," a novelette, was one of the three stories I wrote in my first two weeks of unemployment. It was also the only one I couldn't sell. Looking at it some years later, I realized that the reason it didn't work was obvious: There were too many ideas in the story. There was too much infodump, and not enough going on. It's perfectly possible to write a "novel of ideas," but you need to =dramatize= the ideas, express them through action, not simply talk about them. The story was novel-shaped. I needed the length of a novel to tell it. And so I started work on this book. There were interruptions, for other novels, for children, for divorce, and it took me a good five years to complete it. It is, needless to say, funny. Or at least, I think so... First Contract will probably be my last novel for some years, I'm afraid, as we just closed on seed funding for my wireless games venture, meaning I expect to be busier than the proverbial two-peckered goat for some time to come... Business can be as much fun as writing about business, I guess :).
Rating:
Summary: i love it!
Review: i am not a great fan of the sci-fi/fanatsy genre but i agreed to give this book a fair try when a friend gave me a copy. and withing moments of finishing it i was online looking for more books by the author. apart from being a great story, it is also a hilarious sendup of all sci-fi cliches about utopian alien civilizations who have transcended all selfish ambitions. these aliens do not say live long and prosper. rather, earth is just another market for them to download their goods and all they want in exchange is Jupiter. so most tech-industries on earth are facing bankruptcy since nothing they produce can possibly match the alien gizmos but the genius of johnson mukherji comes with an earth-saving solution. why not turn earth into the taiwan of the galalxy? make tacky stuff incredibly cheap and peddle it at the inflated galactic rate to the visitors? of course there is that little matter of the zdegs who not only control the walmart of the galaxy but also have a unique way of seizing the assets of defaulters. no it does not pretend to be great lit, but i could not wipe te goofy grin off my face for a long time after i finished the last page.
Rating:
Summary: Funniest Sci Fi I've read in ages!
Review: I definitely recommend it. Basically the idea isn't that the aliens come here to bring peace, knowledge and prosperity, (in spite of their marketing spiel) rather they put earth in its proper place in the galaxy - an incredibly backward planet, ready to be exploited. Compared to the galaxy, we are a third world ... um, world. How do you make a place for yourself in the galaxy in a situation like this? The analogy the author uses is that Earth must become a "Taiwan", using our incredibly cheap labour as our only viable asset. Well that, plus a bit of ingenuity. Needless to say this isn't 'hard' science fiction. There are plenty of gaping holes in logic, not to mention physics. And there was a time or two when our hero's characterization was a bit off, though those could be explained as the difference between him being the narrator, and what he's really like. Finally, the second last sentence of the book is a bit sobering if you understand what he's getting at, but it leaves the book open to a good sequel. I hope he writes it!
Rating:
Summary: Clever, but could have been done better.
Review: I found the book quite entertaining. It started from a great premise, was well-paced, and the dialogue was hilarious. My one complaint was that the characterization was rather rushed, which bled the intended drama and tension out of parts of the plot. Still, a great story that I'd recommend without hesitation.
Rating:
Summary: Clever, but could have been done better.
Review: I found the book quite entertaining. It started from a great premise, was well-paced, and the dialogue was hilarious. My one complaint was that the characterization was rather rushed, which bled the intended drama and tension out of parts of the plot. Still, a great story that I'd recommend without hesitation.
|
