Illegal Alien

Rating:
Summary: Two genres collide wonderfully
Review: If you're reading this review, you probably like science-fiction. But do you like mystery and court room drama too? Then you will very much enjoy "Illegal Alien." Sawyer takes a science-fiction concept and mingles it with a courtroom case. This Canadian author has done his research on the US Justice system. I felt that I was reading the transcripts from any one of the thousands of US court cases that occurs every day. The book holds your interest and twists just enough at the end to satisfy your desire for a good whodunnit. Highly recomemnded for both sci-fi and mystery fans.

Rating:
Summary: Adept genre-mixing, but not as good as it could have been
Review: Robert J. Sawyer has written some of the best and most imaginative science-fiction novels of recent years, so I read ILLEGAL ALIEN almost as soon as I found out about it. Sawyer adeptly mixes genres -- in particular, the first-contact subgenre of science-fiction and the trial subgenre of murder mystery -- and his wry and sardonic comments about the O.J. Simpson case and the problems of conducting and reporting celebrity trials are some of the best things in this book. The whole, however, turned out to be less than the sum of its parts. Without giving away key plot secrets, my major complaint was that we learned almost nothing of the aliens' ideas about law or their culture's legal institutions, which I had expected to hear about in a novel in which an alien is tried for murdering a human being. Also, there is a big contradiction between the book's early assertion that the aliens do not share humans' concepts of "good" and "bad" or "right" and "wrong" and some late but vital plot developments. In sum, even second-level Robert J. Sawyer is several cuts above the normal level of most science-fiction, but ILLEGAL ALIEN was not as good as it could have been. -- Richard B. Bernstein

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre at best
Review: This book is social commentary thinly disguised as science-fiction/mystery. There's nothing wrong with that per se; combining sci-fi with social-political views goes back at least to H.G. Wells, to a lesser extent to Jules Verne, and for all I know even before that. There's a catch, though: the sci-fi story must be good enough to stand on its own, without the political trappings. Such was the case with "War of the Worlds", "The Time Machine", etc. Such is not the case with "Illegal Alien". The reader is subjected to a steady stream of the author's liberal political and social views, along with a wearying succession of pop culture references. In short, if you're a left-wing kind of person -- to the extent that you'll put up with a mediocre sci-fi yarn just to get your dose of liberal politics -- then this may be the book for you. All others, steer clear. And maybe re-acquaint yourself with a real writer like Wells.