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Mar. 15th, 2014 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA friend recced me Julie Czernada's A Thousand Words for Stranger! It is SO SPACE OPERA. My favorite part about this book is how the human love interest is an dashing older space captain named CAPTAIN MORGAN who owns a spaceship called -- wait for it -- THE SILVER FOX. I laughed at this for about twenty minutes straight. Hey there, George Clooney!
Meanwhile the heroine is an AMNESIAC SPACE PRINCESS from a species of TELEPATHIC ALIENS who is running around trying to avoid the various people hunting for her, including:
- a TRADE FEDERATION, who want her because they think she can somehow prove the telepathic aliens are breaking Space Trade rules
- an EVIL ALIEN LIZARD PIRATE, who wants her so he can sell her off to a MYSTERIOUS EVIL TELEPATHIC ALIEN
- ALL OF HER ALIEN TELEPATHIC RELATIVES, who are like "we gave our telepathic space princess amnesia for Reasons and THEN WE LOST HER shit shit shit shit"
There's an overarching meta-plot to do with how, like, telepathic aliens hook up by having psychic battles that usually end up with the dude dead, and because they're all getting increasingly more superpowered they have accidentally doomed themselves into death as a sub-species, and Julie Czernada is a biologist so I'm willing to believe that this makes sense. I don't know, I'm not a biologist. Anyway though it is all clearly less relevant than Captain Morgan and his Amnesiac Telepathic Space Princess running through grimy spaceports and battling evil alien lizard pirates and having loyal Chewbacca-esque cockroach alien friends who are willing to drop their entire careers to help our sympathetic human protagonists and spending a lot of time staring angstily into each other's eyes.
So that was perfectly enjoyable but even all that is WAY LESS IMPORTANT than the short story which was packed at the end of the book, which I almost didn't read, which would have been a TERRIBLE MISTAKE because this short story is AMAZING.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Man, we lost the human member of our team so I guess SOMEONE has to take charge his archaeology ruin-hunting dog. FINE. Whatever. Ugh, dogs. So sloppy, so gross, so constantly affectionate.
A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT: *occurs*
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: omg this dog saved my life! also, he's adorable. omg. Dogs. DOGS. Dogs are amazing. MUCH LOVE. VERY AFFECTION.
DOG: *dies tragically*
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: HELLO EARTH EMBASSY I WOULD LIKE ANOTHER DOG PLEASE
EARTH EMBASSY: We are very sorry but we have a policy of not giving out dogs.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: But. But. BUT PUPPY.
EARTH EMBASSY: No, you don't understand, like, humans are pretty useless? But dogs are useful and everyone loves them? So we NEVER give out dogs to aliens because otherwise no one would ever invite humans to the space parties EVER AGAIN. Sorry, dude.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: ...
EARTH EMBASSY: We're very sorry. We do understand. Dogs are pretty great.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Well ... after this terrible accident, we do have an opening on our space archaeology team, so .... if I can't have a dog, then can we have a human?
EARTH EMBASSY: Wait, you actually want a human on your team? No one ever wants a human on their team!
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Well, humans are probably kind of like dogs, right?
EARTH EMBASSY: ....
AND THAT'S HOW HUMANS JOINED THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE. I'm not even a dog person and I find this amazingly plausible.
Meanwhile the heroine is an AMNESIAC SPACE PRINCESS from a species of TELEPATHIC ALIENS who is running around trying to avoid the various people hunting for her, including:
- a TRADE FEDERATION, who want her because they think she can somehow prove the telepathic aliens are breaking Space Trade rules
- an EVIL ALIEN LIZARD PIRATE, who wants her so he can sell her off to a MYSTERIOUS EVIL TELEPATHIC ALIEN
- ALL OF HER ALIEN TELEPATHIC RELATIVES, who are like "we gave our telepathic space princess amnesia for Reasons and THEN WE LOST HER shit shit shit shit"
There's an overarching meta-plot to do with how, like, telepathic aliens hook up by having psychic battles that usually end up with the dude dead, and because they're all getting increasingly more superpowered they have accidentally doomed themselves into death as a sub-species, and Julie Czernada is a biologist so I'm willing to believe that this makes sense. I don't know, I'm not a biologist. Anyway though it is all clearly less relevant than Captain Morgan and his Amnesiac Telepathic Space Princess running through grimy spaceports and battling evil alien lizard pirates and having loyal Chewbacca-esque cockroach alien friends who are willing to drop their entire careers to help our sympathetic human protagonists and spending a lot of time staring angstily into each other's eyes.
So that was perfectly enjoyable but even all that is WAY LESS IMPORTANT than the short story which was packed at the end of the book, which I almost didn't read, which would have been a TERRIBLE MISTAKE because this short story is AMAZING.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Man, we lost the human member of our team so I guess SOMEONE has to take charge his archaeology ruin-hunting dog. FINE. Whatever. Ugh, dogs. So sloppy, so gross, so constantly affectionate.
A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT: *occurs*
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: omg this dog saved my life! also, he's adorable. omg. Dogs. DOGS. Dogs are amazing. MUCH LOVE. VERY AFFECTION.
DOG: *dies tragically*
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: HELLO EARTH EMBASSY I WOULD LIKE ANOTHER DOG PLEASE
EARTH EMBASSY: We are very sorry but we have a policy of not giving out dogs.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: But. But. BUT PUPPY.
EARTH EMBASSY: No, you don't understand, like, humans are pretty useless? But dogs are useful and everyone loves them? So we NEVER give out dogs to aliens because otherwise no one would ever invite humans to the space parties EVER AGAIN. Sorry, dude.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: ...
EARTH EMBASSY: We're very sorry. We do understand. Dogs are pretty great.
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Well ... after this terrible accident, we do have an opening on our space archaeology team, so .... if I can't have a dog, then can we have a human?
EARTH EMBASSY: Wait, you actually want a human on your team? No one ever wants a human on their team!
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Well, humans are probably kind of like dogs, right?
EARTH EMBASSY: ....
AND THAT'S HOW HUMANS JOINED THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE. I'm not even a dog person and I find this amazingly plausible.
