A Very Short Fiction Collection

This is a slim volume of short stories, perfect for airline or beach reading. In The Flattered Planet, A. R. Yngve proves himself to be an author of idea-a-minute inventiveness, but not much maturity. Especially with the politically oriented stories; they have all the subtlety of a brick to the head. (On a more general note, with the election of Barack Obama, stories that assume that the default 'President’ is like Bush Jr. aren’t aging well.) Of course, subtle is hard to do in stories with a maximum length of about 20 pages (small pages with large font and significant margins) and a minimum length of 6 words. (Of the flash-fic my favorite is: “He killed for the elixir of eternal youth. He got life.”) And some of the ideas are good: there's beautiful imagery in a story of underground women whose habitat is threatened by oil drilling (although inasmuch as they are portrayed as a threat, they contribute to a rather myopic treatment of women throughout). There’s also a good one about quantum observers and how even mundane things may effect the universe.

On the other hand, some of the stories devolve into outright silliness: in the opening story, one of the longest, increasingly powerful NASA telescopes discover an Earth-like planet. Following an unrealistically accelerated timeline, they see more and more detail, realizing that it's not just Earth-like, it's *exactly like* Earth. Eventually we send a probe, and they realize they're being watched. They paint their Moon in such a way that we can see it, claiming that we are poor copies of them. The viewpoint astronomer believes that they're a poor copy of us, and conceives a plan to send up a message flipping them off. In another, a thinly disguised Cory Doctorow is repeatedly revived after death, and forced to perform for the amusement of tormentors, since the ‘copyright’ on his life and experiences has expired and people can do what they want with him.

That's really where these stories fall down; even when the ideas are intriguing, Yngve tends to take the low road to silliness instead of examining them with any thematic depth. Still, it's much easier to forgive stories when they are <4000 words long; at least you haven't invested that much. So if you want a light read that throws around ideas like they're confetti, you could do worse than this. However, even with all the ideas in the air here, due to execution none of them completely rise to the level of thought-provoking.

Edited to Add: A. R. Yngve's Response

Alien Beach, by A. R. Yngve

If I were to say that Alien Beach is a self-published novel available for free on the web from the Swedish writer A. R. Yngve, you would probably instantly have some preconceived notions about it – namely that it would probably suck. I am here to tell that it does not, in fact, suck. It’s not terribly good, but it is an early work by an author who has been published in quite a few venues. This is not amateurish fan fiction. It is deeply flawed, but if you’re looking for a fast, free story about alien first contact, you could do worse than to read this.

The basic premise is that an alien race comes to visit Earth. They’ve been receiving our TV and Radio broadcasts for quite awhile now, and would like to get to know us better. After a first meeting on the Moon, they lease an island in the South Pacific for a year. They park their ship in a lagoon, and an international crew of scientists set up camp on the island. In a parallel story line, an anonymous Gulf War veteran starts to have strange visions that he believes are related to the aliens. As he moves closer to them, he gets ensnarled with an alien worshipping cult, but eventually manages to free himself and meet the aliens.

Let me address the flaws: Some of the characters are instantly recognizable as real people. This is especially regrettable in the case of the protagonist Carl Sayer, who is obviously Carl Sagan. It gets very distracting, and it lends to the feeling that this is a book written by a science fiction fan for science fiction fans with all the in-jokes that entails. Also, there are lots of “yeah, right” moments in this book. A lot of them involve international politics (would Israel join Iran in withdrawing from the UN because we let aliens visit the Moon?), others involve personal relationships (middle aged female scientist makes pass at respected, married, elder scientist. After being predictably rejected she is so distraught that she leaps onto the camp doctor for a one night stand. There are no consequences from any of this). The characters are usually two-dimensional and often act in ridiculously juvenile ways. The dialog and exposition can be clunky.

However, the soldier is a well-realized character with some depth to him. And the aliens, while not particularly well characterized, have some very interesting characteristics, particularly the way they (perhaps) advance into higher forms of being. Also, the world-building of their culture and background is admirable. While they are aquatic creatures, they aren’t simply dressed-up dolphins or rubber-masked humans, which is better than many.

All in all this is a fast read. If you let yourself go with it and don’t let yourself get distracted by your eyes rolling every now and again, you should enjoy it as a nice light, almost Golden Age-feeling science fiction novel (although showing the lack of a Golden Age editor).

I’ve been in contact with the author, helping him straighten out some typos that were bugging me and giving him some feedback on specific issues that I felt the book needed work on. He asked me to include this statement in my review:

In hindsight, I see that many of the characters in ALIEN BEACH act immaturely ("Soldier" openly says in the final chapter that he has been behaving like a teenager). I'm not sure precisely to what degree this was a conscious choice.

But I do know that the novel contains much intentional satire of the 1990s: the shallowness of the culture, the immaturity of adults, the Monica Lewinsky Affair, religious cults on a suicide trip, and a pervading millennial dread.

Note how several characters, from the very first chapter, talk about The End of The World. During the 1990s, I often heard such comments in real life, from perfectly “normal" people.

Which is another reason why why it would be so difficult for me to rewrite ALIEN BEACH: it was written in and for a different era -- pre-9/11, if you will.

Regards,
-A.R.Yngve