Subject: REVIEW: "Illegal Alien", Robert J. Sawyer

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Nov 1999 13:24:55 -0500

Illegal Alien, by Robert J. Sawyer
	Review copyright 1999 Robert M. Slade

The book jacket loudly trumpets the surprising plot twists of the book.
This is the fault of the publisher, rather than the author, but it does
rather detract from the enjoyment of an otherwise very pleasant piece of
science fiction when you find that all of "intriguing" plot twists are
predictable well in advance, including a weapon first invented by Isaac
Asimov, if I remember correctly, and re-used in a modified form in such
non-sf works as Michael Slade's "Ripper."

The plot ... well, the plot *is* convoluted enough, and yet simple enough,
that to discuss it at all is almost to give the game away entirely.  Most
of the action centres around the trial of one of the first aliens to land
on Earth, who has been charged with the murder of one of the first people
to meet him.  Yet, in the end, the trial itself is almost irrelevant to
the story.

There is a token effort to present differing cultures and attitudes
between the aliens and ourselves.  In an interesting reversal of recent sf
dogma, the aliens are the religious ones while the earthlings are the more
atheistic.  However, the book assumes a rather stunning similarity in
psychology.  A number of actions take place that, in view of the story in
its totality, really make very little sense at all.

Again, this series is about technology.  Now, there isn't an awful lot of
technology on offer in this text.  But one part notes that the aliens are
able to cross interstellar space because of an ability to hibernate.  Very
useful ability, that.  They need nothing more, to sleep for two hundred
years, than a comfortable bed, and a cool temperature in order to induce
the hibernation state.  Now that comfortable bed is one thing.  The aliens
have an arm running down the middle of the back, and therefore a slot in
the bed to accommodate it, and therefore they don't toss and turn much.
After two hundred years you would have one heck of a set of bed sores.

Hibernation as we know it does not drop your metabolism all that much.
Get a good supply of body fat, and you can actually go for a month without
eating.  Bears only have to extend that a few times.  But even if you were
able to drop your metabolism to one percent of normal, a two hundred year
trip would mean that you would have to pack on a two year supply of
nutrients.  That'd be a fair sized pot.

The aliens, though, haven't developed hibernation to get them through the
winter.  Or, rather, their periodic winters are four hundred thousand
years long.  Let's say that you can drop your metabolism to one percent of
one percent.  That would be equivalent to a heart beat every three hours
or breathing about twice a day for us, just a bit beyond the time
suggested in the CPR lessons.  You would still have to carry forty years
worth of goodies, or roughly a lifetime supply, to get you through that
period.

Put another way, can you see something living on the same time scale that
we do, being able to survive for a time that starts to be significant in
geologic terms?

%A   Robert J. Sawyer
%O  ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sawyer
%C   375 Hudson Street, New York, NY   10014
%D   1997
%G   0-441-00592-6
%I   Ace/Penguin/Putnam
%O   http://www.penguinputnam.com
%P   301 p.
%T   "Illegal Alien"

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