Illegal Alien by Robert Sawyer

[Parrot0123]

Basic Storyline: We follow the events of Earth's first encounter with extra-terrestrial beings. Refreshingly enough, it starts off pretty smoothly. The alien's ship needs repairing after a run-in with an asteroid belt and the Humans have agreed to manufacture the parts needed for repair in exchange for whatever technology they can glean from the process.

Everything falls to pieces though when a murder occurs and one of the aliens (who are known as tosok) is the prime suspect. What follows is the trial of the millennium with all the twists, turns, and deception that you'd expect.

There are a few things I think the author could have done better with this book.

I don't think Mr. Sawyer really thought out the mentality of the alien species he created - the Tosok. I noticed a few contradictory aspects that are never resolved to my satisfaction. Just things that I noticed that may be possible to write off in other ways but haven't really been addressed.

For example, Hask, the Tosok who is accused of murder, does an interview with Barbara Walters in the book. He explains that on his world there is no such thing as justice because crime doesn't exist:

"On my world, there is no such thing as crime; allowing a crime to occur would imply that God has ceased to be vigilant over the affairs of her children."

Incidentally, the Tosok are monotheistic - and ladies, their God is female. It seems that they just translated their name for their God into the English word "God" to simplify things.

Hask goes on to say that the root of human crime seems to be poverty and drugs and that people aren't addressing that by treating it. It seems to me that this is probably Robert Sawyers personal view which he's trying to propagate. I consider the way he worked it in like that to be extremely tacky.

Anyway, back to the quotes by Hask on the subject of crime and justice. In a later conversation Hask explains that his species believes in pre-destination and that everything that happens is the will of God:

"Let me ask you some hypothetical questions," said Penney.
"Is it all right to steal?"

"If I do it, God certainly must have observed it, and since she did not stop me, it must be acceptable."

"Is it all right to kill?"

"Obviously, God could prevent one from doing so if she wished; that she does not clearly means the killer must have been acting as her instrument."

Penney's eyebrows went up. "Are there any unacceptable actions?"

"Define unacceptable."

"Unacceptable: acts that cannot be countenanced. Acts that are not reasonable."

"No."

If we're to accept Hask's word, and I don't believe that it was Mr. Sawyer's intention for Hask to be either lying or bending the truth, then the reason the Tosok get along with each other so well is at least partly because they accept everything that happens as the will of God and don't have any concept of crime or injustice. Anything that happens is acceptable by definition of it having happened.

That doesn't sound like a plausible frame of mind for a sentient being to me, but I'll put that aside as another discussion. These statements seem extremely strange in light of the fact that they're showed to be false time and again throughout the rest of the story. When Hask is injured by a crazed fanatic, Kelkad, the Captain of the Tosok ship is very upset. He is concerned that the crazed fanatic will go free, and says with all seriousness "See to it that my faith in this thing you call justice is not betrayed"

His faith in justice?? What happened to everything that happens being the will of God and therefore acceptable?

Later in the book we see a couple of the Tosoks in the small party disagree with the others and take independent action to stop what they're doing. We also see one of the Tosoks get quite angry at something another Tosok has done and resort to physical violence. (I'm deliberately being vague here to avoid spoiling anything)

It's obvious here that they're not accepting everything that's happening as being the will of God, and that there are some actions that they do consider to be unacceptable. I don't think this can be explained away, I think that Mr. Sawyer goofed.

Another aspect that perplexed me is the actions of the defense lawyer, Mr. Dale Rice. For no apparent reason he brought in a preacher and a scientist to the court to argue the case on Creationism VS Evolution. Let's ignore for the time being that we find out eventually that these arguments have significance in the end. That may be so... but they had absolutely no significance in the court room. Mr. Rice did not follow up on the statements and the argument of Creationism VS Evolution did not make it into his final arguments.

It seems that the only reason for these characters to have testified in court at all was to give us a background to help understand what happens in the story later. Their testimony had no bearing whatsoever on the court case, and there's no reason to believe that Mr. Rice knew something in advance about the Tosok view of evolution and how it would become relevant. This is sloppy writing.

On the plus side, the characters are extremely well developed - at least the human ones anyway. To me, character development is one of the most important aspects of a book, and Mr. Sawyer puts a good deal of effort into getting them just right from accents to mannerisms to speech patterns.

Also, the legal proceedings are very detailed and interesting, they're never made too dull to read and things are explained in terms that can be understood by a general audience.

The story also comes equipped with some good plot-twists as well as the complimentary red-herrings to keep you guessing.

Over all I found it to be an engaging enough read. I'll give it a 7 out of 10 - I enjoyed reading it with the exception of just a few noticeable annoyances. posted Monday, 10 Nove