Top Ten Innovative Alien Stories

           At the beginning of this month, my first professional publication was published in Clarkesworld 77: a short story titled "The Wanderers." (It's available to read or listen to free through the Clarkesworld website.) The story is about a group of sadistic aliens who come to Earth after viewing some of our movies and news broadcasts. As members of a violent society, they are drawn to our planet's violent nature; their favorite transmissions have been our gory horror films, and they intend to conquer us, as we will prove a better challenge than their masochistic subjects on their home planet. When they reach Earth, however, they find their plans thwarted.

            Now I have always liked a certain kind of alien story, one that focuses less on action and more on the alien sensibility, on the way aliens might see us, ways they may differ from and, perhaps a more intriguing sentiment, complement us. Thus, in honor of my first pro publication, I bring you ten of my favorite alien stories; innovative stories which concern the presence of alien life.

            1."Beautiful Boys" by Theodora Goss

            Asimov's Science Fiction (August 2012)

            A scientist investigates and studies the presence of alien life here on Earth in the form of attractive men and becomes involved with one of her study's participants. The aliens in "Beautiful Boys" are less literal aliens and more an attempt to explain the irresistibility some men seem to exude. The main character, an intensely rational woman, tries to give a scientific explanation to otherwise inexplicable emotions. A definite contender for this year's Hugo award for Best Short Story.

            2. "Eight Episodes" by Robert Reed

            Lightspeed (February 2013). EscapePod 107. Originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2006.

            A failed, cult television show called Invasion of a Small World may or may not really be an alien transmission. This story leaves all of the questions it asks unanswered, and though no physical aliens appear in the story, the storytelling style of a feature-type news story provides an unbiased and interesting way to absorb the story.

            3. "muo-ka'sChild" by Indrapramit Das

            Clarkesworld 72

            The most refreshing aspect of Das' "muo-ka's Child" is the depiction of alien life. When the main character, Ziara, lands on a foreign planet, she is saved by an alien life form named muo-ka, who becomes a parent to her. The relationship between them, which is both very similar and much different from our own parent-child relationships, proves, in the end, to be both touching and a tad unnerving.

            4. "Think like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly

            Think like a Dinosaur: and Other Stories

            Michael works for an alien species called the Hanen, who have acquired the nickname dinosaurs because of their dinosaur-like appearance; Michael's job is to facilitate human teleportation to the Hanen's planet. The teleportation in "Think like a Dinosaur" works by creating a duplicate copy of the person and then destroying the original, but when the transfer goes wrong, Michael is supposed to "balance" the equation and kill the young woman's extra copy. This story explores the dark side of technological advancement and asks what might threaten our humanity in the face of that advancement.

            5. "The Pelican Bar" by Karen Joy Fowler

            Eclipse Three and What I Didn't See: And Other Stories

            A young woman is sent away to a boarding school whose inhabitants are tortured and essentially stripped of their humanity. The reader isn’t aware that "The Pelican Bar" is an alien story, or even a speculative story at that, until the last couple of paragraphs, and though I hate to ruin the surprise, Fowler's withholding of this information makes this one of the most innovative stories I have ever read, period.

            6. "The Women Men Don't See" by Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr.

            SciFiction. Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

            Sheldon/Tiptree's "The Women Men Don't See," the oldest story on this list, is told from the point-of-view of an American government agent named Don, whose plane crashes with a woman named Ruth Parsons and her daughter aboard. Throughout the story, the man thinks he knows how the women will behave and is agitated when the women do not act panicked or helpless. Although the aliens in this story are present only briefly, it is what they represent that makes this story one of the best I've ever read.

            7. "Light and the Sufferer" by Jonathan Lethem

            The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye and Feeling Very Strange: The SlipstreamAnthology

            While a young man tries to help his drug-addicted brother, they are trailed by one of the strange aliens called sufferers which are ubiquitous in the story's world. The aliens here, sphinx-like and unexplained, are treated more like scenery than an integral part of the plot and become a conduit for people's desire to attach meaning and find a reason for all things in life.

            8. "The Far Oasis" by Jeffrey Ford

            SciFiction

            Abandoned on an alien planet for murdering a woman, the main character of "The Far Oasis," a man called Sikes, mercilessly hunts and kills the planet's creatures, called Geets, performing an artificial selection experiment in an attempt to recreate in the slightly-humanoid creatures the features of the woman he killed, as well as his own likeness. A haunting, disturbing story.

            9. "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang

            Stories of Your Life and Others

            Beautiful and heart-wrenching, "Story of Your Life" does a great job describing what it might be like to try and communicate with aliens who do not speak our language, or a language anything like ours. Told from the point-of-view of a linguist given the task of figuring out how to communicate with the aliens, the alien visitation here is much more complex and realistic than in any other story I've ever read.  

            10. "Gone" by John Crowley

            Novelties & Souvenirs

            The aliens who visit Earth in "Gone" offer to complete chores in exchange for a checkmark on a "Good Will Ticket," the meaning of which is never quite figured out. A woman struggling with retrieving her children from her ex-husband who has taken them waits for them to visit her. An optimistic story, which is always a rare find.        

And Helena Bell's "Robot," which I discovered the day after I composed this list, certainly deserves mention. The aliens in this story are utilized by people as caregivers for the disabled. Told in an imperative style, "Robot" is reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl."

Hugo Nominations: Part One

            It's Hugo nomination season, and I'm going to Worldcon for the first time. Actually, I've only ever been to one other convention, and that was GeekGirlCon in Seattle, so conventions in general are new for me. I'm excited not only about the convention itself, but also about being able to nominate and vote for stories I think deserve attention.

            One of those stories is "Everything Must Go" by Brooke Wonders from Clarkesworld 74 (November 2012), available in print and in audio format. "Everything Must Go" is the story of a family breaking apart and the house which tries -- though it is constrained by its form -- to save the family and itself. The story is told through a Housing Offered classified ad, a technique which foreshadows the ultimate failure of the house to keep the family together while giving the story a perfect structure. The family's story is told in metaphor, where their fears and hopes are literalized; the alcoholic father transforms into the glass of his liquor bottles, the son who wants to run away grows wings, the mother who doesn't want to lose her family connects them to her using the strings with which she constructs textile art, and the daughter who wants to disappear wishes she could fold herself up like she folds origami. These first few literalizations are more obvious, and they occur at the beginning of the story. But as the story progresses, the literalizations become more complicated and affecting, taken steps deeper than one at first imagines they will be taken, and the house itself becomes very much its own character with its own hopes, fears, memory, and character arc. "Everything Must Go" is an honest portrayal of a family affected by alcoholism. 

            "Devour" by Ferrett Steinmetz (EscapePod #331) tells the story of a man who watches his husband be consumed by a monster. Bruce and Sergio are a couple who, throughout their relationship, have always been opposites in terms of their political opinions; Bruce is a pro bono lawyer who fought for human rights and attended peace rallies, while Sergio was a right-wing plumber, a firm supporter of the war. The war in this story, between China and America, is over. It is never described in great detail; the reader receives only enough information to inform the dynamic between Sergio and Bruce. Neither China nor America is guiltless; there is no real villain, which is fair to real life.

            In the story, China has released a form of bio warfare, a virus which when inhaled overwrites people's DNA, turning their bodies into the body of Patient Zero, a man who the Chinese government injected with chemicals and turned into a monster, powerful and infectious, then ground and released his body as bombs into America, or something. The specifics are not the focus of the story. The bio warfare didn’t work, affecting only a small amount of Americans. However, China's virus, Patient Zero, still lurks in the pipes, where Sergio has contracted it. As he morphs into Patient Zero, a conflicted Bruce -- torn between his former peaceful self and the man who, as he watches his husband die, longs for vengeance -- keeps watch over Sergio and waits for the moment he will have to kill him.

            The love story, told in flashbacks which fit into the story and provide a poignant break from the heart-wrenching scenes of Sergio's transformation, is sweet and authentic. The confliction between Sergio and Bruce is convincing, as is the confliction between Sergio and Patient Zero as they share the body which is quickly ridding itself of Sergio completely. And Bruce's confliction with himself, his struggle to hold himself to his own previous standards when he's been personally affected by the war, is the most arresting of all the story's conflictions.

            In the end, "Devour" is a story about overcoming hatred, about overcoming prejudice. It is not a story about the war that takes place among nations, but the wars which take place between and inside people.

            And as for the John W. Campbell award, I would love to see Mur Lafferty on the ballot again this year. It's her second year of qualification, and though her qualifying professional sale, a short story included in The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, provides a great example of Mur's quirky, innovative humor, it's her book-length works and podcasts which really impress me; she has been one of the first writers to truly embrace the podcasting form, releasing several books as podcasts, including her novel Playing for Keeps, a cliché-shattering superhero story which follows not the best superheroes but those endowed with less impressive gifts -- the power to smell the past, to balance a tray and never drop it, to control elevators. Her podcast I Should Be Writing has helped aspiring writers figure out the world of writing since 2005, and under her editorship, the fiction podcast EscapePod began paying professional rates. Her first professionally published book The Shambling Guide to New York City will be out in May of this year. Mur has been such a force in the speculative fiction world, she definitely deserves another go at the Campbell.