The aliens are here and they want to become charter members of the U.N. They’re nice guys but are sticklers for the law and that causes some big problems. This is good comedy SF with some serious issues incorporated into the storyline that make it a good all around read.
Sam Kent works for World Wide in New York. He scours newspapers and radio for news to send overseas. Nothing much happening but then…aliens have landed at the Burning Tree Country Club. The all male group call themselves Monolithians. They don’t say where their home planet is located.
They’re all nice guys and the first thing they do is hit the New York clothing stores for some Brooks Brothers suits so they’ll mix in. The U.N. grants them charter member status and they’re also made honorary citizens of the U.S. A female employee of World Wide nicknamed Riddie quits and becomes the aliens press officer.
They cause problems when they decide that laws must be enforced exactly as written. One small New York town has Blue Laws that prohibit anyone from working on Sundays. One alien blocks the entrance to a church telling the minister that his job is work and he’s not allowed to break the Blue Law. Parishioners can go inside but he has to stay out.
Sam and his pregnant wife Mae live in a small New York state town. One day a neighbor boy runs to their place and says there’s a spaceship in the woods. Sam goes with him to investigate and sure enough…there it is. Coming out are duplicates of world leaders. Sam tells the boy to run off and San ends up being captured. He’s locked in a room with no way out.
One knob on the wall is a radio. He hears an account of a huge traffic jam. The speed limit is twenty miles per hour and the aliens want to make sure everyone obeys the rule. Leading the packed roadway in his VW is Sam. Noe he worries about what the fake Sam is doing with his wife.
One of his captors finally tells him what’s going on. Sam will become the press secretary to the President of the United States. World Wide is bought out and moves to the White House where it’s now a propaganda arm of the government. The real Sam is worked back in and he and Mae move to D.C.
Sam’s first press briefing is to inform everyone that there’ll be a meeting of the President and other world leaders with the aliens. It’ll be held on a space station.
The book isn’t wacky or cornball and that makes it very entertaining. One funny quick bit finds science fiction writers picketing outside the U.N. calling the aliens unfair for landing. and as one paper puts it, “getting into our racket.”
Richard Wilson
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