Starcrosser

Robert J. Sawyer is a Toronto-based free-lance writer.

Starcrosser, a ufo abduction novel for junior-high students, is part of
Collier-Macmillan’s Series 2000 ( a collection of very short novels).
There’s some funny, enjoyable material here, but I had real problems
with both the plot and the underlying philosophy.

Plot first: At the beginning of the book, the hero, 14-year-old
Marshall Hampton, sticks a magnet on the side of his Walkman portable
cassette player. By the end of the book, weeks later, the magnet is
still there but the tape within has somehow avoided being erased by it.
Stretching credulity further, this Walkman suddenly turns out to have a
built-in speaker (such portable tape players only have headphone jacks),
so that Marshall can reduce some nasty aliens to quivering jelly by
playing rock ’n’ roll to them.

Beyond that, there’s a morally reprehensible quality about the
book’s lessons. Marshall is whisked away from his home in Sioux
Lookout, Ontario, by alien Grophees, who are at war with the evil
Drakonians. The Grophees assume that because Drakonians look like
humans, the humans must think like Drakonians. Rather than being exposed
as silly prejudice, this assumption is borne out by the events of the
story. And, although his conscience occasionally pipes up with a
platitude, Marshall decides to help the Grophees, telling them how to
mount a sneak attack against the Drakonians. A friendly alien cries,
“That is not honest!” Marshall snaps back with some good old human
wisdom: “Victory is never honest.”

There’s some very brief lip service paid to the evils of war, but
it’s all set aside when Marshall leads the Grophees and their allies
in a slaughter of the Drakonians.

It’s a breezy read, but I can’t recommend it either as intelligent
science fiction or as any kind of coherent morality play.