First Contract

While some varieties of SF aliens have peaceful motives when they arrive on Earth, many are intent on hostile takeovers. The plan of Costikyan's aliens is particularly sinister: to drive all success, love and financial solvency from Johnson Mukerjii's life by flooding the Earth market with their superior technological junk. At least, that is how Mukerjii, the hero who narrates with an endearing braggadocio and swagger familiar to SF fans, sees it. It all starts when the first contract between an alien race and the United Nations sees the advanced civilization's entire knowledge base traded for an apparently useless piece of real estateAJupiter. This turns out to be as terrible a mistake as selling Manhattan island off for a few beads. (Using Jupiter's resources, the aliens build gadgets such as hover cars that fly at Mach 6, objects far beyond the grasp of Earth entrepreneurs.) Earth's economy bottoms out, dragging our hero into the sewers with it (almost literally). Ever the optimist and networker, however, Mukerjii swindles his way to funds so he can develop a product and secure a new contract that will take him back to the top. Costikyan's tale is bouyant and fun, despite having little new to offer. Mukerjii remains appealing throughout, never loses his somewhat dubious dignityAi.e., using surplus food, some of which is labeled unfit for humans, to prepare odd variations of the gourmet meals he was used toAas he fights valiantly against a world out to get him. Readers will take him to heart. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ironic alien-contact yarn from the computer-game designer and author of By the Sword (1993). Johnson Mukerjii has the world by the tail: he's a gourmet and connoisseur, successful businessman, and confidante of the surfer-dude president of the US--until the aliens arrive. The aliens, it emerges, are capitalists, willing to sell their advanced technology to anyone who can pay. To them, Earth is no more than an impoverished galactic third-world backwater. Earth industries can't compete with alien know-how, and high-tech firms lead the worldwide crash. Unemployment hits 50%, Mukerjii's company craters while his wife vanishes with the liquid assets. He survives as a soup-kitchen cook in a shantytown, but he has an idea: What can Earth sell the aliens that they haven't already got? How about a self-adhering plastic holder for a null-gravity drink bulb-the Mukerjii Drink Valet? Finance is a problem. He visits well-connected right-wing military SF writer Leander Huff (the aliens like him-they think he's an amusing idiot) and relieves him of some startup money. He sets up an operation in Mexico, then sells the Drink Valet wherever aliens congregate. But the really big sales can only be made off-planet, and to visit a galactic trade show he'll need to scrape up a $100 million. And the money, Mukerjii soon learns, is the least of his problems.Engaging, amusing, and not too far off-kilter to make sense. Expect sequels. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The successful world of business executive Johnson Mukerjii comes to a dismal end when the arrival of aliens and alien technology forces him out of a job and onto the streetsDwith vengeance on his mind. Game designer Costikyan targets the global economy and the world's infatuation with high-tech gadgets in a freewheeling sf comedy recommended for most sf collections.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.