Review: Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi

Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi

Scalzi has a gift of coming up with some great ideas to hang a novel on. In Agent to the Stars a super-capable Hollywood agent gets the crazy job of figuring out how to get the world to accept with open arms the arrival of a race of alien creatures who look like the blob from the old horror movie (only smaller). It’s an impossible job, and that’s really the only problem with this delightful, funny, and thoroughly enjoyable novel. Our agent never really spends any time working on the problem. Most of the novel reads like the adventures of a Hollywood agent who just happens to know an alien creature. Much of the tension and excitement derives from our hero dealing with the clients that he was supposed to have passed off once he took on the alien race. And in fact, he only stumbles into his solution late in the book, rather than strategically planning it out. That being said, I enjoyed every word of this novel. Will Wheaton reads it with great feeling, maximizing the humor, the tension, and the occasional very touching scene.