Totem Poles

by Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling

The saucer aliens are here. They're healing the planet. They've got to be stopped.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Ebooks

23 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 17, 2016

About the author

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre. He is best known for his Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which won Philip K. Dick awards. Presently, Rudy Rucker edits the science fiction webzine Flurb.

Reviews

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:

In this satirical story, aliens have arrived on Earth and promptly began cleaning up all of the pollution caused by humans.

The air invaders resembled classic flying saucers. They haunted Earth’s skylines, absorbing pollutants. In their seagoing form, the saucers took on shapes like whales. They devoured poison gyres of floating plastic with their ivory teeth, and filtered toxins with their dark baleen. And the subterranean saucers were colossal, rubbery, saucer worms. They infested mankind’s mines and landfills, erasing every scrap of poison they found.

As a result, the rain forests are recovering, the polar ice is freezing again, and most of humanity welcomes the aliens. There are some people, however, who distrust the aliens' motives (“If you wash an apple before eating it, do you do that for the apple’s good?”) ― so much so, that they do their best to kill the aliens, even though the aliens have evinced a complete unwillingness to harm people.

It’s an engaging idea, but Rucker and Sterling focus on quirky satire and surrealism at the expense of clarity and accessibility. “Totem Poles” is a very weird and disjointed tale, in which strange bedfellows like spirits of the dead, edible alien grubs, cities somehow reproduced by aliens, and resurrected “saucer saints” all play a role.

This story is free online at Tor.com.

[elsewhen and away · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was actually really startled to see how illustrious and learnéd the authors of this story are, because I thought it was weird, dumb, male-gaze-y and poorly put together. You assume they're going to say something about human society, human nature, et cetera, and they kind of do, but then it just veers off into nonsense. If anything I'm impressed that two entire people with vast experience can collaborate this badly.

[Jana Bianchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Que conto mais louco. Fiquei meio "ué" quanto à história, mas a construção da mitologia viajada é no mínimo interessante. Achei uma mistura curiosa de weird com realismos mágico com ficção científica, não estava muito preparada, acho, mas vale experimentar. :)

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tries for groundbreaking and different, but the narrative never really comes together. Aliens are on Earth, cleaning it all up for us, so, naturally, some humans feel the needs to either fight against these creatures or exploit them. But then there's resurrection and saints and several not particularly interesting characters.

[Adam Wolf · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gah. I love Bruce Sterling's work, and I like Rudy Rucker's work, but I didn't really enjoy this. It's surreal and bizarre.

[Scott Shjefte · Rating 3 out of 5]

ALIEN HAVE THOUGHTS.

[Isa (Pages Full of Stars) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for free on Tor.com

I felt like the story had too many elements but they didn't really work well together and felt disjointed instead. Ultimately, it left me confused of what was the purpose of the story or what the actual story was.

[Marco · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a very strange satirical story, where aliens arrive on Earth and promptly clean up all of the pollution caused by humans. Despite some funny and interesting part, the story is all over the places, and I found myself at a loss to understand what the point of this story was.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Alex Sarll]

A ridiculous, plausible, depressing fable in which the flying saucers finally come to save us...and those not profiteering are animated by "a horror to see beings who were immune to human malice".

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and wonderful

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really weird. Could've been something but ultimately unsatisfying for me.

[Mitch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise, but very disjointed and didn't flow right. Still not sure what the point was.

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, but it is really just all over the place. There's a framing story, and then a number of different threads that never really come together.