Book Review: Year Zero, by Rob Reid
Jul. 8th, 2012 02:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayne“Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it's a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carley are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news.
The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity's music ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), when pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything and the aliens are not amused.”
Thus the inside of the dust jacket of Rob Reid's new book, Year Zero, begins. The author is the founder of Listen.com, which became the Rhapsody music service, so he has lots of insider knowledge of the inner workings of the music industry. It releases at most major book stores on July 10, New Book Tuesday. John Hodgeman read the audiobook, and Reid has some animations on his web site which I have sadly not yet seen.
I learned of this book a month ago or so when he wrote a column for Wired that described a solution that worked for him to get past writer's block: give your characters play lists. Since his entire book, and a lot of his professional background, revolves around music, this makes sense. From there I went to his blog where he was holding a contest to give away 30 hardback copies of his book, all you had to do was make a post suggesting a song that we could give the aliens and why, and he'd pick ten from his Facebook page, ten from Twitter, and ten from his web site. I won on the web site and the book was sitting on my doorstep when I got back from a seven week road trip last Sunday.
It is an interesting first contact story, though it reminded me a lot of John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars, also a first contact story involving the entertainment industry (available free at http://www.scalzi.com/agent/, also available in print edition). Rob's aliens are quite interesting and reminiscent of something that you might find in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers series.
I liked this book. The aliens are very alien and tremendously advanced though still somewhat hopeless, the tech is tremendously advanced but can still be used by humans, and lots of music references and jokes along the way (especially Frampton and Carley's father's name). Humans are decidedly at an overall disadvantage but are still viable and not totally eclipsed by the aliens, not at all the fish out of water that Arthur Dent was (except for in HHGTTG book 4). I've worked with attorneys before and in various legal environments, and Reid's lawyers read true to me, which added a nice additional dimension. The problems for the good guys to overcome are quite spectacular, their opposition is quite ruthless and cunning, and it all comes together in a pretty good story.
I do have to ding it on one count, though. It's not the story, it's the printing. Rob uses footnotes quite a bit, and I had a very hard time spotting the in-text mark, so frequently I gave up and just read down to the bottom of the page and bored through the footnotes. Also, and again this is probably a layout issue and not Rob's fault, some of the footnotes spanned multiple pages. I thought the layout could have been better balanced, but it still worked.
And I have to give one commendation for the printing: I did not notice a single typo. It seems like more and more these days I find typos in hardbacks, I'm beginning to wonder if we're paying top dollar for betas so they can fix the paperbacks.
http://readrobreid.com
http://www.amazon.com/Year-Zero-Novel-Rob-Reid/dp/0345534417
And in the spirit of Rob creating play lists for the main characters, here's my Top 25 Most Played as reported by iTunes: (from most played to least)
Afternoons & Coffeespoons - Crash Test Dummies
Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
For A Rocker - Jackson Browne
The Barry Williams Show - Peter Gabriel
Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
Loves Me Like a Rock - Paul Simon
Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Stuck In The Middle With You - Eddie Bauer Collection (I don't know who the artist is, but it's a great cover)
All For One - Blackmore's Night
I Wish They'd Do It Now - John Roberts and Tony Barrand
Me and Julio Down By the School Yard - Paul Simon
The Coachman - John Roberts and Tony Barrand
My Karma Broke Down - Three Weird Sisters
Wilbury Twist - The Traveling Wilburys
Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo
Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
Funky Nassau - Blues Brothers
Friend of the Devil - The Grateful Dead
Rolling Down To Old Maui - Stan Rogers
Heavy Cloud No Rain – Sting
Burning Down the House - Talking Heads
Bedrock Anthem - Weird Al Yankovic
March of Cambreadth - Heather Alexander
Truckin' - The Grateful Dead
Weird Science - Oingo Boingo
The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity's music ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), when pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything and the aliens are not amused.”
Thus the inside of the dust jacket of Rob Reid's new book, Year Zero, begins. The author is the founder of Listen.com, which became the Rhapsody music service, so he has lots of insider knowledge of the inner workings of the music industry. It releases at most major book stores on July 10, New Book Tuesday. John Hodgeman read the audiobook, and Reid has some animations on his web site which I have sadly not yet seen.
I learned of this book a month ago or so when he wrote a column for Wired that described a solution that worked for him to get past writer's block: give your characters play lists. Since his entire book, and a lot of his professional background, revolves around music, this makes sense. From there I went to his blog where he was holding a contest to give away 30 hardback copies of his book, all you had to do was make a post suggesting a song that we could give the aliens and why, and he'd pick ten from his Facebook page, ten from Twitter, and ten from his web site. I won on the web site and the book was sitting on my doorstep when I got back from a seven week road trip last Sunday.
It is an interesting first contact story, though it reminded me a lot of John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars, also a first contact story involving the entertainment industry (available free at http://www.scalzi.com/agent/, also available in print edition). Rob's aliens are quite interesting and reminiscent of something that you might find in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers series.
I liked this book. The aliens are very alien and tremendously advanced though still somewhat hopeless, the tech is tremendously advanced but can still be used by humans, and lots of music references and jokes along the way (especially Frampton and Carley's father's name). Humans are decidedly at an overall disadvantage but are still viable and not totally eclipsed by the aliens, not at all the fish out of water that Arthur Dent was (except for in HHGTTG book 4). I've worked with attorneys before and in various legal environments, and Reid's lawyers read true to me, which added a nice additional dimension. The problems for the good guys to overcome are quite spectacular, their opposition is quite ruthless and cunning, and it all comes together in a pretty good story.
I do have to ding it on one count, though. It's not the story, it's the printing. Rob uses footnotes quite a bit, and I had a very hard time spotting the in-text mark, so frequently I gave up and just read down to the bottom of the page and bored through the footnotes. Also, and again this is probably a layout issue and not Rob's fault, some of the footnotes spanned multiple pages. I thought the layout could have been better balanced, but it still worked.
And I have to give one commendation for the printing: I did not notice a single typo. It seems like more and more these days I find typos in hardbacks, I'm beginning to wonder if we're paying top dollar for betas so they can fix the paperbacks.
http://readrobreid.com
http://www.amazon.com/Year-Zero-Novel-Rob-Reid/dp/0345534417
And in the spirit of Rob creating play lists for the main characters, here's my Top 25 Most Played as reported by iTunes: (from most played to least)
Afternoons & Coffeespoons - Crash Test Dummies
Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
For A Rocker - Jackson Browne
The Barry Williams Show - Peter Gabriel
Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
Loves Me Like a Rock - Paul Simon
Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Stuck In The Middle With You - Eddie Bauer Collection (I don't know who the artist is, but it's a great cover)
All For One - Blackmore's Night
I Wish They'd Do It Now - John Roberts and Tony Barrand
Me and Julio Down By the School Yard - Paul Simon
The Coachman - John Roberts and Tony Barrand
My Karma Broke Down - Three Weird Sisters
Wilbury Twist - The Traveling Wilburys
Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo
Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
Funky Nassau - Blues Brothers
Friend of the Devil - The Grateful Dead
Rolling Down To Old Maui - Stan Rogers
Heavy Cloud No Rain – Sting
Burning Down the House - Talking Heads
Bedrock Anthem - Weird Al Yankovic
March of Cambreadth - Heather Alexander
Truckin' - The Grateful Dead
Weird Science - Oingo Boingo
