Becoming Alien

Saga of Tom Red-Clay #1

by Rebecca Ore

16-year old boy finds an alien crash-landed on a farm and ends up being recruited to join the Federation of Sapients - and adventuring out among the stars.

First book of a trilogy, although ends in a way that does not require continuation to the other books. Sequels are "Being Human" and "Human to Human". Finalist for the 1989 Philip K. Dick Award. Nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. Nominated for the 1988 Locus Awards.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Aliens, Science Fiction Fantasy

313 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Rebecca Ore is the pseudonym of science fiction writer Rebecca B. Brown.

Rebecca Ore was born in Louisville, KY, out of people from Kentucky and Virginia, Irish Catholic and French Protestant turned Southern Baptist on her mother's side and Welsh and Borderer on her father's. She grew up in South Carolina and fell in love with New York City from a distance, moved there in 1968 and lived on the Upper West Side and Lower East Side for seven years. Somehow, she also attended Columbia University School of General Studies while spending most of her energy in the St. Mark Poetry Project. In 1975, she moved to San Francisco for almost a year, then moved to Virginia, back and forth several places for several years, finished a Masters in English, then moved to rural Virginia for ten years, writing s.f. novels and living in her grandparent's house after they died.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stands out from the sci-fi crowd by tackling xenophobia head on and continuously, in a believable yet fantastic reality. This book isn’t perfectly written but it was so powerful in its ability to bring important /much needed reflections about unity/differences through its narrative, that I would want it to be taught in classrooms around the world. Fear of ‘ the other’ and how that consistently plays out through violence makes me continue to be ashamed to be human, whether it be towards other humans or in the case of this book, other sapients. Highly recommend if you like your sci fi to delve into these kind of ideas.

[Sable · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for the Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge and the Second Best reading challenge.

I really enjoyed this book. This is the ultimate stranger in a strange land story. A hillbilly boy from the Appalachian backwoods rescues a crash-landed alien, which is a threat to Tom's older brother's drug-manufacturing business. Through a complex series of unfortunate events, Tom is offered a chance to become a cadet in the Federation of Sapient Beings in place of the alien he aided. A whole series of odd situations ensue due to the general strangeness of trying to get along with other intelligent beings with a completely different evolutionary tree. Unlike in Star Trek, communication is not a simple matter of a Universal Translator, even with surgical adaptations, and species are not generally of the same phenotype. In many cases, instincts of one species trigger contradictory instinctive reactions in another species, and being able to interact with one another requires a great deal of effort, compromise, and in some cases, mind-altering drugs and surgical adaptations. For instance, one of the major species, a bat-derivative called Gwyngs, has an instinctive fear of avians, who make up several other significant species in the Federation.

Which leads me to a point of complaint. The book cover of this edition pisses me off. First of all, the reason I picked up this book in the first place is that I recognized the Drac on the cover from "Enemy Mine," an excellent sci-fi movie that I watched in the 1980s that was one of the primary sources of my interest in science fiction; and I was aware that it was based on a short novel, and I thought this might have been that novel. Which it wasn't. I'll forgive it for that because I thought it was an excellent novel anyway. But I can't forgive it for the fact that there is not a single alien species in this book that looks remotely like the alien in this picture, even if you stretch the limits of your imagination. All of the aliens in the Federation, it says specifically, are mammals or avians, because it's just too difficult for birds and mammals to understand and relate to other genus of lifeforms. That alien on the cover is clearly a reptile. Why is it that sci-fi books seem determined to use the worst covers possible? Why can't the publishers commission a couple of in-house artists to paint scenes from the actual books? The fantasy publishers seem to have this well in hand, so you guys have no excuse.

But I digress. Otherwise I have no complaints! I thought the story was engaging and interesting. I liked the characters, from Tom to his alien companions and compatriots. I would also like to say that I thought that these were some of the best aliens I've ever read. They clearly are not human; they have different instincts and motivations, and often what they're trying to get across requires a second read to comprehend; much as I imagine Tom, in the novel, had to play things back in his head a couple of times to grasp the full meaning of what the aliens were trying to say. Yet, their motivations are understandable and even empathetic. I have read other reviews that make the comparison to C.J. Cherryh, whose aliens are brilliant, and I thought of that comparison myself as I was reading.

Some other reviews have complained that the plot wanders and that some situations are confusing to the reader as well as the character. I disagree. The plot is about adapting to the strangeness of these alien species and learning to appreciate and support what it is that the Federation stands for. Events transpire in the course of Tom's learning process as a cadet that help Tom to do these things. If people are confused I suggest they think of it in terms of theme. This is not the story of a single event; it is the story of Tom's growth as a character, and in many ways, it's a bildungsroman. Some events seem totally unrelated to each other; and they are, but their purpose is to confront Tom with his xenophobia so that he can grow beyond it, even eventually helping others to grow beyond theirs; and also, to hold up a dark mirror to show us our own xenophobia. How are we ever going to be able to interact with intelligent alien birds, should we encounter them, if we can't stop racism? And what's going to happen if we encounter something truly weird, like insects or a crystalline entity?

I admit that sometimes I had to read a phrase twice within a dialogue in order to figure out what a particular alien was trying to say; but as I said, I liked that because I think it reflected Tom's experience nicely, and gave me a rather intense first-person experience.

A lot of things remain unresolved, so now I've got to find the rest of the trilogy somewhere. But regardless, the main story arc is resolved and I really enjoyed the ride. I guess I'm just not giving it a full five stars due to style elements. I thought it was really interesting and I wanted to find out what happened next enough to breeze through this in a couple of days, but I wasn't as emotionally engaged as I have been in other books. Still, well worth reading and I'm likely to hold onto my copy for a while.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read a story by a writer that grasped, and could convey, alienness the way that Rebecca Ore does in this book. It's very compelling and very weird. The novel also comes off as being very cold; however, to be honest, once you get far enough into the story, the main character gets better (years later) at interpreting alien emotions, and better at dealing with his own.

An underrated SF gem.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the first page of Becoming Alien, a teenaged Tom Gentry watches his older brother Warren conduct a drug deal in the backwoods of Virginia. On the second page he rescues a wounded alien from a crashed space probe. From there things move rapidly. He nurses the alien - a sapient, bat-winged marsupial - back to health. His brother agrees that this is all best kept secret since he is operating a drug lab on their family property. The healthy alien, able to communicate through pictures, convinces Tom they should escape together, but Warren figures out what is up and kills the alien in self defense during their atttempt. The Gentry brothers are busted. Warren, now a heavy user of his own goods, gets institutionalized as insane. Tom gets probation. Aliens, poorly disguised as humans, come to investigate the murder. Tom is found innocent and taken off Earth to train as a cadet in The Federation. We have reached the end of the second chapter.

After this things slow down, but not in a bad way. The set up implies that Ore is offering an updated Heinlein juvenile or the opening a grand space opera, but that is not the type of novel she writes. What follows is a thoughtful and imaginative examination of an extreme form of multi-culturalism involving species with evolutionary histories taking them back either to mammals, marsupials, or birds. Earth is not part of The Federation. Human are still judged too xenophobic, nor have we developed the Star Gate technology that allows for FTL travel. Some Tibetans taken off planet 500 years previously have been able to adjust only in the Primitive Zone as free traders.

But Tom is made of different stuff. Although no good in chemistry or biology he is a natural linguist. He settles into the dorm for cadet trainees and learns to navigate the complex politics and power struggles among the different aliens. He also has the usual freshman dorm experiences of arguing over music choices, the tedium of an overloaded schedule, and coping with unfamiliar roommates. One is a bird, the other an ill-tempered furred mammal who comes in only to sleep.

Tom's education involves some dangerous incidents but is built mostly around the complexities of inter-species life and his growing awareness of the tensions that underlie this benign federation. Ore also takes time to describe the group mating rituals of the Gwyngs, the marsupials who are officially Tom's sponsors. He finds he has a somewhat awkward role to play in these. And she explains the workings of the multiple toilet facilities required for a reception hosting a dozen species. I confess that is the sort of thing I often feel is left out of sf novels, and so I appreciate her attention to detail.

Several alien characters are more fully developed than is Tom, but he is narrating the story and he is just a kid from the hills of Virginia. He is chagrined to learn that a descendant of the Tibetan refugees considers him naive. He tries not to be insulted when he must take English diction classes so his accent will not become an intergalactic standard. Those are the sorts of details that kept me involved with a story that is lacking in action. Becoming Alien is also the first of a trilogy, so who knows where Ore will take us next.

[Babsidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can get past the offensive uses of language, this book explores the human/alien dynamic in really interesting ways.

Our protagonist Tom really is a fish out of water - or rather a convicted juvenile offender off planet - and he spends most of the book doing what other people tell him to. By the end, though, he finally starts acting in his own interests, taking control of his own destiny. As the first in a trillogy, I look forward to seeing how the other books continue his journey. The aliens around him, too, are fleshed out and interesting each in their own ways. Ore isn't afraid to have readers dislike her characters, and her book is richer for it.

That said, this book has a lot of problems with race and misogyny, even for something published in the 1980s. Interestingly, it's the language that is offensive so much more so than the characters or plot. Ore uses extremely outdated and offensive words to refer to Terran people of color, as well as women, then goes on to positively depict intersexed aliens and talk sensitively about inter-species relations in this extremely xenophobic universe. I almost think she has Tom use this slurs as a reminder that he's a back-country hick. I really, really wish she wouldn't. This book would have been a high recommendation if not for her inability to handle humans that are not white men.

[Cheryl]

Just because Tom is confused while getting to know the different peoples doesn't mean the reader has to be even more confused about them and about the plot (is there one? something about the Yauntries?). After all, he at least spent real time in the physical presence of them.

And, you know what? I found the details of the different species interesting, sure, for example how Gwyngs are marsupial and sleep in puppy piles... but the underlying 'being-ness' of each species is not so alien, actually. That is to say, all the Barcons are healers, all the different bird-peoples have a defensive chip on their shoulders... but one species has more in common with any other one species than, say, the "breeds" (yes, that's Ore's word) of humans (say, Anglo vs. Chinese, perhaps) have with one another.

Heck, readers who can understand Ore's ellipticalism and flirtations with plot are alien to me. ;)

So, if this is straight SF it's over-rated by the measure of how alien the aliens are, and if it's a parable about different human cultures irl it's over-rated by the measure of the comprehensible impact it makes.

Imo.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom lives with his drug-dealer elder brother Warren in the back hills of Virginia. Tom is a naturally intelligent adolescent but unmotivated and is drifting into petty crime and feels beholden to Warren. When Tom sees a weird craft crash in the woods he finds an injured alien and two other dead ones. Taking the alien back to the shack they nurse it back to health but Warren, fearing discovery by police, keeps the alien (which they call Alpha) a prisoner and work him on the pill presses, much to Tom’s disgust. Eventually Alpha and Tom decide to escape but Alpha is killed by Warren and a visit from Alpha’s friends results in Tom and Warren’s incarceration. Warren has been using and has a mental break, while Tom is released into the custody of some aliens posing as humans. Through a series of events Tom is taken away to become a cadet representative of humans from Earth. Rebecca Ore’s book details the slow process Tom undergoes as he battles xenophobia (not just his but that of other alien species), his past, and loneliness as the only human cadet. The machinations of the Federation are revealed and Tom gradually comes to an accommodation with his role as a subservient species and his independence as a human. An interesting and enjoyable first novel. First book of a trilogy.

[Darnoc Leadburger · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is only in my collection because I buy a random book from an unknown author every time I go to a used bookshop or a big book sale. That, and the cover was kind of cool. Besides that, I was a bit skeptical of this book; for good reason, as it turns out. A little history lesson before continuing on with synopsis and review: *Becoming Alien* was the first of three "Ben Bova Presents" novels, presumably titles read and championed by that notable SF author (whose Grand Tour novels I usually enjoy) and published by Tor. It was published when Rebecca Ore was forty, and it (like its sequel) was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award in year of its release, 1988. You could find all of that with a little bit of Googling, though, so let's get into a unique overview before some fine critical critiquing.

The first thirty-five or so pages of this book read like *Lilo & Stitch* where the protagonists are brothers instead of sisters and the Hawaiian charm has been replaced with Virginia drug dealing. The alien in question is a kind of bat-like being whom the older brother forces to help him make meth against his younger brother Tom's wishes. Soon after the alien, Mica, gets shot and killed, the brothers are busted for cooking and dealing meth. Tom must live life as a convicted felon on his own, but the monotony of his pathetic existence is interrupted when he's visited by aliens disguised by humans. Three of them are of the same species as Mica, and two are the more human-esque Barton. They crash his house for a few weeks before being visited by an ape-like alien who holds some power in the interstellar Federation that they're all a part of, and he tells Tom that Mica wanted him to take his place as a space-cadet. Tom accepts this and heads into space to join the Academy.

A lot of the dramatic conflict comes from xenophobia, a theme first (vaguely( explored in the conflict between Tom and Mica's mother, who doesn't warm up to Tom quickly. She is also alienated from her kind when recovering from de-disguising surgery, although shortly thereafter she's promoted to what appears to be the second-highest singular position in the Federation, besides the Historical Board. Then we get into the actual Academy, where Tom rooms with a bird named Gravel-something, whose species is probing the Federation, just like the Federation probes a separate species using one of the bats, Tom, and another cadet who is shot and killed by the new aliens before Tom is taken prisoner. Somewhere along this line (which I don't remember chronologically because, who cares?) Mica's mom finally decides to sponsor Tom. Tom's roommate Gravel also has a semi-xenophobic panic attack due to the strangeness of alien creatures that Tom helps him overcome on a vacation to that one ape-like alien's forest resort. The political situation between Mica's Mom, who believes that the Federation has enough species, and Big Bird (what we'll call the leader of the Federation, as much as anyone is) believes that they must grow and grow and grow, hence his bringing Tom back to the planet that he visited alongside the male bat and the deceased cadet in a diplomatic mission to convince them to join the Federation shortly after Tom must "defend" Mica's Mom in their tribaliatic mating rituals. This also comes after Tom is introduced to a "primitive" human woman sheltered on the Academy world when she's brought to ape-guy's cabin, an excursion shared by the male bat-guys and Granite and his mate. The book ends after a series of political maneuvers on this young race's futures rather abruptly. Not my most succinct or helpful summary ever, but it's gotta be worth something...

The plot is not bad, but it does tend to blur together. It also seems cheaply narrow to me; Tom just happens to be caught between the two most important people in the Federation (I don't think they really are, but that's kind of how they're portrayed), and the whole political element of an interstellar empire's colonization is handled by just a few people? Where are the epic political arrays that would fit a mammoth organization like this? There either are none, or Ore makes no attempt to show them to us. I just felt that the small amount of characters was cheap, and the big picture of the story pathetic. I still don't know what Tom's purpose amongst the sea of xenophobia was. It was kind of typical, but ill-extrapolated at the same time.

The prose was also slightly... off. It was relatively action-oriented with a focus on dialogue and physical actions rather than imagery or monologues or what-have-you, and while that's not a bad thing, prose likes that needs a good story and notable characters and concepts to *really* pop. This book didn't pop, and worst of all, this book reads kind of dated - and by dated, I mean crass. Some reviewers said she couldn't write realistic females or whatever, but I think that Ore just has a crassness when it comes to race and sex that feels very "90s" and unbecoming of a work of interstellar adventure. It's just... weird, and solidifies its place in time in a way that makes my nose curl in a way that most claims of being "dated' do not.

One more complaint: the characters aren't really engaging. Take Tom for example: he's got one helluva Stranger-in-a-Strange-Land story and yet I never really felt what his motivations were or felt an emotional connection to his displacement or anything else about him. He was just flat and uninspiring. All the alien characters seemed the same way, albeit with biological quirks and relationships that may give them the appearance of being deep. But that being said, let's talk about those aliens, and maybe even the most glowing praise I give this book...

But first, one gripe: I don't think these aliens are *that* inventive or *that* bizarre. We've all read things which which might remind us of humanoid bats that go into heat like normal mammals or of arrogant avian races, but I don't think that inventive speculative biology was the point of this book; instead, it's about xenophobia and the rifts that exist within species, those both newly contacted and those that have always known of alien races. One of the Federation's purposes seems to be eliminating xenophobia, and they largely do a good job, but some xenophobes (both self-aware and unaware) slip through the cracks. There are a couple intensive passages about smoothing out Granite's xenophobia, and I found it rather interesting to see a science fiction novel tackle it like that instead of the usual "two completely alien beings met each other and aren't shaken by that fact." I can't intelligently recount the themes since it's been over a week and this isn't a particularly impactful book, but it was there, and I liked it.

Still, some cool themes and tangential concepts don't fix a book's deficiency in plot, prose, and characters, so *Becoming Alien* gets a 5.5/10. It sits in the upper end of a two-star, where the binary stars mean "It's sorta okay, but I wouldn't recommend" instead of "this was a poor book." And *Becoming Alien* was sorta okay, since it never made me roll my eyes and sigh deeply or made me wish it was over, but it wasn't good either. It's one of the less encouraging books I've read so far this year, but that won't stop me from buying book two (*Being Alien*) or book three (*Human to Human*) if I find them in the same Book Club hardcover edition I found this in. Anyways, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading, and feel free to read more SF Reviews @ Darnoc Leadburger here on Goodreads. Otherwise, thanks again, and I'll hopefully grace your eyes with my reviews again in the near future... cheers.

[Rod · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite all-time science fiction books by a woman who quickly became one of my favorite authors -- I only wish I could find more that she's written. I've always loved the "human among a polyglot of alien cultures" story-line, and this is one of the best. There is humor, there is drama, there is sexuality, there is lots of heart, all of them in abundance. If I have any reservations, it's only because of the (slight) cliche' of the human hero: A guy who seems to have an overall lack of perspective for the situation he's in. Here he is, the first human ever to visit an alien world, the person who gets Earth involved with a galactic federation... and he spends most of his time worried that, by leaving Earth, he's breaking the provisions of his parole. Seriously? I was like, Duuuuuude...!

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay.. into the O's with not much more choice than the N's NOT reading Orwell and although Mel Odom is fun I read that one less than 10 years ago, so am going for the one I'm sure I read but don't remember at all! Let's see how it goes!

Discovered this one was a book Curt picked up many years ago and very much liked.... which illustrates our different tastes in reading. It was fascinating. I have never seen alien cultures and thought processes done so completely and so well. I mean alien. Very alien. So alien I had a hard time understanding and empathizing with the characters. I gave this book 3 out of 5. A good read, but hard and not one I am likely to pick up and read again, even though I will be thinking about it for a long time.

[Douglas Summers-Stay · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's the story of a boy who meets an alien and ends up joining the alien federation as a cadet. This reminded me a lot of C.J. Cherryh in the treatment and exploration of alien minds, though I prefer the stronger plot in Cherryh's novels to the wandering plot of this novel. I felt like the things I cared about in the story didn't get any resolution, which made me think I'd lost the thread of the story somewhere. But I hadn't realized it was just the first in a series. One idea that struck me was that the aliens descended from bird-like species enjoyed feeding their young by regurgitating.

[Kerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as science fiction goes, these are some of the most intriguing books I've ever read. They still are problematic in the way Ore talks about race, and the unavoidable humanist arrogance. This and the subsequent books are so well written and interesting though, that I can still feel comfortable giving them four stars. One off for the racism. Most white folks just don't seem to grasp the nuances of race, and it's hard to find modern fiction that doesn't have some problematic language in it, unfortunately.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

An oddly engaging "fish out of water" story where a young man, after helping to rescue an alien after it crashed on his family farm, is recruited to join The Federation.

The aliens' physical appearance is vividly described; tho am having a harder time grasping their social structure. The bits of hand-waving on the author's part aren't enough to dissuade me from keeping with it, tho.

[Bev · Rating 1 out of 5]

Owned it for a very long time...finally got around to trying to read it and found that I could not finish it.

[rivka · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

It's been a long time since I read this, but as I recall, while it had some interesting bits, it was mostly pretty meh.

[Kyle D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spare, thoughtful meditation on the difficulties of communicating with those different from us. The best part is probably the first section set in rural Virginia, as a high school boy tries to nurse a stranded alien back to health, communicating largely through drawings, without angering his xenophobic drug-dealer of an older brother. To me, things slow down later on and could probably have been cut by half, but I'll still remember the different ways the very different aliens try (and don't try) to understand each other without resorting to violence.

Ore's style reminds me at times of Gene Wolfe's: she'll narrate some actions without pausing to tell us how the characters feel about what's happening, only to surprise us later on with a panic attack or outburst. It made me read carefully and slowly, imagining the scene for myself without needing to be spoon-fed by Ore--and I liked that a lot. There's also an ongoing sense in the English translations of alien dialogue that you're not quite understanding exactly what they're trying to say, which is of course the point. The aliens felt alien because they talked alien. (And I love that the closest the novel comes to a "solution" for the miscommunication problem is music: everyone from every culture can sit around and argue about what they like and don't like.)

I read this book as part of my #its1988 project, where I'm reading/watching/listening to 1988 media throughout 2018 (see https://twitter.com/1988is2018/ for more). What feels particularly 80s about the book? On the surface, it's the vision of the future: music will always be listened to on "laser discs" (think how futuristic they were in 1988!), paper printouts will always be important, and on perforated, never-ending sheets. But deeper, you can tell that Ore is part of a newer trend in SFF where the literariness of the language is a crucial part of the effect. In other words, this isn't just a "think of this cool one-shot idea and revel in how fun that is!" that I've seen in older SF, even into the 70s. (I still remember finally reading Ringworld in the 2000s and kind of ho-humming it. Sorry.) But this book is art, and it's complicated, and it's even unresolved and odd, all things that I doubt Ore could have gotten away with earlier. I like it.

[Garth · Rating 3 out of 5]

not sure if it is just the Kindle version of this book, but i've never seen so many punctuation and spelling mistakes in a book ever. the story was interesting enough (especially considering this came out in 1988, and how many "first contact" books and films and shows have been made in the last 40+ years). but the errors, on nearly every other page, were a constant struggle. they were so frequent i sometimes wondered if they were on purpose. sometimes entire wrong words would be in wrong places -- forcing me to wonder was it intentional, leaving me frustrated and alienated on purpose? too many commas through the whole thing and sometimes periods in the middle of sentences.

and yet this is an award-winning book!

so i put a 3-star here trying to give the author and original editor team the benefit of the doubt. but if i were grading on the Kindle experience it would be more like 1.75 stars.

i'm still curious enough about how the story goes from this point forward that i might eventually end up getting the next book in the series. but for now it's worn my patience too thin. i'll try another couple books by other people -- and then decide later if i'm coming back to this.

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

An alien survives a crash-landing in the Appalachians and is rescued by a teenager who, through a series of odd events, ends up being recruited as a cadet for a galactic federation of starfaring species. That makes it sound very YA, and in fact I thought I'd be getting something like Bruce Coville's "Aliens" series that I loved as a kid, but it's a much more mature and serious story than that. Largely plotless, it's mostly an exploration of xenophobia, culture clash, and the truly alienating (ha ha) experience of being the only human navigating the politics of an inter-species institution. Not compelling enough for me to carry on with the series, but I admired what Ore was trying to do with it and think it was a worthy Philip K. Dick nominee. If it sounds like it would be up your alley then give it a go.

[Micaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually read more fantasy than sci-fi, but this was high-concept, high-quality so far as sci fi goes. It's very psychological--the author does a good job of creating strange but believable aliens and an excellent job of exploring the different potential reactions to being confronted with another sapient species, ranging from fascination to disgust to the terror of the Uncanny Valley. Well done.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings. The beginning seemed like a regular science fiction adventure, then it was like falling down the rabbit hole into a completely different book altogether. The complexity of the alien races, societies, interactions and issues was brilliant and awe inspiring. it was, though, awfully hard to follow at times and the pace slowed a lot.

[Randall Kramm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca Ore's three-book series explores many aspects of exactly what it means to be human, and what we owe not only to one another but other intelligent species. I can not recommend it enough to anyone who has not read it.

[Miriam Michalak · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF - enjoyed the beginning but got very bored around the half way point and gave up :)

[Eric]

Good lord, this has been bothering me for ages! I think I must have read this book before 2000 and for some reason, little bits and pieces of it stuck with me; but just couldn't remember for the life of me what the name of the book was, or how to search for it. Dunno why that sort of thing should bother somebody, but kind of a relief to have found it (after posting on book search site). Not like this info will be of much use to me…

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read some pretty amazing reviews on this book, but for me at least it was just okay. It did a pretty good job of conveying how lonely, isolating, and well, alien, becoming an alien would be. So it did live up to the book's title.

That was basically it however. There was little story, and what was there moved at a snail's pace. There were also many opportunities for really good action, but sadly they were never developed. I don't regret reading it, but I will never reread it.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young man branded as a loser in his society gets involved in interstellar travel. I'm not really a science fiction fan, but this book and the sequels spurred my interest in anthropology. I re-read these every few years and always experience so many of the emotions that the main character, Tom, goes through. I get something new from these each time.

[Jenne · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most interesting books I've read in a long time.

[Marty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will try the next one. it does give you a real feel for the swing of disorientation to familiarity that the different creatures including Tom experience around each other.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read in July 1994

[Larry Holshu · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. As a sci-fi reader it's worth reading once. It could have a second book added to it then maybe it would answer some unanswered questions. But over all worth checking out.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ought to be a YA sci-fi classic!