Alien Stories

by E.C. Osondu

"A vital voice in the short story, telling us new truths with deep humanity."
-George Saunders

Celebrated Nigerian-born writer E.C. Osondu delivers a short-story collection of nimble dexterity and startling originality in his BOA Short Fiction Prize-winning Alien Stories.

These eighteen startling stories, each centered around an encounter with the unexpected, explore what it means to be an alien. With a nod to the dual meaning of alien as both foreigner and extraterrestrial, Osondu turns familiar science-fiction tropes and immigration narratives on their heads, blending one with the other to call forth a whirlwind of otherness. With wry observations about society and human nature, in shifting landscapes from Africa to America to outer space and back again, Alien Stories breaks down the concept of foreignness to reveal what unites us all as 'aliens' within a complex and interconnected universe.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy

176 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2021

About the author

E. C. Osondu is a Nigerian writer known for his short stories. He received his MFA from Syracuse University and is the winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and a Pushcart Prize. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, n+1, Guernica, and other publications. He teaches at Providence College in Rhode Island.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

The two meanings of the term ‘alien’, a foreign national and an extraterrestrial, merge together in Nigerian-born E.C. Osondu’s award winning short story collection, Alien Stories. Writing both sci-fi stories and immigrant narratives, the gap between the real and the fantastical begins to close with the extraterrestrial stories functioning so strongly as metaphors for immigration and colonialism until you stop wondering which definition of ‘alien’ is intended in each story. Osondu’s writing is crisp and creative, working well in both traditional narratives as well as more experimental stories told as advice columns, focus groups and more. These stories are built with empathy and understanding and their delivery manages to avoid being heavy handed while still being very direct and deadly sharp in their social critiques. Alien Stories is such an absorbing collection of stories that is just as much fun as it is devastating while witnessing Osondu addressthe stereotypes and fears around aliens while also showing the humanity and struggles of those displaced from home whether that home be a foreign country or a distant planet.

‘What he romantically called adventure, the other man must have seen as human cruelty and suffering.’

Using the same framing for foreign nationals as he does for extraterrestrials allows Osondu a lot of creative space to deliver powerful messages on race and national identity. The cold and often cruel treatment the alien visitors receive comes directly from real life and makes it clear that when Osondu writes about aliens he very clearly means Africans living abroad. In Focus Group, quite literally being the responses of a focus group asked about aliens who have landed to live among us, people loudly announce their white supremacy asking ‘why can’t they be white like everyone else?’ (othering any non-white human as well) or show their slippery-slope fears stating ‘the way I see it, it is only a matter of time and mankind will become aliens.’ The knitting of the real and the imaginative creates this versatile realm where a immigration story of a grandmother from the Red Planet resonates as a meaningful refugee story of our own times as in the story Mark.

These stories hit really close to home and seem so familiar, with men saying things about having no issue with aliens living on their planet but why this village and needing to find a paternalistic similarity with them before accepting them as people too. Other stories such as Spaceship look at religion and superstition as people trying to make sense of a universe much vaster than themselves and rationalizing good fortune and disaster as something beyond their control but pinned as causality to larger forces than their own existence.

The opening story, Alien Enactors sets the framing for much of the book. There is a George Saunders-esque setup with a corporate amusement center for white people to watch folks from different cultures give a demonstration about their culture and then be rated on how enjoyable it was to the clients. The most successful actors discover that the highest ratings come from pseudo-authenticity that comforts the clients through (often racist stereotyped) cultural aspects presented in the white gaze. For example, the woman representing China gets low ratings for demonstrating traditional Chinese foods when the clients want Americanized buffets and reject any cultural artifacts that they themselves feel is outside of them. Through this collection we often see how ‘othering’ occurs because it is not something that seems to be immediately recognizable to the white American culture, and as in the story Visitors, the aliens are not accepted until they demonstrate traits that fit into this worldview, such as an African father having athletic aspirations for their son being what makes the white man bond with them being mirrored with the extraterrestrial father being concerned about their toddlers illness being the moment he decides they are allowed to occupy a space in America.

Another standout is Memory Store in which a client can sell their memories for cash. It is firmly established that the clients tend to be impoverished and usually immigrants and their ‘authentic’ memories are bought up by wealthy white memory tourists who want to experience something outside themselves. Which is a lot of really great critical analysis of imperialism and capitalism going on and I’d love to see this story anthologized for classroom purposes. It’s nearly flawless in a short few pages and connects with other stories like Debriefing which is a litany of do’s and don’ts as an immigrant in the United States and how to make oneself acceptable to the white culture.

Osondu has created something really magical and charming in this collection while still delivering a full-impact punch of social critiques and racial discourse. These stories are imaginative and inventive, coming is an awe-inspiring variety of storytelling and ideas while never moving far from the central theme of alienation. His vision reveals humanity in all its absurdities, terrors and traumas while still being full of heart, humor and optimism.

4/5

‘Everyone had a cavernous bag filled with hope; we were hopeful that we would cross the water, the barriers, and border guards, that we would make it to that place where the light shined.’

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A person could simply walk into any of the stores and sell their memories for money. It was that straightforward. He had come to the realization that certain things were undoubtedly straightforward in America."

A wonderful collection of short stories, most of them with some sci-fi theme. This is not sci-fi for the sake of itself, it is to lend an interesting layer of strangeness to the stories mr. Osondu tells.

Most stories have a root in African culture, where the (obvious) metaphor of the alien as outsider in western culture is used with subtlety and tenderness.

"People will urge you to go to school. They’ll tell you an American education is useful. That is so not true. It is so 80s. You are here to hustle."

In this regard the story Debriefing is a highlight. It takes the form of a set of tips and instructions to people of colour coming new to America. It is funny and kind of chilling at the same time.

"It is gone. You will never recall that particular memory again. It is like it never existed. Wiped out. Gone. It no longer belongs to you. But don’t worry about it. I am sure there are lots where that came from, buddy."

Another exceptional story is Memory Store, the most ostensibly sci-fi story at first glance. Anyone can walk into a Memory Store, and sell one of their memories. Only drawback is that after recording it, that memory is permanently gone from your own memory. It's a striking comment on the idea of assimilating to a new place, of losing a part of yourself to fit in.

Overall an excellent collection of stories.

(Thanks to BOA Editions for providing me with a review copy through Edelweiss)

Alien Enactors - 4 stars
Memory Store - 5 stars
How To Raise An Alien Baby - 3 stars
Visitors - 3 stars
Feast - 3 stars
Mark - 3.5 stars
Spaceship - 3.5 stars
Sacrifice - 3 stars
Light - 2.5 stars
Traveler - 4 stars
Debriefing - 5 stars
Focus Group - 3.5 stars
Child’s Play - 4 stars
Who Is In The Garden? - 3 stars
On The Lost Tribes Of The Black World - 3 stars
Love Affair - 4 stars
The Home Companion - 4 stars
All Our Earthly Possessions - 4 stars

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I really enjoyed this collection, though some stories weren't quite to my taste. The standouts for me—all excellent—were “Debriefing,” “Focus Group,” and “All Our Earthly Possessions.”

Generally speaking, these stories are profound and insightful, and offer the reader what are likely to be completely new perspectives on displacement, belonging, and identity.

[Deedi Brown (DeediReads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

I recently discovered the fabulous indie publisher BOA Editions (which also happens to be headquartered in Rochester, NY, which isn’t too far from my hometown). I followed them on Instagram, and one of their posts about this short story collection caught my eye. Speculative, promising weirdness, and George Saunders blurbed it? Sign me up.

The folks at BOA were kind enough to send a copy my way, and friends, it didn’t disappoint. These stories are excellent. The feeling of finding a diamond in the rough reminded me of reading Imaginary Museums by Nicolette Polek, which was published by another fab indie, Soft Skull Press. (Indie presses are SO GREAT and doing important, amazing work, and you should follow and support them, please and thank you.)

Anyway, each of these stories uses the concept of aliens to make a larger statement about racism and xenophobia. There are baby aliens, and spaceships that get mysteriously left behind, and a focus group giving their thoughts and opinions on aliens, and a grandmother who tells stories about a red planet, and so much more. Osondu gives us so many metaphors and layers and smart, imaginative applications of speculative elements.

If you like to read great short stories that play with metaphor and craft and make you think about them long after you’ve finished reading, check this one out!

[Conor Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm incredibly lucky to have stumbled onto Alien Stories. This short story collection is truly a masterpiece with more depth than many I've read in recent years. Moreover, the array of stories is dizzying in its variety, but each one is unique and memorable in its own way.

The author cleverly plays with that various definitions of the word "alien" throughout the collection. The issues and themes they explore range from the morality of the death penalty to the structural racial discrepancy in treatment quality in the American healthcare system. These issues come across clearly due to the masterful storytelling and economy of language that E.C. Osondu uses throughout the book.

However, these stories also shine because they are wildly creative. Every single one stuck in my memory, so it's hard to even choose just a handful to highlight. One story involves an immigrant to America going to a "memory store" to sell his memories after he loses his job at the car wash. Another is about an alien ship that crashes into a town and is abandoned by its pilot, but suddenly the villagers start having a string of good luck in their lives. All of the stories provide a stunning cross-section of incredibly relevant themes, fable-like elements, and sci-fi plot lines.

No story overstays its welcome, either. Most of them are short and sweet, clocking in at just a few pages. However, you would be hard-pressed to not rip through them all at once since they are just so good. I'm going to be highly recommending this collection to anyone interested in short stories for a long time to come.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories by Nigerian author, E.C. Osondu, examines the alien life. While many of the pieces use extraterrestrial aliens as a plot device, it’s easy to see that terrestrial alienation is the topic under consideration. Most of the pieces are of the soft science fiction variety, focusing on the psychological and relational elements more than the scientific detail. That said, a few of the pieces read as purely realist fiction. Some of the pieces focus on what it’s like to be an alien (of some variety,) but many of the stories focus upon how others perceive the “alien.” I should point out that the tone of the collection tends to be lighthearted, and so while it might seem that a collection based on the theme of alienation would be a bit melancholy, that is not so much the case.

This volume is part of the American Reader Series (#36) put out by BOA Editions. The collection includes eighteen stories. The first story, “Alien Enactors,” imagines individuals trying to convey information about their native culture in a recreational setting (called “the Ranch”) that is very market driven. The enactors are obsessed with ratings and with pleasing customers and the story is a commentary on what it is like for an émigré to enter the globalized world.

“Memory Store” was one of my favorites of the collection, because it sets up a fascinating thought experiment. The premise is that there is a store where one can go and sell one’s memories, and once one has sold a memory, it is lost to one forever. [Like selling blood or other bodily fluids, it mainly attracts those in relatively desperate states.] As a sci-fi plot mechanism, it makes for an interesting idea, but when one thinks of it as being about the trade-off of loss of past as one integrates into a new cultural environment, it becomes a powerful analogy.

“How to Raise an Alien Baby” is presented as a discussion of rules aliens would need to follow to adopt a baby from Earth. The story provokes one to think about how strange it can be for a child to enter a completely new cultural environment.

In “Visitors,” an alien couple have moved into a small village, and the lead characters are a couple who are having said alien couple over. The arrival of this alien couple invites incessant questioning about why they would pick such a place. For those who’ve lived only one place, it seems to be a common thought to wonder why anyone in their right mind would choose to live there – of all places. We also see a divergence of views toward aliens. The wife is more open-minded while the husband remains suspicious.

“Feast,” which is set on Alien Feast Day, features a child’s eye contemplation of aliens, and the endless questions such a view inspires. As with the husband in “Visitors,” the children try to grasp what aliens are really like, why the are so different, and – in the process – they stumble, misestimating the differences between the aliens and themselves.

In the story, “Mark,” a grandmother imparts wisdom via a story about the “Red Planet.” The journey described in this extraterrestrial tale is an analogy intended to prepare others a different kind of travel.

“Spaceship” is another of my favorites from the collection. In the story, aliens leave a broken-down spaceship at a village, just as someone might leave a car along the highway until it can be fixed. What is brilliant about the story is its description of how the locals begin to impart meaning upon the ship’s presence. All things, good and bad, that happen in the village are linked to the whims of the broken-down spacecraft. It serves as a commentary on superstition and religiosity.

In “Sacrifice,” each year an alien spacecraft visits, requiring one village youth to be surrendered to the aliens. There’s a sort of “Hunger Games” selection processes that isn’t discussed in detail, but which arrives at a presumably random “tribute” each year. However, when an only child is selected, the mother gets up in arms about it.

“Light” is about personal transformation and how it may seem to be a magical and spontaneous occurrence to others. In the story, a light from the sky lands up on the lead character, and, with it, she experiences a profound personality change.

In “Traveler” a local and an alien (“foreigner”) converse in transit.

“Debriefing” is one of the stories that isn’t of the science fiction genre. It imagines the advice that an African would receive upon arriving in the United States. It’s sort of a “do’s and don’ts” of living in America for the alien resident. It’s amusing in some places and disconcerting in others.

“Focus Group” presents a series of comments from individuals as if they were taking part in a focus group where they were asked “What are aliens like?”

The story “Child’s Play” revolves around two children who like to play a game that allows them to disappear into an alternative dimension.

Life changes for a bickering couple when the man finds a mysterious boon in the backyard in “Who Is in the Garden?”

“On the Lost Tribes of the Black World” is a story that is presented as if it were a scholarly description of the “Konga” tribe, a people forged around the singular act of drumming.

In “Love Affair” a lesbian émigré to America from Africa, Finda, tries to navigate the minefield of human relations. On the one hand, she learns from her grandmother that being gay isn’t something Finda would be likely to be able to pull off in their homeland, but still Finda isn’t finding her sexual orientation to be any picnic in America – despite the fact that she can be open about it. This is one of the most engaging stories in the collection.

With “The Home Companion” the collection shifts back into sci-fi territory, imagining a technology that can serve to combat loneliness by providing one with an intelligence with which to converse.

“Our Earthly Possessions” discusses just what a traveler has as he or she moves to a new land. The subject of memory, addressed in the second story, is revisited in this story from a different angle.

I found this to be a fantastic collection of stories. If you have any interest in what it is like to be a stranger in a strange land, these stories will offer you insight into that condition. If you are experienced in that regard, the stories will resonate with you. It’s a smart collection of stories and will plant seeds of thought and help them germinate. If you read short fiction, I’d highly recommend this collection.

[Buba · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

Read the “Memory Store” for my English class, but then I decided to read some of his other short stories.

I loved “Child’s Play”, it nearly brought me to tears.

[Will Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I make the connections between extraterrestrial alien and immigrant alien, but other times I know I should be understanding the point or reference but I don't. I think I would have enjoyed the stories more if I had more experience with immigrants. But I can tell the stories are good, even with my shortcomings.

[Daisy]

I enjoyed this. While many of these stories have a uniquely Nigerian perspective on immigration, there are also many stories that have a much broader, more sci-fi exploration into what it means to be an "alien." And I enjoyed the ways that many of these stories blended into both genres, making the two indistinguishable.

It's all in the little details. One of my particular favorites includes the suggestion to invest in a good winter coat: "You do not want to suffer from any cold-borne illness. They do to the black man what tropical illnesses do to the white man." Or another, more sobering perspective on the American romanticism for "adventure": "I was thinking about the story he just told me. What he romantically called adventure, the other man must have seen as human cruelty and suffering. I envied him the inimitable stability that his own life story represented. He could predict tomorrow and have a master plan that covered the next fifty years, whereas the man from Laos could barely plan for the next day." These stories flip the narrative with such ease that their observations almost seem too obvious, but they are also coming from a perspective that I don't often hear from.

[Shannon (That's So Poe) · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like satire and literary themes in your sci-fi, this is a great collection to pick up! I loved how these short stories talked about the Nigerian-American immigrant experience through analogy to actual aliens, showing the way that people are othered to the point of being seen as almost inhuman. The humor is biting and fluid and powerful in this, as is the commentary. At times its view of humanity is rather bleak, but the writing is so gentle that somehow it brings you through it without wringing you out. If you like Douglas Adams or Oscar Wilde, I think this writing style will really speak to you like it did to me.

Content Warnings:
rape, homophobia

[Dylan Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wide collection of stories revolving not only around what we perceive as extraterrestrials, but also the feelings of alienation experienced by the people already on earth.

Some of the stories are misses, little sketches that strain under the weight of the few pages they are already on, but others are masterful little stories that are almost parable like.

It's a slim tome, so definitely worth a read

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this eclectic collection of stories all centering around the theme of being “alien.” There’s a strong sense of voice throughout. I’m not sure if I’ve read such a coherently themed collection before! It felt a bit repetitive at times. Not sure if any of the stories will prove super memorable for me, aside from maybe “Memory Store” and “Debriefing.”

[Stephanie Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was quite a thought-provoking and often a bit sad read. Each story is different and touches on what it means to be different, to be other. The author is himself is from a world completely different from mine, and I appreciated reading his stories from his perspective.

[Sinistmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a solid collection; I enjoyed the multiple ways the word alien was applied in the stories, and the writing style made things feel fuzzy. I especially enjoyed Alien Encounters, Memory Store, and Light(a light making you not like yourself was especially creepy to me).

[Eric Aldrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart, quick, thought-provoking stories using sci fi as a metaphor for immigrants' experiences in a dominant culture. Highly recommend!

[Amelia A · Rating 4 out of 5]

*BOA Editions, Ltd.

4.5 stars

[AHZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 for this one. Some stories were unique, others just didn't seem to belong in this book.

[Kelsey Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a short, entertaining read. I found some stories more interesting than others.

[Connor]

DNF

[Shimnom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is said to be a Sci‑fi series, which it is on the surface.

In this book, "alien" is used in two senses: real aliens (extraterrestrials) and, in the real sense, strangers.

My favorite story was 'Visitors'—a story which baffled me so because I was wondering why there was no description of the alien family—until I realized that the visitors might as well be black families.

Kudos to Osondu for putting forth this rather revealing work so succinctly. The fact remains that, for all the talk about UFOs and all, even among us here as earthlings, we are aliens.