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Live Nude Aliens and Other Stories
From a technological dystopia to small town Canada, this collection of short fiction explores themes of change, memory, and things hiding in the shadows. These tales, previously-published and new, take classic space opera, pest problems, and the recent past in new and fresh directions.
Will electric light cast a world into darkness? Do you remember 1971, when Kennedy was in the White House, Hendrix sang about space, and the extraterrestrials returned? Has the invasion of the live nude aliens already begun? When you look at the world and see things slightly askew - our reality tilted just a few degrees - then you get stories like these.
Stories in this collection
Let There Be
Foundling
Space Comprimari
Live Nude Aliens
The Book of Den(n)is
Robbie Burns Night
The Shade at Aseneith
Crabbing in Worley
The Count
No Human Involved
Flying Whistle Stop
Will electric light cast a world into darkness? Do you remember 1971, when Kennedy was in the White House, Hendrix sang about space, and the extraterrestrials returned? Has the invasion of the live nude aliens already begun? When you look at the world and see things slightly askew - our reality tilted just a few degrees - then you get stories like these.
Stories in this collection
Let There Be
Foundling
Space Comprimari
Live Nude Aliens
The Book of Den(n)is
Robbie Burns Night
The Shade at Aseneith
Crabbing in Worley
The Count
No Human Involved
Flying Whistle Stop
262 pages, Paperback
Published March 11, 2022
2 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 19, 2022
I don't write reviews of the books I read and rate because most of them already have so many reviews already. I can give an opinion in my rating but I always feel I can't add anything new to the conversation. This is a new book and as of right now doesn't have a good review, so I'm writing one!
I first heard of Jd Deluzio from "The Con." I read that because it had Jane Austen and Sf content. I love Jane and I read Sf some of the time. Intrigued, I read it. I really enjoyed it, especially the characters and the humor.
The follow-up is a collection of short fiction, mostly Sf. If I rated "Live Nude Aliens and Other Stories" only on the best stories, I would give it five/five. If I rated it on the ones I didn't like as much, probably three/five. So it gets a four.
The longest works are the best and like "The Con" feature great characters. "The Book of Dennis" isn't Sf of any sort but it has a sense of supernatural or supernormal forces maybe being at work in the world. It's very well written and a bit dark, and one of the better things I've read so far this year, a miniature novel.
"Flying Whistle Stop" is a fun story set in a timeline where aliens landed in the 1950's. After being away for eighteen years the aliens return. Not everyone is happy to see the aliens again. DeLuzio's version of how aliens might change the world is fascinating. The aliens are totally bizarre. The story has a lot of ideas, positive, negative, and just interesting, that come up as the plot develops. It has some of the same humor as "The Con" and I think it would make a good movie.
Some of the shorter stories are also quality. "Let There Be," the first story, is about an alien world shared by two kinds of aliens. I could see the twist to the plot coming just before it happened. It isn't Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (a very famous Sf "idea" story) but it made me think about a few things. I'm still thinking! "Space Comprimari" is DeLuzio's idea of a "Space Opera" (the book has little intros to each story). I don't tend to read that kind of Sf but it was short and shows great imagination. The ideas is there is a big heroic space story but we're only seeing the minor character's parts. "Foundling" tells a creepy story about a lonely woman who finds a child who needs a mommy. Of course, there's a snag. The idea was basic but the characters were too relatable in an uncomfortable way and I was afraid of where it was all going to go.
A couple stories I did not like as much. The title story features Patti and Chelse from "The Con" and it was great to see them again! Someone reports on an alien invasion he claims is real and they comment on it like typical fans, criticising and analysing everything. I also laughed out loud at the ending. So it is not too bad. Most of the story, however, gets told by a drunk college bro. His humor is a little too close to real-world drunk guys that age and not my thing. "The Shade at Asneith" is reprinted from an anthology of Lovecraft-related fiction. Again, it isn't a bad story. I like that it has a credible Asian-American protagonist, but it also has even more of the people I avoided in college. That wasn't the problem. In "The Con," this author did a good job of presenting the Jane Austen and Sf references so that people who didn't know one or the other could follow the story. Here I felt like I was missing something because I don't read Lovecraft. So it might be a better story for some other readers than it was for me.
Overall this is an enjoyable collection with a lot of different kinds of stories. It also has a cover worth framing. Now that I've read it all, I think I can name everyone and everything on it!
I first heard of Jd Deluzio from "The Con." I read that because it had Jane Austen and Sf content. I love Jane and I read Sf some of the time. Intrigued, I read it. I really enjoyed it, especially the characters and the humor.
The follow-up is a collection of short fiction, mostly Sf. If I rated "Live Nude Aliens and Other Stories" only on the best stories, I would give it five/five. If I rated it on the ones I didn't like as much, probably three/five. So it gets a four.
The longest works are the best and like "The Con" feature great characters. "The Book of Dennis" isn't Sf of any sort but it has a sense of supernatural or supernormal forces maybe being at work in the world. It's very well written and a bit dark, and one of the better things I've read so far this year, a miniature novel.
"Flying Whistle Stop" is a fun story set in a timeline where aliens landed in the 1950's. After being away for eighteen years the aliens return. Not everyone is happy to see the aliens again. DeLuzio's version of how aliens might change the world is fascinating. The aliens are totally bizarre. The story has a lot of ideas, positive, negative, and just interesting, that come up as the plot develops. It has some of the same humor as "The Con" and I think it would make a good movie.
Some of the shorter stories are also quality. "Let There Be," the first story, is about an alien world shared by two kinds of aliens. I could see the twist to the plot coming just before it happened. It isn't Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (a very famous Sf "idea" story) but it made me think about a few things. I'm still thinking! "Space Comprimari" is DeLuzio's idea of a "Space Opera" (the book has little intros to each story). I don't tend to read that kind of Sf but it was short and shows great imagination. The ideas is there is a big heroic space story but we're only seeing the minor character's parts. "Foundling" tells a creepy story about a lonely woman who finds a child who needs a mommy. Of course, there's a snag. The idea was basic but the characters were too relatable in an uncomfortable way and I was afraid of where it was all going to go.
A couple stories I did not like as much. The title story features Patti and Chelse from "The Con" and it was great to see them again! Someone reports on an alien invasion he claims is real and they comment on it like typical fans, criticising and analysing everything. I also laughed out loud at the ending. So it is not too bad. Most of the story, however, gets told by a drunk college bro. His humor is a little too close to real-world drunk guys that age and not my thing. "The Shade at Asneith" is reprinted from an anthology of Lovecraft-related fiction. Again, it isn't a bad story. I like that it has a credible Asian-American protagonist, but it also has even more of the people I avoided in college. That wasn't the problem. In "The Con," this author did a good job of presenting the Jane Austen and Sf references so that people who didn't know one or the other could follow the story. Here I felt like I was missing something because I don't read Lovecraft. So it might be a better story for some other readers than it was for me.
Overall this is an enjoyable collection with a lot of different kinds of stories. It also has a cover worth framing. Now that I've read it all, I think I can name everyone and everything on it!
March 12, 2022
I heard of this book via a Big Idea piece in John Scalzi's Whatever blog and could not resist a book by that title. With a title like that, I certainly expected a book with humor and whimsy, which I got, but it was presented in a very sophomoric style that really turned me off.
DeLuzio has a great imagination and built some nice situations. The first story sets up a fairly imaginative alien (or horror) society and situation but does not really have a plot. Disappointed, I skipped to the title tale as a test of whether I would continue to read. It was full of the kind of sexual references that a teen might think were clever and took much too long for a short story to take off, but I admit the ending was clever. However, based on those two stories I had no urge to read a third.
I am doubly sorry I did not like the book. It just came out, and I wanted to give it a nice compliment on its opening day.
DeLuzio has a great imagination and built some nice situations. The first story sets up a fairly imaginative alien (or horror) society and situation but does not really have a plot. Disappointed, I skipped to the title tale as a test of whether I would continue to read. It was full of the kind of sexual references that a teen might think were clever and took much too long for a short story to take off, but I admit the ending was clever. However, based on those two stories I had no urge to read a third.
I am doubly sorry I did not like the book. It just came out, and I wanted to give it a nice compliment on its opening day.
September 9, 2022
You may have read J.D. DeLuzio's recent novel, "The Con," a humorous slice-of-life tale of a group of people attending a Canadian science fiction convention. His new collection gives us a look at how varied and absorbing his fiction can get.
* Let There Be - A piece about a society of monsters that combines surreal horror and parental heartbreak.
* Foundling - A lonely woman feels maternal concerns for a lost child -- who may not be a human child at all.
* Space Comprimari - An invasion of Earth and the resulting counter-insurgency, told from the points of view of low-level soldiers and spies. And a cat.
* Live Nude Aliens - Two characters from "The Con" return to hear a strange and possibly true tale of an alien invasion in the distant future.
* The Book of Den(n)is - A story about Dennis and Denis, who meet briefly only twice, but who profoundly affect each other's lives.
* Robbie Burns Night - Encounters and remembrances of acquaintances, separated by decades, linked by one eccentric holiday.
* The Shade at Aseneith - A tale of Lovecraftian horror -- turns out a bit differently than expected.
* Crabbing in Worley - A short study of a town with a periodic infestation of strange crab-like creatures.
* The Count - A former sailor and teller of tall tales meets an old man he knew many, many, many years ago.
* No Human Involved - A brutal story of a sadist who tortures AIs of people who've uploaded their minds to the Internet.
* Flying Whistle Stop - An alternate history tale of the way the world changes after aliens visit Earth.
I'll admit I went into this expecting something different. The title of the book had me expecting lots of humorous and titillating stories, and the cover art, depicting characters from the stories, humans and inhumans alike, sitting together in a bar, so I also expected some crossover camaraderie. And while many of the stories have humorous elements -- what good fiction doesn't? -- and while there are a few crossover characters, the emphasis throughout the book is on high-quality, expertly-told, dramatic stories.
There aren't any bad pieces in the book. But some of my favorites included the two horror works that start the collection out -- "Let There Be" is creepy and weird, and it was cited as an excellent story by none other than horror editor extraordinaire Ellen Datlow, while "Foundling" draws us into the life of a girl going nowhere who lets her aimless life and unfocused compassion lead her into a life on the run with an abandoned child with gruesome appetites.
"Flying Whistle Stop" is a neat piece that posits how the world would change -- and how it would not -- if aliens visited Earth. It's told mostly through the POV of Jordan, a math whiz in 1970s Canada who dreams of working for NASA, or any other agency who'll let her travel to space. The extremely inhuman but friendly aliens nicknamed the Whistlers kickstarted a technology boom since their first visit in the 1950s, but their return visit is stirring up Christian extremists to even greater levels of lunacy. The character work here is really fun -- I can think of at least two characters, maybe more, who deserve their own novel, and the Whistlers' extreme weirdness is constantly fun.
The high point of the book is "The Book of Den(n)is," the longest story and the only one with no ties to science fiction, fantasy, or horror. The tale tracks Dennis through his youth, his teen years, into middle age -- and then after a tragedy, it follows Denis, a man Dennis met briefly as a kid, from his middle age, back to his youth and his childhood. It's a very human and humane story, with no Hollywood action or ending, no cozy wrap-up, and plenty of lost plot angles and vanishing characters -- because that's what real life is like. It's a beautiful story, and I was glad to get to read it.
Go pick it up, folks.
* Let There Be - A piece about a society of monsters that combines surreal horror and parental heartbreak.
* Foundling - A lonely woman feels maternal concerns for a lost child -- who may not be a human child at all.
* Space Comprimari - An invasion of Earth and the resulting counter-insurgency, told from the points of view of low-level soldiers and spies. And a cat.
* Live Nude Aliens - Two characters from "The Con" return to hear a strange and possibly true tale of an alien invasion in the distant future.
* The Book of Den(n)is - A story about Dennis and Denis, who meet briefly only twice, but who profoundly affect each other's lives.
* Robbie Burns Night - Encounters and remembrances of acquaintances, separated by decades, linked by one eccentric holiday.
* The Shade at Aseneith - A tale of Lovecraftian horror -- turns out a bit differently than expected.
* Crabbing in Worley - A short study of a town with a periodic infestation of strange crab-like creatures.
* The Count - A former sailor and teller of tall tales meets an old man he knew many, many, many years ago.
* No Human Involved - A brutal story of a sadist who tortures AIs of people who've uploaded their minds to the Internet.
* Flying Whistle Stop - An alternate history tale of the way the world changes after aliens visit Earth.
I'll admit I went into this expecting something different. The title of the book had me expecting lots of humorous and titillating stories, and the cover art, depicting characters from the stories, humans and inhumans alike, sitting together in a bar, so I also expected some crossover camaraderie. And while many of the stories have humorous elements -- what good fiction doesn't? -- and while there are a few crossover characters, the emphasis throughout the book is on high-quality, expertly-told, dramatic stories.
There aren't any bad pieces in the book. But some of my favorites included the two horror works that start the collection out -- "Let There Be" is creepy and weird, and it was cited as an excellent story by none other than horror editor extraordinaire Ellen Datlow, while "Foundling" draws us into the life of a girl going nowhere who lets her aimless life and unfocused compassion lead her into a life on the run with an abandoned child with gruesome appetites.
"Flying Whistle Stop" is a neat piece that posits how the world would change -- and how it would not -- if aliens visited Earth. It's told mostly through the POV of Jordan, a math whiz in 1970s Canada who dreams of working for NASA, or any other agency who'll let her travel to space. The extremely inhuman but friendly aliens nicknamed the Whistlers kickstarted a technology boom since their first visit in the 1950s, but their return visit is stirring up Christian extremists to even greater levels of lunacy. The character work here is really fun -- I can think of at least two characters, maybe more, who deserve their own novel, and the Whistlers' extreme weirdness is constantly fun.
The high point of the book is "The Book of Den(n)is," the longest story and the only one with no ties to science fiction, fantasy, or horror. The tale tracks Dennis through his youth, his teen years, into middle age -- and then after a tragedy, it follows Denis, a man Dennis met briefly as a kid, from his middle age, back to his youth and his childhood. It's a very human and humane story, with no Hollywood action or ending, no cozy wrap-up, and plenty of lost plot angles and vanishing characters -- because that's what real life is like. It's a beautiful story, and I was glad to get to read it.
Go pick it up, folks.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews