Buy it from Amazon
| Subtitle | A space opera soap opera |
| First Written | 2012 |
| Genre | Scifi |
| Origin | US |
| Publisher | Candlemark & Gleam |
| ISBN-10 | 1936460238 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1936460236 |
| My Copy | library paperback |
| First Read | September 23, 2014 |
Constellation Games
Reread this for fun this fall and it's just as fun as I remember. Kind of falls apart in the third act a bit but I think it doesn't diminish much.
Noted on December 8, 2020
It took me a while to realize that all the species names are english words for 'foreigner' or stranger (the asian ones clued me in: farang, gaijin, gweilo).
Noted on October 11, 2014
One of the most fun things about the aliens is getting to understand their culture; they're a loose group of anarchic archeologists, and represent a few dozen varied species, and getting the hang of them is fun.
Noted on October 11, 2014
THIS is a great read. It's fun, hugely inventive, and written in a vernacular of the moment that reads like something from a tech blog.
Our hero is a video game programmer; when a group of alien anthropologists makes First Contact, he's ready. Ready to find and review the alien video games for his blog.
It sounds like a completely dumb setup, but the various alien species are fascinating and hilarious, the actual video games he describes are fascinating, and the epistolary style (blog posts, text message transcripts, IMs) makes for good pacing.
Noted on October 11, 2014
I've yet to bring No-Name to the end of the game, but I've played enough to see the twist ending coming. Home is not the place you come from. That place is gone, if it ever existed at all. Home is the place you go to and like enough to stay, the place you ratify with your presence.
Quoted on December 8, 2020
"They have computers," I said. "They'll have games. I'm going to find out what game that cerebrophage is playing and I'm going to review it on my blog."
Quoted on October 11, 2014
“They wanted us to change," said Tetsuo. "They came to our planet and they wouldn't shut up about fluid overlays and unhierarchical forms of social organization. We felt like we had to listen to them, because they were so powerful. But secretly we thought of them as monsters from space. And now here we are at your planet, and we are the monsters from space."
"Why'd you come here? Why even bother?"
"Don't you want to be a monster from space, too?”
Quoted on October 11, 2014