Review of Craig Falconer’s Not Alone
(Craig A. Falconer, Not Alone, self-published?, 12/19/15)
Mr. Falconer’s book doesn’t need another review—at last count, 1850+ readers have jumped on the fanwagon and written their one- and two-line endorsements (called reviews by Amazon)—but I often review books that I buy for R&R reading when they have a lot of positives. Unfortunately this one has many negatives too. So here goes.
First, the positives. There is no Star Wars-like space opera here. Most of the first half of the book is spent uncovering a government conspiracy and battling the perpetrator’s and media’s attempts to hide it. Dan Murphy, a believer in UFOs, just happens to be present when a thief steals a Top Secret folder containing evidence for ETs from a government agency, and it also just happens that Emma Ford, an expert in PR and marketing, shows up to help him battle the media. When no one worries about who the thief is, I became suspicious—that’s a flaw some readers might glide over, but I didn’t. Still, I managed to get through this ponderous half of the story because the concept was interesting, albeit a long variation on all those conspiracy theories about Area 51.
Second, there are nice twists that happen in the second half of the book, if you can make it that far. Consider them examples of the adage, “It’s not paranoia if it’s true.” These twists can be a lot of fun, I’ll admit, but I just wish it hadn’t taken the author so long to get to them—completely unnecessary. Because Mr. Falconer can’t seem to pare things down, he should have hired a content editor.
In his “apology” at the end, he states that he wanted to make just one novel and not split it up. At 742 equivalent pages, this ebook is shorter than my Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, but it’s certainly equivalent to at least two novels. And it didn’t need to be! Where does Falconer go wrong? Call it his being a wannabe speech writer, overly enchanted with his own prose, or what you like—he’s just too verbose.
This is a sci-fi novel that doesn’t need world-building, yet narrative dominates, especially when it comes to recording the speeches of pontificating politicians and media personalities. In fact, by writing about rants from those railing against a globalist viewpoint, he ends up giving credence to their arguments, especially considering that his story about uniting Earth against an ET invasion effectively supports that viewpoint! I have no idea whether this has anything to do with BREXIT or Scottish independence (Falconer lives in Edinburgh), but I don’t care—it’s very boring.
Minimalist writing (called “hard-boiled” in the mystery and crime genres) is still necessary for sci-fi—an author needs to allow readers to participate in the story by creating their own images of the characters, fill in dialogue, and not be bogged down by boring details. Mr. Falconer has a lot to learn in that sense.
Most of the book takes place in the U.S.—Colorado, in fact—so there are bound to be slip-ups in describing American culture. I probably did my share in Rembrandt’s Angel (mostly taking place in England, but with a bit in Scotland), so I realize how difficult this can be. But Mr. Falconer’s main villains are American politicians and his protagonists are also American, so we both have to work harder in minimizing those slip-ups. Some are quite comical. When he speaks of “hoovered up” in an American living room, I immediately thought of J. Edgar because of the conspiracy theory permeating the first half of the book. Of course, the phrase just means vacuuming in Great Britain.
The book also fails when it comes to science. The idea that Murphy can hear alien sounds when others standing beside him can’t is farfetched, for example. There’s no explanation of where the ETs come from either. Gliese 667cc orbits a red dwarf 23.62 light-years away from Earth. There are Sol-like (G-type) stars just as close that might have twins of Earth orbiting them—just because our planet-finding techniques don’t work with them doesn’t mean that E-type planets aren’t there. And if the ETs are so advanced, why can’t they stop the launch of a military platform right on the launch pad without killing anyone? And so forth….
Conspiracies involving cover-ups of ET visits and first encounters have been sci-fi themes since the genre was invented. I don’t have to go very far back to prove my point: The first part of this novel and my novella “Portal in the Pines” (available as a PDF free for the asking) are very similar conspiracies (the “twist” goes in the other direction in my novella) and the first encounter in the second part of my More than Human: The Mensa Contagion (published about six months before Falconer’s) is more elaborate than Falconer’s (my whole novel is a lesson on minimalist writing). Authors don’t plagiarize stories, but they reuse themes, writing different stories around them.
The book also needs more copy editing as well as content editing. British terms aside, my copy editor’s eyes caught many remaining errors. Sure, I could get by them, but other readers could find them annoying. Shortening the book might have helped there too—less to copy edit!
This book just isn’t good enough that it should have attracted all those readers who jumped on the fanwagon with reviews far less thorough than this one, but any book that I can start and get through these days is generally entertaining in one way or another. This showed quite a bit of originality in dealing with the themes of first contact and cover-up of ET invasions…but caveat emptor, because you might not like the bloat.
***
In libris libertas….
