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GENeration eXtraTERrestrial, Aurelio O'Brien, Bad Attitude Books, 2010 Many novels have been written about aliens coming to Earth. What happens after they become part of society, and the media spotlight moves elsewhere? Grace Brown is a serious scientist in the field of extraterrestrial life. Her boss blackmails her into working with Diane and Tab, a photographer and writer for a tabloid newspaper. The three travel throughout America, meeting people who say that they were impregnated by extraterrestrials ("Knocked Up By An Alien!"). Their stories are not as easy to dismiss as Grace had hoped. To get back at her boss, Grace brings them all back to her employer, where they happen to give birth all at the same time. Born to a male farmer from Kansas, Brock looks like a walking plant who eats rocks. It's how he gets his daily minerals. Gray looks like your average alien (gray skin and big eyes) who needs a drink of alcohol every day, the way that humans need water every day. He also has a hydraulic skeleton; his arm and leg bones slide inside each other, so he can make them longer or shorter at will. The triplets, Flora, Fauna and Manfred, have wings and hatch from eggs laid by a New York socialite. Alpha looks like an average child, except for the thrid eye in the middle of her forehead that allows her to see auras. Charlie is a super-genius with a full head of hair and set of teeth, right out of the womb. Realizing that his mother has died in childbirth, Charlie crawls to her head and hugs her while he weeps. After the media circus fades, the Genxters deal with the usual growing-up issues. There's alcoholism, gender issues and making their way through school. Gray becomes a natural athlete; he is cut from his high school football team when the other teams refuse to play with him on the team. One day, the metabolisms of the triplets go into overdrive. They can't eat enough, and they gain a lot of weight. They spend the next couple of years each encased in a chrysalis, from which they eventually emerge. They each lose their wings because of a certain adolescent rite of passage. Charlie dresses like he just stepped out of a book on Edwardian attire. He starts a website so that the group can stay in touch. He becomes very interested in finding out where he, and the rest of the group, come from, so he scrutinizes signals from the stars, looking for any signs of intelligence. This is a really interesting novel, but it is not just a novel. There are several websites mentioned in this book that really exist. Yes, it is very much worth reading. Paul Lappen is a freelance book reviewer whose blog, Dead Trees Review, emphasizes small press and self-published books.
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