Alice Mortimer lives in a college town where nothing much happens—until Alice finds herself in the middle of a mass shooting. She’s at the end of a 10-hour shift at a burger joint when a deranged young man starts shooting up the place. Alice gets seriously pissed off. She wrests the guy’s pistol from his hand, then chases him brandishing a basketful of hot, greasy french fries. Which she uses to beat him senseless as he cowers in terror. A bystander grabs the rifle the young man was carrying and persuades Alice to stop before she kills him. All of which is to say that Alice would become an instant nationwide hero online. Except that this is far from the biggest story of the night. Because a half-dozen alien spaceships show up in Earth orbit. Welcome to a highly original First Contact story.
One lone woman, and a handful of soldiers, take on the aliens
Alice is 22. She’s a senior studying astrophysics at the local college. So she’s largely immune to the wildly improbably conspiracy theories that flood the internet as soon as those spaceships appear. What’s more, having suffered a trauma from her combat with the mass shooter, Alice also turns out to be immune to the paralyzing effect of the strange aurora that appears in the skies worldwide. Pretty much everyone else goes catatonic or aimlessly wanders around. So, when she learns that one of the aliens has shown up in the radiology lab at the hospital, she confronts it. And, when a handful of soldiers from the nearby military base show up driving a pair of M1 Abrams tanks down the street, on their way to take out the alien, Alice joins the fight.
As you might imagine, this is just the beginning of Alice Mortimer’s engagement with the aliens. As I hinted, this is a strange and original First Contact story
FYI, this is the 2,300th review I’ve posted on Mal Warwick on Books.
Love, Sex, and the Alien Apocalypse (First Contact #29) by Peter Cawdron (2024) 370 pages ★★★☆☆
A disappointing digression into philosophical debate
There’s a great deal of action in Love, Sex, and the Alien Apocalypse. It should be enough to satisfy the craving of most science fiction thriller readers. Unfortunately, though, the heart of the novel doesn’t lie in the action sequences, which are almost incidental to the author’s intent. Because it’s clear that Peter Cawdron’s principal interest here is to explore the nature of consciousness. He devotes page after page to a spirited philosophical debate between Alice and the aliens about consciousness and free will. For a reader like me searching for a fast-paced story that rushes to a satisfying conclusion, the long delays occasioned by that debate are a disappointment.
Oh, the conclusion is satisfying enough. Cawdron gets there in the end. And, yes, the story is highly original and thought-provoking. But I could have done without all the philosophical palaver. For me, philosophy and theology amount to so much navel-gazing.
About the author
Peter Cawdron has written 29 standalone novels in his remarkable First Contact series. In earlier years, he wrote an additional 15 science fiction and fantasy novels and collections of short stories. Cawdron was born in New Zealand but lives in Brisbane, Queensland, and calls himself Australian. However, he writes principally for an American reading audience.
For related reading
I’ve reviewed all but one of the previous novels in this long-running series at Peter Cawdron’s insightful First Contact book series. (The one I skipped is fantasy, not science fiction.
For more good reading, check out:
- The five best First Contact novels
- 10 new science fiction authors worth reading now
- These novels won both Hugo and Nebula Awards
- The ultimate guide to the all-time best science fiction novels
- The top science fiction novels
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
