The Intergalactic Interloper

January 4, 2021
Alien first contact gets the Michel Gondry treatment in Heras’s whimsical slice-of-life debut. In 1995, a spaceship lands in New York City’s East Village aiming to contact Earth’s most promising intelligent life-forms: house cats. But when bookstore clerk Ollie’s cat, Pirate, is kidnapped from his broken-down apartment and worried Ollie spots AxzleProva, the ship’s two-headed, dual-gendered, tortoise-like pilot, fleeing the scene, the aliens’ mission goes off the rails. Ollie is determined to rescue Pirate, but it will take a string of counterabductions, a Santa Muerte ritual, and help from Ollie’s British veterinary student bandmate, a shy Latino building superintendent, and an astrophysicist’s actress daughter to get her back and salvage AxzleProva’s diplomatic mission. Heras charms with simple prose and a wry-but-earnest fondness for working-class New York, but fumbles in writing the internal lives of his female characters, who are disproportionately one dimensional among the expansive cast. Quirky clip art–style illustrations add little to the text, but the story’s deeply personal stakes and warmhearted atmosphere go a long way to make up for the shortcomings. There’s plenty to love in this light, offbeat take on a favorite sci-fi trope.

October 15, 2023
Set in 1995, this lighthearted sf story opens with a spaceship landing on the roof of an East Village apartment building in Manhattan. The alien inside, a "space turtle" named AxzleProva who has two heads and two personalities, is on a mission to identify intelligent life on Earth. The most promising candidate is a species called the house cat. As the alien observes surrounding life forms, Ollie, a struggling musician in the building, discovers his cat is missing. Thus begins a desperate search that includes the viewpoints of Ollie's potential love interest, a deranged neighbor, a woman with a thing for bunny costumes, and a superintendent in a loveless relationship. The story's strength can also be its weakness: realistic depictions of the characters' day-to-day activities (riding the subway, ordering lunch) add character depth, but decrease tension and momentum. Still, a satisfying, surprising conclusion more than compensates. Readers will also enjoy the aliens' perception of humankind (AxzleProva describes humans as "meddling and murderous overgrown monkeys"). With a whimsical narrative voice, quirky characters, and some laugh-out-loud scenes, this story will delight readers.

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