When I was in high-school I picked up a book about a dentist who is taken by aliens to work on their teeth. It was called “Prostho Plus” and written by Piers Anthony, one of my favorite writers at the time. What I remember many years later was the ability to explore alien culture differently and looking at the biology. It was also fun to see aliens from the point of view of someone who differed from the protagonist in most books. “Agent to the Stars” by John Scalzi is different in almost every way except that it lets you examine common science fiction ideas from a different angle by having a person significantly different from the norm being the one to make first contact. Here, a young Hollywood agent who is tasked with the job of introducing a strange alien to the rest of the world without them freaking out.

Summary of “Agent to the Stars” by John Scalzi

The story begins with Tom Stein who is called to a meeting with his boss one of the most important people in Hollywood. He assumes it is about the 12 million dollars he just got his best client, Michelle Beck. An attractive star in her mid-twenties known for making teen movies. But when he arrives, he is introduced to Joshua, an alien who appears to be transparent gelatin. He is told by his boss to get rid of as many clients as he can because he is going to be the agent to Joshua and in some ways his entire race.

The first step is to get Joshua back to his house since the alien will be staying with him. He does this by putting him in a water jug, but he is interrupted by a reporter who wants to write about him, but Tom says no. He then moves on to dealing with the rest of his clients, most of who he passes along to a junior agent who has just been promoted and so has few clients while keeping the most important for himself.

This draws the attention of the reporter who instead of writing about the hottest young agents in Hollywood writes about how he thinks Tom is cracking up under the pressure. This makes his week much harder and while he is trying to deal with the clients who freak out or leave him in various ways, he gets a call from Joshua who has been exploring the wilderness with Tom’s dog Ralph.

Joshua doesn’t come back soon and the idea of losing the only alien actually on the planet freaks out Tom. But his boss assures him that Joshua and his race are nearly indestructible. And soon Joshua returns. It turns out that the dog had a heart attack and Joshua decided it would be OK for him to merge with the dog. A choice that borders on immortal for his race, but the dog was both consenting and dying. This allows Joshua to become a dog.

At the same time Michelle Beck, the blond, somewhat vapid, starlet has decided she wants the part of a 50-year-old Holocaust survivor. She does a terrible job actually fainting in the audition after having memorized the wrong scene(in which her character had only one line). And then has an accident with a Latex mask that leaves her mostly brain dead. This naturally leads to the obvious but uncomfortable solution of Joshua merging and in some ways becoming Michelle. The morality of this is debated and discussed and in the end they go to the alien ship in orbit to get the thoughts of the other aliens.

They convince her and Joshua becomes Michelle, while keeping much of who he is and much of who she is. This merging makes Joshua now Michelle a far better actress, and she convinces the director of the holocaust movie to give her a chance to audition again. She does well enough to convince both the director and the niece of the woman in the story to let her play the part.

The story jumps about a year, filling in the gaps with news clippings of the events. The most important being that Michelle Beck is up for the Oscar for best actress. She gives a speech talking about how much she admires the woman the movie was about and how important it is to look past appearances to the basic humanity of people. While she does this she reveals, in front of the billion people watching the Oscars, that she is a space alien. And thanks to the speech and her performance that convinces people she understands humans, the world doesn’t collectively freak out as they are introduced to the aliens.

My Opinion on “Agent to the Stars” by John Scalzi

This was a fun and light book, though it didn’t shy away from a few disturbing moments. Nothing in the book shocked me or is likely to shock anyone else unless they picked it up without reading the basic premise and were surprised by the first appearance of the alien. But while it was predictable that hardly matter. I watch plenty of TV, most of which is entirely predictable, and enjoy it as well. And the characters, while not the deepest ever written, have strong personalities. Even the setting of Hollywood and the different actors that Tom had to deal with were fun as minor conflicts in a story with a real conflict that I actually cared about. So all in all this was significantly above average for me but isn’t likely to break into my favorite books. Though it might be one I keep around to recommend to the right person, as it feels different from most other science fiction.