January 07, 2004
Illegal Alien by Robert Sawyer
An alien space ship lands on Earth. First contact proceeds very smoothly. The aliens learn English and tour the globe before taking up residence in Los Angeles while they bootstrap Earth industry sufficiently to produce the parts that have been damaged on their space ship. A human being is killed in the aliens' dormitory with evidence that indicates an alien killed him. The rest of the book is courtroom drama with aliens.
It's been a while since I read it so I can't recall the details, but Sawyer did some interesting things with the legal implications of an alien vs. human murder case and somehow managed to maintain enough mystery about the outcome to keep me turning pages.
Posted by jeffy at January 7, 2004 11:20 PMComments