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The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: they're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish. So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone to help them close the deal. Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for an entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster. "With a plot that starts out as the rough life of a young agent in Hollywood and rapidly metamorphoses into B-movie territory as a remarkably intelligent first-contact yarn, this book is absurd, funny, and satirically perceptive." --Booklist… (more)
FFortuna: Stupidest Angel is a Christmas book and further on the spectrum of craziness, but the two have similar types of humor. The movie star in Agent to the Stars also reminds me a bit of Molly Michon from Stupidest Angel.
Starts well, Scalzi's intelligent and funny style on display, but loses the plot about halfway through. [Spoilers]
The suicide of a depressed woman, the ongoing romance of the main characters around her brain-dead body, the non-consensual use of her body by our friendly aliens, and how nobody on earth seems to have a problem with that, or any concerns for the victim for the rest of the story. Weak. ( )
Read this in one day as I was recuperating from a bicycle accident. It was the perfect thing - light and funny with a snappy plot that kept me turning the pages and out of my mopey head.
It's just as silly and fun as you would expect a book about aliens in Hollywood to be. ( )
I liked this book. Not quite as funny as Androids but still very clever. I liked the Hollywood angle a lot. If your looking for a quick, light, funny read, this is the book for you. ( )
This book was originally dedicated to Natasha Kordus and Stephen Bennett, friends of old, and still is.
It's also now dedicated to Bill Schafer, friend and original publisher of this novel.
And to Irene Gallo, who (with help from John Harris, Shelley Eshkar, Donato Giancola, and Pascal Blanchet) has made all my books at Tor look so good.
First words
"Fourteen million and fifteen percent of the gross? For Michelle Beck? You're out of your fucking mind, Tom."
Headsets are a godsend; they allow you to speak on the phone while leaving your hands free for the truly important things. My hands were currently occupied with a blue rubber racquetball, which I was lightly bouncing off the pane of my office window.
Quotations
On the whole, people took it rather well. The only place that rioted was North Korea.
It was only afterwards, after all, that people realized she wasn't human.
. . . some academy members petitioned to have Michelle disqualified as the Best Actress winner. Their rationale was that not only was she not really human, there was no way to determine that she was, in fact, female.
The academy voted down the proposal in the interests of interspecies peace.
The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: they're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish. So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone to help them close the deal. Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for an entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster. "With a plot that starts out as the rough life of a young agent in Hollywood and rapidly metamorphoses into B-movie territory as a remarkably intelligent first-contact yarn, this book is absurd, funny, and satirically perceptive." --Booklist
The suicide of a depressed woman, the ongoing romance of the main characters around her brain-dead body, the non-consensual use of her body by our friendly aliens, and how nobody on earth seems to have a problem with that, or any concerns for the victim for the rest of the story. Weak. ( )