Sunday, December 20, 2009

Doctor Alien

Novella by Rajnar Vajra

A comedic SF novella about a human psychiatrist that aliens bring up to their spaceship to diagnose other aliens that they have been unable to understand. The biggest issue anyone can have with this story is that our protagonist solves all his cases with dumb luck and lucky guesses rather than brilliant psychiatric insight; but I'm willing to forgive this because a) he is very aware of it, and paranoid he won't be so lucky in the future, and b) that isn't even remotely the point. Comedic heroes are exempt from the normal superhuman competency requirement of protagonists.

Anyway, I love the main Tsf alien traders, they have a delightful sarcasm and the based-on-old-tv/radio translations are pure gold. Several laugh-out-loud moments. Take 3.5 asprin and call me in the morning.

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