Book Review: Scum of the Earth by Alexander C. Kane

Scum of the Earth by Alexander C. Kane

Ezra Barker is an assistant to The Senator, the woman in charge of a section in the middle of what used to be the United States. The Merg, a hostile alien race, came and conquered. They are now extracting any and all valuable resources from the planet (which they call "Merg 12") with the promise that they will leave behind a human utopia when they are done. Barker is a collaborator who signed on early to save his own skin. He's really good at his job, handling paperwork and scheduling and managing minor situations for The Senator. His life is disrupted by two things. The Merg have a "visitor" coming and he is assigned to review safety procedures for the route from the landing site to the heart of Zero City (formerly known as Chicago). His other disruption is a woman who brushes her hair in a window across the street from his apartment. She lives in a workers' tenement, so she probably has unenviable mine work. He is smitten with her though she is completely unaware.

After he does the route inspection, he has more knowledge than is good for him, so the Merg plan to eliminate him. But the woman drops her brush out her window, giving him the chance to meet her. Once they are together on the street, a car drives up and kidnaps him. She was part of the resistance movement that needs him for their next big plan involving, you guessed it, the visitor.

The story has a tricky balancing act giving a rather undesirable hero sympathy. He's intelligent and a survivor, skills that have put him on the anti-humanity side, though all the rhetoric from the Merg is about how great things are and will be once they have left. After being kidnapped, he's pretty quick to help out the resistance though the woman has no interest in him at all. 

Enough side characters are thrown in to keep things interesting and to present different ways of collaborating and resisting. The Senator is a typical politician, telling people what they want to hear and generally being able to read a situation and charm/persuade people and Merg to do her bidding. Some lower-level cops are fully invested in the Merg propaganda, making them natural antagonists to Barker and the resistance. The resistance characters are a loose collection of people with varying degrees of competence and commitment. 

The characters have a lot of Orwellian "double think" going on. The Senator is described as able to believe two contradictory ideas are true at the same time. Others believe in the Merg's promises or in their own ability to make a bad situation better, even when they have almost no control over what happens to them. Even though the book is very comedic, it sneaks in some more serious ideas about how people deal with the worst situations, often in very different ways. I found it surprisingly satisfying as a comedy and a drama about an alien invasion.

Recommended.

This book is discussed on A Good Story is Hard to Find Podcast #358. Check it out!