Science fiction is a wonderful medium for satire. The use of aliens as outsiders to poke fun at our foibles are a wonderful mechanism to satirize our world. Rob Reid tried to do this in his novel, Year Zero. The aliens come in to help poke fun at music piracy and its punishments. But Reid’s novel just doesn’t work. His aliens are silly and the premise is weak. It’s a decent idea with very flawed execution and I just couldn’t finish it. Let’s check it out.

Nick Carter is a young entertainment lawyer who might be on the way out of his firm. But when aliens come down and tell him that the universe owes the entertainment industry the entire output of the universe in fines for pirating music. Apparently Earth music (and by Earth music, the author is really only talking about US music) is the most popular form of entertainment in the universe. Based off Earth laws (and by Earth laws, the author means US music piracy laws), all the species of the universe owe so much money from pirating, that Earth is owed the entire sum of money in the universe. Some alien species have it in mind that the only way out of this problem is to destroy Earth. Nick has to work with two friendly aliens (Carly and Frampton) to save Earth and figure out a way out of this mess.

It’s a wonderful premise that gets bogged down by too much talking, uninteresting characters, silly situations and everyone (including the aliens) seem to only be concerned with US music and laws. And aliens love 1970s music, but are concerned with 2000s era music piracy laws. This could have (and should have) been a much better book, but I became disenchanted with it very quickly. I made it through 2 chapters on my first attempt to read it. The second time, I made it through 6 chapters before washing my hands of the book and giving up. Not recommended.