No Room to Live by Kyle Fields; Brilliant Subversion On Alien Invasion Tropes

No Room to Live by Kyle Fields; Brilliant Subversion On Alien Invasion Tropes

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Kyle Fields’ No Room to Live isn't just aware of and acknowledges the tropes in Alien invasion Science Fiction. Instead it plays with them, confronts them, critiques them, and subverts them providing a different approach to the subgenre.

Central Pacific pilot Kup Winston survives a collision with a UFO and encounters an enigmatic alien called The Warden. Unfortunately his Good Samaritan gesture creates more problems as The Warden reveals an upcoming invasion project targeted towards Earth. 

The complex narrative moves to various locations and involves various characters, humans and aliens. Hawaii, Texas, Australia, Vanuatu, and Iceland become important strategic locations for the aliens and we see how these changes affect the characters that live there. 

Besides Kup whose original encounter becomes a catalyst for the incidents that follow, it includes Jerry Morgenstern, a Texan attorney, Leilani Damonati, a Hawaiian senator, Hildur Einarsdottir, an Icelandic guide, and Kahealani, Kup’s pregnant wife among others

 Each character goes through various emotions connected to this invasion. From confusion, to hostile suspicion, to curiosity, to empathy, to fury, to resilience in survival, to diplomatic reasoning, to adjusting to the new normal. They reflect the various choices that people would make when faced with this odd situation. 

Some would fire at the newcomers with their guns blazing. Others would at least try to communicate to find out the intent or negotiate terms. Some would welcome aliens with open arms. Others find a new minority to kick around.

 The human characters are complex and within this specific situation have to question their own positions, loyalties, values, and thoughts towards crossing boundaries and breaking laws. No matter what the alien's real intentions are, it's clear that the human race on Earth will never be the same again and many of those old structures will alter if not completely break.

The humans are not the only complex characters in the book. The aliens also are very layered. Kup’s time with The Warden reveals this. There is suspicion along with a survival instinct that Kup is near a creature that might do him harm. Then The Warden tends and cares for him revealing a softer side and we see what might become an alien-human friendship novel. 

Then something changes and we learn something different about The Warden and the aliens’ plans. Kup’s hurt is more evident because of The Warden's betrayal. Within a few chapters our perceptions of the characters change accordingly.

There are also other complications involving the aliens and their society which provide wry commentary on our own. Many of the human characters form genuine friendships with the aliens. Notably Hildur’s relationship with one of the newcomers provides a sincere contrast to the one established between Kup and The Warden. 

It's a way to demonstrate that the aliens are no more a monolith than the humans they encounter. Similar to their Earth counterparts, the aliens have different complex emotions, motives, behaviors, and thoughts about this new world and the people who dwell within it.

There are also deeper themes in the book. Aliens from outer space as a metaphor for immigration is not a new concept. It's been used in works like Alien Nation and episodes like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits among others. 

This book however runs full force with the concept exploring the different legal, political, social, moral, and ethical concerns that would appear in a situation especially if the aliens were found unsuitable in their previous worlds.

It's this stigma of aliens being outsiders in both their home worlds and here that garners the most attention in the book. The human characters learn that the aliens’ former world had very strict social structures and legal requirements over how people were supposed to look, what position they were supposed to hold, and how they were supposed to behave within them. These are impossibly high standards for anyone to hold, so the aliens’ arrival makes even more sense.

This revelation provides a bitter edge that humans may judge the aliens’ home world for these arbitrary regulations but are they any different than the ones here? In fact that makes the aliens’ arrival even more questionable that they might eventually go through the exact same situation here. 

Once again they might find themselves outside a society that refuses to accept them forever searching for a place to belong, a world that they can call home.