Second Suicide

I recently downloaded Hugh Howey's Kindle Single, 'Second Suicide'.

Its a quick read and a very interesting one. told from an alien's point of view, it immediately got my interest. Not only for the voice of a sentient life form, but from one heading to Earth to destroy all humans.

They wish to destroy us not because we are in the way of a planned inter-galactic bypass, no, simply because we are here. The beings are much like us; they like sex, like to play games, are suspicious of poetry and are very war like.

In their huge battleships as they hurtle towards Earth, our 'anti-hero' is an intelligence officer who has studied us for some time, in preparation of our annihilation. The story takes place in the final few days before planet fall and the attack on Earth.

The conquering race have also the technology to revive themselves, downloading their consciousness onto servers which can be downloaded into bodies ( Rather like our old skin job friends from new Galactica.)

Howey, against the terrifying narrative of a race casually planning our genocide, looks at the woe of beings that are not only immortal, but seemingly invincible, that have lived for an eternity and conquered countless worlds.

I was slow to believe the hype around Howey, but then I saw his prose...Now I'm a believer.