Hard Landing

Written in the form of a research journal, Hard Landing contains interviews, personal accounts, and other documentation about five ETs who find themselves in exile on earth during the Cold War. Unlike so many books, Budrys was able to make the format work while telling the story of what became of the ETs following the crash of their ship right up to their deaths. I've given this book a fifth star, just because the author was masterful enough to make the format work without making his readers crazy. Each of the characters, even those just briefly in the story, are given good development, which makes this short book very good as well.

Algis Budrys' first novel to appear in fifteen years, Hard Landing begins with report of an electocuted man found lying on the tracks of the Burrow Street station in Shoreview, Illinois. The story Budrys goes on to tell is a tale ripped from the pages of a supermarket tabloid. A starship crash lands in a New Jersey swamp, its passengers, human in appearence, scatter, each forced to find their own way in an alien world, living the rest of their lives among the human race. Like much of Budys' best work of the 1960s, Hard Landing expounds on the nature of identity, following its cheif protagonist, Jack Mullica, through a series of adventures after his initial crash landing. Hard Landing is a welcome addition to Budrys' small but impressive collection of work. Hopefully Budrys, who has never been the most prolific of writers, will not go another fifteen years before releasing his next.