Gray/Guardians-Kathy Porter

Gray/Guardians
Kathy Porter
BookSurge, 2007, $17.99
www.booksurge.com
ISBN: 1419636685

In the near future, the inconvenient truth is the earth is dying as the environment has reached code red. Natural disasters have become epidemic and disease pandemic. Earthquakes and tsunamis at sea and in the air have become catastrophic as if the planet is in its final death throes. Humanity appears on the eve of extinction as the Doomsday Clock has reached the point of no turning back.

Hope arises when aliens arrive to treat ailing humans suffering from the Severe Environmental Allergy Syndrome. The Grays offer the governments a plan to save the species from the dying planet. They will bring selected humans to their home planet; predominantly women of child-bearing age.

Soon afterward, a second alien race appears. The Guardians insist earth can be saved if enlightened people make the concerted effort and that the Grays' secret agenda is a breeding program to establish super lethal hybrid to dominate the universe. Selling their belief to the embattled human leaders is near impossible as the Guardians are technologically inferior to the Grays so earthly leaders assume less knowledgeable; besides which they wonder what is the Guardians’ agenda? On the other hand, the concept of not leaving home with most surviving is one generality humanity embraces. As the Grays and the Guardians battle over the future of mankind, humans feel somewhat helpless since their input seems to not matter, but both extraterrestrials underestimate the earthlings.

This cautionary science fiction thriller uses real people like Bush and agencies like SETI to establish a feel of plausibility that two alien races arrive at a time when earth is on life support. The story line is fast-paced and filled with action, but also provides intriguing metaphors on how western civilization looks at other cultures from a purely technological perspective; if you can’t plug and play wireless you are backward. Readers will appreciate this deep science fiction thriller that is mindful of Frank Stockton’s classic The Lady and the Tiger as humanity must choose but which of these aliens is the beast and which is the nurturing mother.

Harriet Klausner