Year Zero

A Novel

By: Rob Reid

Narrated by: John Hodgman

Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

An alien advance party was suddenly nosing around my planet.

Worse, they were lawyering up....

In the hilarious tradition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Rob Reid takes you on a headlong journey through the outer reaches of the universe - and the inner workings of our absurdly dysfunctional music industry.

Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it's a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news.

The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity's music ever since "Year Zero" (1977 to us), when American pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything - and the aliens are not amused.

Nick Carter has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly, and he's an unlikely galaxy-hopping hero: He's scared of heights. He's also about to be fired. And he happens to have the same name as a Backstreet Boy. But he does know a thing or two about copyright law. And he's packing a couple of other pencil-pushing superpowers that could come in handy.

Soon he's on the run from a sinister parrot and a highly combustible vacuum cleaner. With Carly and Frampton as his guides, Nick now has 48 hours to save humanity, while hopefully wowing the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.

©2012 Robert Reid (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Fans of Douglas Adams will rave about this smart, funny satire. Debut novelist Reid, founder of Listen.com, has crafted a masterly plot that deftly skewers the American obsession with music, money, and power. Fast paced and original, this is highly recommended." (Library Journal [starred review])

"Witty and original - I loved it. A biting satire of the record business and those who run it...and ultimately ran it into the ground." (Cliff Bleszinski, creator, Gears of War)

"With chess master precision, the refreshingly ray gun-free novel wittily plays with the possibilities of its fantastical plot. It mixes airtight point-and-counter point rounds of arguments with wild travails to distant worlds. The careful cohesion of Year Zero is a marvel given its star-hopping digressions." (Buffalo News)

A wonderful romp

If you could sum up Year Zero in three words, what would they be?

Funny. Relevant. Enticing.

What other book might you compare Year Zero to and why?

Anything by Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.

What does John Hodgman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Hodgman's tone is perfect and his annunciation kept me in the story. He gave the characters life that was worthy of the text - something the voice in my head couldn't do when trying to read a hard copy.

Tedious

What did you like best about Year Zero? What did you like least?

The story was slow moving.

Would you ever listen to anything by Rob Reid again?

no

What does John Hodgman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

the Narration was average but clearly the best part of the experience

Could you see Year Zero being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

no

Great premise, flawed execution.

Both the story and performance failed to live up the fantastic concept. You have such a great premise here.

John Hodgman is a funny guy but failed at differentiating the voices enough in the performance. I struggled to understand who was talking sometimes.

The story was unpredictable, but the story would drag, wasn't that funny, and the descriptions were terrible. The "most amazing thing I'd ever seen", doesn't really describe anything. It's a lazy cop out.

The "It's so hideous", while another exclaims "it's so beautiful" type of humor isn't funny.

Hodgman tries. It doesn't work well for an audio book. The performance of replicating the most boring species in the universe had me struggling to stay awake. When I'm worried about falling asleep and driving off the road, that's a failure in an audio book.

I was hoping for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Men in Black with some John Grisham legal drama thrown in. My favorite parts were the legal banter. The real genius is pointing out the ludicrous copyright law.

The ending is quite clever, the beginning is quite good. Most of everything in between needed work. The premise got me to buy it, but I struggled to finish it.

Really Good Book!

Where does Year Zero rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is one of the best books I have listen to in a while. It is a good for a laugh!

I really enjoyed this book.

The premise sounded like an impossible juxtaposition of themes, but the author worked them together skillfully to produce an entertaining story. The performance was awesome and contributed greatly to the overall enjoyment of the audio book.

Get this book if you want a humorous journey with humans, space aliens and music copyright law.

I highly recommend this book to SciFi lovers who want a different look at the universe.

totally unique take on the sci-fi genre.

no spoilers, but a really unique and intertwining story. very funny at times. interesting socioeconomic commentary. aliens pirating American/world music and the consequences of it. money apparently makes the universe go round also.

Nice Light Reading

If you like pop music and culture, you should like this funny (silly?) romp through the galaxy. Aliens and lawyers try to save the earth in a massive copy write infringement case. The author provides laugh put loud entertainment, but the reader needs to be somewhat familiar with pop music references to really get the humor. It’s really very clever.

Sorry, Leo…I don’t like it.

I got this book based on the recommendation of Leo Laporte. And that’s a guy who talks almost weekly about hardcore sci-fi with Steve Gibson. I’m really surprised by how good this book wasn’t. Sure, there’s some rewarding and humorous moments, and the premise is interesting. But the execution just isn’t that great. It took me weeks to finish because I just didn’t feel any pressing desire to go back to it. But I spent a credit on it, so I was determined to get to the end.

Some things were just dumb, and poorly utilized. Like the entire subplot of the “show” and the reality stars’ father. What a waste. The characters were also stereotypical and uninteresting. Also, the various locations, and reasons for where they were and why just didn’t make sense. Basically, a bunch of ideas thrown together w/o a logical progression from one place to another.

Lastly, I’m not a huge John Hodgman fan, so his reading didn’t provide much for me to truly engage with. But it wasn’t horrible. Just not my thing.

Pure Fun

If you've ever tried to get the rights to a song, or worked in a copyright law office, or worked in any other kind of office, or even used Microsoft Office, then you'll probably enjoy this book.

One of the best things I've read in ages. I don't write a lot of reviews, but I'm worried that I'd be a bad person if I didn't take a moment to recommend this book. I can just imagine the look of hurt and betrayal on a friend's face after they discover this book on their own and realize I had already known how great it is: "You knew this marvel existed and you never told me!" I can't wait until I can share it with my family on our next long car ride.

Not helped by the comparison to Hitchhiker's Guide

This is a good book with a sold performance, but the constant comparison to Hitchhiker's Guide sets an unrealistic expectation. This is not as funny and doesn't try to be. It has moments and scenarios that are HGesque, but all in all it is a somewhat absurdist telling of a hard scifi story, not an absurd story that happens to be in a scifi setting.

Hodgman's narration has its ups and downs. The novelty and humor he brings to the beginning are great, but the story drags in the middle and so does his deadpan delivery. As the excitement picks up so does his performance and it ends very well.

Worth a listen, but not something that you're going to insist that your friends get. I look forward to Reid's next novel as he shows real promise.