Day of Descent
by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
1993 Pocket Books
Alien Nation was a 1988 film about an alien slave ship that lands in the Mojave Desert. About 300,000 Tenctonese slaves, called Newcomers by earthlings, are assimilated into Los Angeles. The film and subsequent TV series is about human cop Matthew Sykes and Newcomer cop Sam "George" Francisco. The series was developed by Kenneth Johnson of V fame, and explores social issues like racism, cultural assimilation, and immigration.
The series ran for one season, ended on a cliffhanger, and was continued in 1994 as a series of made for TV movies. In between, this book series came out. This first book is a flashback to before the ships landed, though with a wraparound of events just after the last episode. The other novels are based on the original scripts that eventually became the films, creating the unusual situation of the novelizations coming first.
Day of Descent has two separate stories that kind of combine at the end. In space, we see George and his family and their involvement with the rebellion that causes the ship to land on Earth. On Earth, Sykes investigates his first case as detective - an astronomer is murdered after discovering an object heading to Earth.
Both are excellent, especially the half in the ship, though the pacing is a bit off. Both stories wrap up and we switch gears to the story of the Newcomers' first days on Earth, something that felt like a brand new story. The voice of the characters matched the series well, down to George's son Buck being a piece of crap.
My opinion of the book went down a notch or two a week later after watching the eighth episode of the series, "Contact". The Sykes storyline is a direct lift from this episode. Again, the book isn't a novelization of that episode, nor is it in it's own continuity. It even has a forward where the stories fit in the chronology of the series.
Aside from that bit of business, this does what the best of tie-in novels do - add depth to the fictional world while keeping true to the original.
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