Year Zero: A Novel

About this book

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An alien advance party was suddenly nosing around my planet. Worse they were lawyering up. . . . In the hilarious tradition of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Rob Reid takes you on a headlong journey through the outer reaches of the universeand the inner workings of our absurdly dysfunctional music industry. Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks its 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 humanitys 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 everythingand the aliens are not amused. Nick Carter has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly and hes an unlikely galaxy-hopping hero: Hes scared of heights. Hes 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 hes packing a couple of other pencil-pushing superpowers that could come in handy. Soon hes on the run from a sinister parrot and a highly combustible vacuum cleaner. With Carly and Frampton as his guides Nick now has forty-eight hours to save humanity while hopefully wowing the hot girl who lives down the hall from him. Hilarious provocative and supersmart Year Zero is a brilliant novel to be enjoyed in perpetuity in the known universe and in all unknown universes yet to be discovered.John Hodgman resident expert The Daily Show with Jon Stewart