[Disclosure: I know the author, so, no star rating though I liked this a lot.]

It's almost too bad that the small-press trappings of this book make it obvious that you're going to get something a bit academic and experimental, because I think it might work even better as a total bait-and-switch with a technothriller cover design, leading you to expect a big showdown with the alien-directed powers that be... which ultimately amounts to about a minute of someone sneaking into a military base, finding only some locked doors, and realizing that there isn't really much anyone can do in that situation if the writer isn't bending over backwards to help them out. As a commentary on genre expectations, this has a fair amount of drily funny stuff like that, especially Selke's total refusal to put any kind of stamp of fictional authority on the premise: that is, the narrator isn't a scientist who discovered disturbing new evidence, nor a person who once encountered aliens or even met someone who did, nor anything else that would provide the expected genre element of "here's how you know this weird thing is real, and here's why the plot starts now and not at any other time." Instead, the narrator has read a lot of widely available biological facts and at some point came up with her own layperson's theory about them (non-spoiler, since it's spelled out early on: maleness is not an alien-imposed mutation, but the Y chromosome is), the implication being that if you go read the same things now, you might come to the same conclusion. That's an approach to SF that's tricky to pull off, since if readers spot something iffy in your strange-but-true facts, they may be less willing to go with the premise than they would be if you added some hand-waving about having found a mystery gene in the lab(*); but if done well, it allows character to drive the story in a way that a typical conspiracy plot can't do, since what's making the story happen now is just that this particular person had a thought, for their own reasons.

(* The most annoying example I've ever seen of a clumsy usage of "strange but true!" is in Larry Niven's story "For a Foggy Night", where someone explains that fog can't possibly be a natural phenomenon because water is transparent—which, for me, unintentionally turned it into a story about how Niven or his narrator had somehow gotten through life without ever seeing steam.)

That's what a big part of this book is about: it's a character study, and a view through the eyes of someone who's very determined to tell you how things are and why she sees them that way. Our narrator, Jyn, dances in strip clubs (and continues to do so throughout the book—since, as she pointedly explains, for most people it's just not feasible to go on the lam from the Men in Black for an extended time without needing to still make a living) and quite a bit of the book is a carefully observed, and openly didactic (i.e. she's telling you these things because she knows you don't know), report of what that job is like and how she relates to people there, both in terms of the general economic and sexual dynamic and also from her own vantage point as a lesbian-identified Asian-American. She's sure that her theory about the real nature of human biology is objectively true, and that anyone could have figured it out, but she also wants to be very clear on exactly what kind of conspiracy theorist and sex worker she is—not these other kinds you've read about. The book holds those two layers, objective and subjective, at a distance from each other most of the time, leaving you to wonder whether Jyn's view of gender relations is informed by her theory about alien genetic influence or vice versa. When she eventually speaks directly to that question(**), it's in a way that rejects the "this changes everything!" spirit of many stories like this: she doesn't think this secret alters who people really are, or demands any specific action, she just thinks it's better to know your history than not to know it. That's an understated but very moving moment. So is the section where Jyn finds herself making entirely personal decisions that have nothing to do with the big plot, messes up briefly but badly, and achieves some understanding about herself that unfortunately is too late to make a difference.

(** A thing some readers may find a little frustrating is that, often, the reason Jyn decides to explain some aspect of her ideas or her background is not because some plot development or conversation brought it up, but simply because she realizes she hasn't done so yet. I think it works because the narrator's voice is so deliberate, i.e. this is a story she's presenting to you in order to get certain points across, rather than just being swept along by events and dropping in information only as it relates to a given moment.)

Be aware that there's not a whole lot of UFO-related content, if that's your thing; Jyn describes herself as a big UFO history nerd, but the road-trip plot doesn't touch on this as much as you might think, suggesting rather than really fleshing out the idea of a tour of America's alien-conspiracy-related historical sites. I think it would've been hard to do that without giving up the commitment to economic realism that gives the book so much of its flavor: there's only so much a person of limited resources can do by driving around. I used the word "academic" earlier, but I don't mean that this isn't vivid or interesting or funny—it is; I just mean that you can see the author working out some ideas about how these stories normally function and what points of view are missing from them, and that it takes for granted that you've already seen plenty of The X-Files etc. so you don't really need for those familiar beats to be hit. There are a lot of other things here that you probably haven't seen.

Jyn is an exotic dancer (stripper) and a UFO nut. When she spots a Man in Black lurking outside the San Francisco club where she works, she panics and decides to leave town. And since she’s doing that, she decides to tour all the important UFO sites as she heads north to Washington, across to Montana and then south through Colorado and Texas into New Mexico and, er, Roswell. Jyn also has a theory that the Y chromosome is a mutation, part of an experiment by aliens to prevent parthenogenesis in mammals. An interesting and sympathetic narrator and good use of UFO mythology. Worth reading. ( )