A gigantic alien race conquers the Earth to use it for… storage!?

Men Like Rats presents a world where the planet is covered with gargantuan warehouses (Lows) and cargo is moved back and forth via automated drop ships (Highs). Humans eke out an existence on the fringe, infesting the warehouses and ships like vermin. The setup reminded me of Rene Laloux’s strange animated movie Fantastic Planet with humans creeping among an outsized alien landscape that they do not comprehend. In Men Like Rats though, the aliens are offstage.

We follow Richer the Quick, a human who has been living on his own for a while. The book doesn't really have a single story. It's more about following Richer through the world Chilson has created. Exploring that world was pretty interesting. It appears that things have been this way for a long while, as the humans have already adapted their theology to explain the Cargo, the Highs and Lows and the reason their Creators provide so well, yet have seeded their world with traps and vicious beasts (which are actually intended as pest control). The entire human race (or what we see of it) has become a cargo cult.

I think the description could have used some work. He chose to write the narrative using the language of his characters. This gave the book a bit of a learning curve, which has been used to strong effect in other sci-fi novels, but I'm not sure it added to this book. When I started the book, I kept thinking, what is a High? What is a Low? What is a Middleplace Low or a Lowerplace Hole? I had such a hard time figuring things out that it drew me out of the narrative. Lots of the landscapes he writes about are so alien anyway; some nice concrete descriptions would have helped the reader connect to the book a little earlier.

Still, I did get into the book. There was a neat concept here, but it was a little too confusingly presented. However, if the premise sounds interesting I would say pick it up. It has issues; but at only two hundred pages, if you don’t mind spending a short time with a book where the premise outshines the story being told, it is worth a read. ( )

A very good work from a too-little-known author: what happens if we are faced with really incomprehensible superior technology? This is not a heroic fantasy, but an interesting take. ( )