24 June, 2001: The Night the Heads Came
William Sleator wrote Interstellar Pig, a children's s.f. book that the ten-year-old me had some difficulty getting his brain around. (The lack of closure threw me.) The Night the Heads Came is, sadly, more straightforward; Leo and his friend Tim have snuck out of their houses, and Leo is driving Tim to New York, where he'll show his drawings to a science fiction magazine that has expressed interest. The car dies, and aliens -- creepy alien heads, no less -- kidnap Tim. Tim is returned a few days later, apparently several years older and with a headful of strange memories about visiting other planets. His artistic talents have increased, too, and he's got some highly disturbing art depicting a different alien race. Leo is trying to secondguess the Heads (and the other aliens), who are secondguessing him and manipulating Tim. This is a perfectly good children's book (although I could have done without the Stephen King-esque "It's over... or is it?" ending), but it just felt more linear and less surprising than Interstellar Pig. Maybe I should chalk it up to the fact that I'm not ten any more.