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Year Zero
Cover of Year Zero
Year Zero
A Novel
by Rob Reid
Borrow Borrow
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it’s 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. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on American pop songs ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), resulting in the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang and bankrupting the whole universe. Nick has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly. Thankfully, this unlikely galaxy-hopping hero does know a thing or two about copyright law. Now, with Carly and Frampton as his guides, Nick has forty-eight hours to save humanity—while hoping to wow the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it’s 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. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on American pop songs ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), resulting in the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang and bankrupting the whole universe. Nick has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly. Thankfully, this unlikely galaxy-hopping hero does know a thing or two about copyright law. Now, with Carly and Frampton as his guides, Nick has forty-eight hours to save humanity—while hoping to wow the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.
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Excerpts-
  • Chapter One 9780345534415|excerpt

    Reid / YEAR ZERO

    ONE

    ASTLEY

    Even if she’d realized that my visitors were aliens who had come to our office to initiate contact with humanity, Barbara Ann would have resented their timing. Assistants at our law firm clear out at five-­thirty, regardless—­and that was almost a minute ago.

    “I don’t have anyone scheduled,” I said, when she called to grouse about the late arrival. “Who is it?”

    “I don’t know, Nick. They weren’t announced.”

    “You mean they just sort of . . . turned up at your desk?” I stifled a sneeze as I said this. I’d been fighting a beast of a cold all week.

    “Pretty much.”

    This was odd. Reception is two key-­card-­protected floors above us, and no one gets through unaccompanied, much less unannounced. “What do they look like?” I asked.

    “Strange.”

    “Lady Gaga strange?” Carter, Geller & Marks has some weird-­looking clients, and Gaga flirts with the outer fringe, when she’s really gussied up.

    “No—­kind of stranger than that. In a way. I mean, they look like they’re from . . . maybe a couple of cults.”

    From what? “Which ones?”

    “One definitely looks Catholic,” Barbara Ann said. “Like a . . . priestess? And the other one looks . . . kind of Talibanny. You know—­robes and stuff ?”

    “And they won’t say where they’re from?”

    “They can’t. They’re deaf.”

    I was about to ask her to maybe try miming some information out of them, but thought better of it. The day was technically over. And like most of her peers, Barbara Ann has a French postal worker’s sense of divine entitlement when it comes to her hours. This results from there being just one junior assistant for every four junior lawyers, which makes them monopoly providers of answered phones, FedEx runs, and other secretarial essentials to some truly desperate customers. So as usual, I caved. “Okay, send ’em in.”

    The first one through the door had dark eyes and a bushy beard. He wore a white robe, a black turban, and a diver’s watch the size of a small bagel. Apart from the watch, he looked like the Hollywood ideal of a fatwa-­ shrieking cleric—­until I noticed a shock of bright red hair protruding from under his turban. This made him look faintly Irish, so I silently christened him O’Sama. His partner was dressed like a nun—­although in a tight habit that betrayed the curves of a lap dancer. She had a gorgeous tan and bright blue eyes and was young enough to get carded anywhere.

    O’Sama gazed at me with a sort of childlike amazement, while the sister kept it cool. She tried to catch his eye—­but he kept right on staring. So she tapped him on the shoulder, pointing at her head. At this, they both stuck their fingers under their headdresses to adjust something. “Now we can hear,” the nun announced, straightening out a big, medieval-­looking crucifix that hung around her neck.

    This odd statement aside, I thought I knew what was happening. My birthday had passed a few days back without a call from any of my older brothers. It would be typical of them to forget—­but even more typical of them to pretend to forget, and then ambush me with a wildly inappropriate birthday greeting at my stodgy New York law office. So I figured I had about two seconds before O’Sama started beatboxing...
About the Author-
  • Rob Reid is the founder of Listen.com, which created the Rhapsody service, the world’s largest seller of online music until it was eclipsed (rather badly, he’ll admit) by Apple’s iTunes service. He is the author of Year One, a memoir about student life at Harvard Business School, and Architects of the Web, a business history of the Internet. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Morgan.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    May 7, 2012
    Internet innovator Reid (Listen.com) makes his sci-fi debut in a shaky but funny sendup of the music industry and the lawyers who feed off it. Aliens love music, but are dreadfully untalented. When they discover human music, they’re ecstatic, until they realize they’re on the hook for millions in licensing fees. Their natural plan is to destroy the Earth, but some aliens decide to recruit music lawyer Nick Carter (not the Backstreet Boy) to arrange licenses and avoid disaster. His sexy folk singer/paralegal neighbor, Manda, and his boss, Judy, also get pulled into their misadventures, which are filled with footnotes and musical references galore. Much of the satire is sharp, although how much longevity it has is debatable (sequences making fun of Microsoft Office, AT&T’s lack of coverage, and Foursquare already feel obsolete). Still, anyone frustrated by the labyrinthine and often Machiavellian machinations of the RIAA and similar groups will get plenty of laughs, and the comedy more than covers for the relatively thin characters. Agent: Alice Martell, the Martell Agency.

  • Associated Press

    Praise for Year Zero "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 "Reid's extreme imagination never wanes as he builds an entire universe solely on how alien societies would react to our music and culture. Nothing is typical or obvious. Reid uses the lens of an outsider to unleash a sarcastic--and hilarious--rant on how obsessed we are with technology and greed."

  • Chris Anderson, TED curator "Holy hilarity! A new force in geek humor is upon us. You'll never think the same way again about extraterrestrials, bad music, buggy technology--or lawyers!"
  • Library Journal (starred review) "My pick for best (and funniest) sci-fi book of the year." Chris Anderson, editor in chief, Wired "Hailed as this summer's best beach read for science fiction and music geeks . . . It's an often hilarious satire on much of current entertainment, including reality TV, the legal profession and fandom (interstellar and otherwise), but the book's crowning achievement is that it actually makes copyright funny." Toronto Star "Year Zero is ROFLMAO funny, insightful, and sly: A sort of Hitchhiker's Guide to our own tortured commercial/litigation culture, by way of planet Zinkiwu." Mark Jannot, editor in chief, Popular Science "Fans of Douglas Adams will rave about this smart, funny satire. Debut novelist Reid, founder of Listen.com, has crafted a masterly plot that deftly skewers the American obsession with music, money, and power. Fast paced and original, this is highly recommended."
  • Cliff Bleszinski, creator, Gears of War "Witty and original--I loved it. A biting satire of the record business and those who run it . . . and ultimately ran it into the ground."
  • Jill Tarter, director, Center for SETI Research "With chess master precision, the refreshingly ray gun-free novel wittily plays with the possibilities of its fantastical plot. It mixes airtight point-and-counter point rounds of arguments with wild travails to distant worlds. The careful cohesion of Year Zero is a marvel given its star-hopping digressions." Buffalo News "Smart and wacky." Bob Boilen, NPR's All Songs Considered "Reid . . . takes aim at many targets--technology, the music industry, hipsters--and nails them all hilariously." Parade "What if aliens heard our music--and really liked it? You could 'what if' for the next millennium and still not come up with as many zany scenarios as Rob Reid does in this tale of copyright law, astrophysics, biophysics, and crazy physics that hasn't yet been invented. So sit back, hold your sides to ease the laughing pains, and find out whether Earth survives."
  • Techdirt "Awesome. Think Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but with copyright law driving a major plot line. A mainstream humorous sci-fi novel that uses the Berne Convention as a key plot point and tosses aside casual references to Larry Lessig and Fark? Yes. Count me in."
  • Kevin Hearne, author of The Iron Druid Chronicles "Year Zero is a brilliant satire of the American entertainment industry, and I never stopped grinning."
  • Boing Boing "Light-hearted, intelligent and just plain silly . . . Year Zero is very clever and has wonderful fun with themes I thin
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Year Zero
A Novel
Rob Reid
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