primeideal

I don't know a whole lot about Star Trek or the Arsenal football/soccer team, but I do know what it's like to be fannish about something, and that was a vibe that Mike Chen captured well in "Here and Now and Then," a time travel story with d'aww-ish family feelings. So I was excited to run across "Light Years from Home," about a family that grows apart in the aftermath of an alien abduction.

At the beginning of the story, sisters Kass and Evie Chao live on opposite sides of the country and aren't on speaking terms. The parallel is a stretch, but I sort of, kind of, got "Proof" vibes from the setup; Evie, the younger sister, is a UFO conspiracy theorist who believes she's carrying on their father's last wishes in investigating the mystery of their brother Jakob's disappearance; Kass, the elder, is the pragmatist who has no time for Evie's nonsense; she's taken on the responsibility of caring for their mother, Sonia, who is suffering from dementia.

But fifteen years after his disappearance, Jakob shows up! It turns out he really was abducted by aliens, and that was the catalyst from changing him into a druggie and slacker into a motivated engineer defending the freedom of the galaxy from a menacing enemy. He just wants to stay on Earth long enough to complete his mission and then head back out. Between Evie's research and Jakob's teleportation, both siblings converge on an overwhelmed Kass, and they have to come to terms with their family trauma while avoiding the FBI and the hostile aliens.

At times, it felt like the plot kind of repeated itself. We, the readers, know that Jakob really has been traveling with aliens, that's made clear from page 1. So his dithering about "oh I can't tell them everything, just gotta complete my mission" and Evie's "do I trust him? do I not?" felt like a lot of back-and-forth and/or characters refusing to communicate just for the sake of complicating the plot. Similarly, when we learn early on that Kass has held onto a memento their father believed was associated with Jakob, it's clearly going to be Chekhov's alien tech.

The parallels between the family members were nicely drawn. At different times, the characters take turns doing things like narrowing their focus to one-step-at-a-time plans; making, and then breaking, promises to themselves about quitting smoking or keeping the peace; and being too responsible to gloat--most of the time. They may be neurotic, but they come by it honestly!

There are some nice moments of computer-based humor:

A window appeared, informing her that her log-in password had expired and she needed to put in a new one. Her fingers flew with muscle memory, trying several of her go-to passwords. Red Xs appeared each time, along with messages that each had apparently been used in the past two years and she needed something different.
Quite the life metaphor.

Typical Jakob doing everything half-assed. If she were to break into a computer and use a browser, she'd at least have the sense to put it in Private Browsing mode.

Evie flipped the laptop around. "Look, I've been reading."
Mom leaned forward, squinting at the screen. "What's Reddit?"
"That doesn't count as reading. Jesus, Evie."

And we even get a glimpse of post-pandemic realism. "From the front seat, the rideshare driver gave him a look. 'Does he need a doctor? If he's not well, he should wear a mask.'"

There are a couple occasions when Jakob compares his experiences to "not glamorous like in science fiction, this is real," sigh.

When it comes to a serious disorder like dementia, a miracle cure might come across as insensitive or in poor taste. In this case, I felt like the short-term effects of alien tech that provided Sonia with the opportunity for some closure/resolution with her kids, while not diminishing the serious challenges that lie ahead for her, was handled well. While bittersweet, "Light Years from Home" indeed provided more of the complicated but realistic family dynamics that are Chen's strength!

Bingo: author of color. It's hard to say there's a single protagonist since all three siblings are POV characters, but I would argue this fits the spirit of "Mundane Jobs" too; Kass is a therapist, and Evie is a veterinary technician!