The Stinal Countdown: The Un-Bumped Six: My Alien Parents

Continuing into the Un-Bumped Six and into the one that, admittedly, is the one that interests me the least. Alien books from Stine can be a bit all over the place, but hey, I could always be surprised. So let's get abducted with My Alien Parents.

COVER STORY

And a lot of that reason for my disinterest is definitely the cover. It's fine. Sets the freakiness of the situation up really well. But I just find the alien designs to be just okay. Great amount of detail on them, but eh, When the scariest part is the garish clothing and the high detailed wooden cupboards, I can hardly say I'm expecting too much. Solid shocked kid face as always from Jacobus. Reminds me of My Hairiest Adventure. This book better not end with kids being dogs or I swear to god...

STORY

We get another introduction from Stine, this time talking about how he and his brother Bill thought it strange how their parents had this routine. The same breakfast every morning, the kids getting the same lunches. Even their parents driving the same route. As if they were aliens or something. No, they were just boring, says the guy who got grape juice in the morning because his parents knew he didn't like pulp. More name drops this time including E.T., War of the Worlds, and referencing the Invasion of the Body Squeezers books. Like I said before, it's always neat to see Stine's brain picked like this.

Our protagonist, a boy named Rob Herbert, wakes up as his mom calls him down for breakfast. When he wakes up, he notices a poster for a lame band named Heavy Midnight has been put on his wall. Guessing it's a hair metal band from the eighties, which is why Rob isn't fond of them, thinking that if his friends see it, he'll be ostracized for life. He argues with his mother as to why she put the poster up, but she says they'll talk about that later. In fact Rob notices that his mother seems to be a lot colder and acting pretty strange. 

Rob's mom serves him poached eggs, but Little Lord Fauntleroy over here throws a fit since he always gets scrambled eggs. It's almost as if his normal routine has been upended all of a sudden. Rob's dad wakes up and he's shaved, which is weird as he doesn't shave. He also hates poached eggs, but eats these up and starts just licking his fingers like a maniac. More strange things happening according to Rob like his mother eating breakfast. He keeps complaining to which his mom, rightfully even if she is an alien, tells him to shut up and let them live. You know, I'm on the side of the parents so far. God forbid they don't follow routine. 

Rob then asks where their dog Snappy is. In terms of dog names, that one's fine. But his parents act suspicious and say that Snappy just went outside, then his dad says he's going to get some lumber to build stuff, despite not being a builder. Rob's worried, especially when his parents say that if he keeps up all this worrying he won't live long. Rob then spills his hot chocolate. That's right, this kid gets hot chocolate every morning which is weird enough. His parents seem to panic when he spills it. Turns out that this spill was also an excuse to leave the room as Rob is now convinced that whoever those two are, they aren't his parents. His dad isn't handy, his mom doesn't eat breakfast. And maybe they ate Snappy, which hey, wouldn't put it past Stine. They must be aliens! And he needs to get proof.

As Rob studies his "parents", writing up any strange behavior in his notebook. His friend Andrew shows up. Rob hopes that maybe Andrew will help him expose his alien parents. But when he tells Andrew about Snappy being missing, Andrew's confused. When the hell did they ever get a dog? So Rob, not taking kindly to being looked at as the crazy one, goes crazy on Andrew and starts to attack him. Andrew leaves and Rob's mom grounds him. But given that Rob already fears the worst, he's going to get out of here while the getting's good. He's about to leave before his dad shows up and takes him to the basement, which is clean now, unlike how it's usually cluttered. He goes to leave, but his mom finds the notebook in his hands. Rob panics and runs outside, only to get tackled by his dad.

TWIST ENDING

Rob's parents then call a repair service to check on Rob. Or, should I say ROB-10 CHILD MODEL X-45J. In other words... BOOM! YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS SECRET ALIENS, BUT NOPE! SECRET ROBOT CHILD BITCHES!!! Well, at least he isn't a dog. Turns out that this Rob isn't even their first robot kid, but a replacement and he's been having weird memory issues. The repairman then resets Rob as the robot shuts down.

CONCLUSION

In the previous Un-Bumped Six book I covered, The 13th Warning, I mentioned how that book seemed to feel like maybe it was part of a scrapped third Triple Header book, and there's definitely that feel with this story in particular. At just a little over 40 pages, this is one of the shortest Stine stories we've ever covered. And despite its short length it flows pretty well. It has enough time to do the mystery and enough time to go into our twist, which is definitely one Stine's used before and even since, but it does work here. It's a bit predictable that most likely the issue was with Rob, not his parents. That it was a case of his memory being corrupted and not the other way around. 

Although that brings up some questions. What happened to the original Rob robot? Why did the Herberts get a kid robot? Did they have a kid who died, or were they just willing to adopt? Is this some AI-type plot? Is the original Rob robot looking for a blue fairy now or something? Then there's plot holes like the robot being able to eat food like hot chocolate and eggs. Though it's also telling that this kid was strange as he spills hot chocolate on his lap and doesn't react to, again, scalding liquid on your crotch. Reader Beware, your crotch is going to hurt like the dickens. So you do have to play a bit of Logic Olympics to make everything connect, but if you can suspend your disbelief, you're in for a simple enough read. Nothing super impressive, but a simple time killer. And that's always appreciated. My Alien Parents gets a B.

So this one is less breaking news as it got lost in the shuffle as I took my semi-break in March, but we actually have more news on My Alien Parents. It turns out that much like Three Faces of Me, this wasn't a new book from Stine in 2000. Not at all. In fact, it was another book he did earlier.

It turns out that years prior, Stine had already put this book out under the title You're NOT My Parents! as part of the "Twist in the Tale" book series. It's all there. Robby, Snappy, the things his parents do, the twist. It's the exact same book. The Un-Bumped Six continue to legitimately befuddle me. 

Thanks to Goosebumps Completionist of Twitter for finding the book and allowing me to use the above image.