THE NIGHT THE HEADS CAME

A teenager discovers that his own memories can't be trusted, in another nightmarish tale of alien intrigue from the author of Interstellar Pig (1984) and the more recent Dangerous Wishes (1995). His best friend, Tim, has disappeared, but all Leo can offer police is a wild tale of being abducted by little green men in a futuristic spaceship. The very banality of this "memory" rouses Leo's suspicions, and the plot thickens when Tim shows up two days later—older and bearing a set of disturbing drawings that, he claims, must not fall into the hands of "The Others." Sleator tells all as it happens, so that readers learn most of what's going on before Leo does; The Others, smog-loving shape-shifters bent on devastating the environment, are being chased by "the heads," an alien race of kidnappers. Both tinker with Leo's mind, though the effects prove to be only temporary. The author uses his considerable descriptive skills to make the members of both camps gut-wrenchingly repulsive; although the aliens' schemes are too confusing to follow easily, the author's many fans and readers who like their stories served up with mind-controlled zombies, chases, captures, twists, levitation, tricks, weird science, and horrible monsters with disgusting table manners brandishing oversized syringes will find plenty here to please. (Fiction. 10-13)