It is the second stage of interstellar colonization. Humanity's first attempt, the Hausman drive, caused severe genetic damage, and the mutated results were abandoned in the colonies. The inhabitants of the planet Guera eventually developed a new form of travel that only they know how to use. Now they have a monopoly over all interstellar commerce.
Meanwhile Jamisia, a teenage girl living in a satellite orbiting Earth, is awakened in the night by her tutor and told to flee for her life. She learns that she is an Unwitting Test Subject with multiple personality disorder, that people want her for reasons she doesn't understand, and that she must travel into Guera-controlled interstellar space if she wants to live.
This Alien Shore contains examples of:
- Agony Beam: Guild members interrogate a criminal about Jamisia by using an illegal torture technique that involves directly stimulating his neural circuits. Even a fraction of a second of agony is enough to break him.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Justin Clarendon, a teenage boy related to the metroliner's captain, shows Jamisia an air vent that leads to Mohammed's City, where non-Muslims aren't allowed.
- Alien Sky: Paradise Station, a popular tourist destination, is located in a much denser part of the galaxy than Earth, so the sky is full of stars.
- Artificial Gravity: Every spacecraft has this, although it doesn't feel quite like the real thing. Even the tiny escape pod that Jamisia uses has gravity that can be turned on and off.
- Artificial Meat: At one point Jamisia eats faux eggs with chocolate chips.
- Brain/Computer Interface: As required by law, everyone has brainware implanted in their skulls at birth that they can use to watch movies, play games, and message each other without moving.
- Buried Alive: Jamisia spent sixteen days buried in rubble after the building collapse that killed her parents when she was six.
- Career-Ending Injury: Ian Kent used to be an outpilot until a docking accident damaged his brain and destroyed his color vision, making him unable to navigate the ainniq. His kaja, or mental condition, is known as Outpilot's Syndrome and makes it impossible to function in everyday life without high doses of drugs and brainware programs. Without his job, he can never be himself even for a minute and lives in misery.
- Computer Virus: One of the main plots involves a deadly virus that infects people's brainware, causing them to go insane and sometimes killing them.
- Cope by Creating: Kent's main hobby is his art. He struggles to capture the beauty of the ainniq, but it would be impossible even with color vision.
- Curves in All the Right Places: Venturous Smuggler Sumi thinks that Jamisia is "slender, but not without a curve or two in just the right place."
- Designer Babies: Terran embryos are modified to prevent them from developing the physical or mental abnormalities the Variants have. Two of Jamisia's genes were altered, one an insulin regulator and one a predisposition to neural decay.
- Earth That Used to Be Better: Now that Guera controls interstellar travel, most Guerans see Earth as a forgotten relic, too wrapped up in internal politics to become important in the galaxy.
- Electronic Telepathy: People can use their brainware to transmit private messages to each other.
- Erotic Dream: Jamisia used to have such vivid, intense dreams that she'd feel ashamed when she woke up. It turns out they were caused by her alter, Katlyn, using her body to have sex.
- Eyes Always Averted: Dr. Kio Masada, one of the Guerans, is iru, or autistic, and doesn't usually look at other people while he talks to them.
- Facial Markings: The Guerans use face paint to identify their kaja.
- Faking the Dead: At the end of the book, the head of the corporation that wants to capture Jamisia sees her spacecraft get destroyed in a crash. But in reality, that was just an unmanned probe - Jamisia has really been sent to live under a false identity on Guera.
- Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Muslims are required to visit Mecca at least once in their lives, even if they live on a planet that's light-years away. Most sects establish holy sites on their own planets for those who can't afford the trip, but traditionalists must visit Mecca itself, even if they have to sell themselves into Indentured Servitude. Because the traditionalists also can't be ruled by a nonbeliever, they live in their own area on the metroliner, with their own government and their own laws.
- Fighting from the Inside: One of Jamisia's alternate personalities takes control of her body and forces her to kiss Justin and let him fondle her breast. When Jamisia manages to regain control, she pushes him away and runs away in a panic.
- Fingore: When Ian Kent is found dead, his hands have dug into the floor, sending shards under his fingernails and turning them into a bloody mess.
- Forgets to Eat: Masada tends to get so wrapped up in his work that he forgets everything else, including the need to eat.
- Gaia's Lament: When the Hausman drive was first invented, trillions of people were crammed onto Earth. Humanity rushed to establish as many colonies as possible to make the planet less crowded.
- Gem Tissue: The Gueran Sonondra Ra is blind, so she had her eyes replaced by faceted gems.
- Handy Feet: The Salvationers, one of the groups of Variants, have prehensile feet that let them climb the support struts of the metroliner's observation dome.
- Heads-Up Display: The Brain/Computer Interface works by scrolling information across people's field of vision. People control it by picturing icons.
- Hearing Voices: Jamisia, as a result of the experiments she was subjected to. On the space station, they mostly sound like quiet whispers, but they get much louder and more intrusive after she escapes.
- Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The ainniq is inhabited by creatures called sana. No one knows exactly what sana are, as they are invisible to human eyes, but the average human being has an extremely short lifespan upon entering the ainniq. The Guerans are the only people who can see sana.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Jamisia longs for an hour without her alternate personalitities in her head. She whispers, "I want to be normal. Oh, please, I just want to know what that's like again..."
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Jamisia tries to avoid human contact on the metroliner. When Justin offers to walk her back to her room, she mumbles, "I need... I have things to do."
- Instant Sedation: Trank darts work in seconds.
- Lie Detector: Alya Cairo gives one of these tests to Devlin Gaza while she interrogates him about the virus. She's really trying to see if he tampered with the detector's programming, which would strongly suggest that he is guilty.
- Living MacGuffin: Jamisia's brain is very valuable, although she doesn't know why. It turns out the purpose of the experiments was to give Outpilot's Syndrome to one of her alters, allowing her to pilot ships despite being Terran and potentially breaking the Gueran monopoly on interstellar transportation.
- Locked in the Bathroom: While fleeing from the smugglers who gave her a ride and now plan to sell her, Jamisia hides in a public bathroom to change her clothes and cut her hair.
- Married to the Job: Guildmistress Alya Cairo's third lover once accused her of making it clear that all things came second to her work, including the people who cared about her. Most of her relationships have been short-lived, but she's managed a ten-year relationship with Devlin Gaza, who has power of his own and understands the importance of their work.
- Mind-Control Device: The powerful Gueran Chandras Delhi has a program that can burn out the part of a person's brain that provides the spark of initiative, allowing her to order the victim to do whatever she wants and search his brain for information. The program causes irreparable brain damage, so she only uses it on enemies and traitors.
- Morality Chain: Devlin Gaza hasn't been as corrupted by power as Alya Cairo, so when he reacts with horror to one of her ideas, she knows she's gone too far. He's also the only person she can be truly open with, and their relationship helps her hold onto her humanity.
- Mustache Vandalism: Playful Hacker Phoenix likes modifying Internet Ads so the models have mustaches.
- The Nose Knows: The Medusans, who have snake-like tentacles instead of hair, have an extraordinary sense of smell that they can use to pick up on other people's pheromones.
- Over-the-Shoulder Carry: When Jamisia is hit by a poison dart, Phoenix carries her this way, before switching to Bridal Carry.
- Parental Substitute: Jamisia's tutor was the closest thing she had to a father.
- Percussive Maintenance: When the hacker Phoenix's computer seems to glitch, he hits it to see if it will work again.
- Punch a Wall: When Masada tells Gaza that the virus has a section of Guild code in it, suggesting that the Guild probably has a mole, Gaza punches the wall so hard that the faceplate of a nearby console is jarred of of alignment.
- Sensory Overload: Jamisia was raised in a space station, so she isn't used to crowds. When she ventures into the marketplace on the metroliner, she becomes severely overwhelmed.
- Sexy Shirt Switch: After Jamisia has sex with Phoenix, she wears his shirt.
- Single-Minded Twins: The Belials produce children in matched sets of two to six people, all sharing a name and legal identity.
- Sins of Our Fathers: There's still a lot of resentment between Variants and Terrans over Earth's abandonment of the first Variants.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Derik, one of Jamisia's alters, is quite foul-mouthed.
- Sleeper Starship: The Guerans insist on drugging all passengers into sleep during trips through the ainniq. They won't explain why.
- Spider Limbs: One of the Variants has pairs of extra legs jutting out from his torso. He walks on all eights like a spider.
- Split Personality: Jamisia has several of these as a result of the experiments.
- Starbucks Skin Scale: Masada's skin is described as mocha.
- Stress Vomit: After one of her alters forces her to kiss Justin, Jamisia runs back to her room and vomits into the sink.
- Success Through Insanity: The Guerans are all insane, which makes them the only people who can pilot ships through the ainniq.
- Their First Time: Jamisia's alter Katlyn has used her body to have sex many times before, but her first conscious experience with sex is on the metroliner with Justin, with Katlyn still in charge but Jamisia watching instead of asleep.
- Theiss Titillation Theory: Invoked by Jamisia when she blends in with a crowd of rich tourists by wearing a crotch-length skirt with a very short top.Men. They were so funny, so predictable. They could pass by a dozen nudes and not pay attention to one, but hit them with a piece of clothing that might slip out of place and their eyes became riveted. It must be some evolutionary thing, survival of the fittest and all that; maybe from the days when a woman in a fur sarong might have been hiding an extra banana or two beneath her wrap, whereas a nude offered no food at all.
- This Is Reality: Derik does this while sneaking out of a ship:He felt weirdly like he was in some viddie, instead of in real life. An action viddie. He sure hoped the bloody scenes weren't coming up yet, that would be no fun at all.
- Throwing Off the Disability: Guerans can change aspects of their kaja if they choose. Masada's brainware compensates for sensory distortions, while Luis Hsing became completely neurotypical as soon as he was old enough. This is considered a sacrifice of one's natural essence.
- Tragic Keepsake: Masada's wife of ten years was a musician before she died in a pod accident. Masada keeps her keyboard and touches it every day to remind himself of her.
- Troubled Fetal Position: When Jamisia meets her alters, she finds one of them curled up in a ball, covered in bruises. He has no treatment or outlet for his Outpilot's Syndrome.
- Universal Universe Time: Time is measured in E-days, E-years, and so on.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Hausman League is a society of Variants who still blame Earth for abandoning the Colonies and believe that the Terrans' outdated political system, lack of technological advancement, and xenophobia are a hindrance to everyone else. Devlin Gaza is a member of this organization, and he programmed the virus to seem like it had come from Earth so the Guild would cut Earth off from the rest of the galaxy for good.
