Customer Reviews

Spaceman Blues: A Love Song

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

An apartment explodes, and, supposedly, Manuel González is blown to smithereens along with it. Or is he? Brian Francis Slattery's debut novel, "Spaceman Blues: A Love Song," is an explosion of words, all in bright sparks, in all directions, a flaming sky of beautiful chaos. Even when I had trouble following this surreal story, I loved reading it. It almost didn't have to make sense. Sometimes the joy of literary paint splashing on walls, Pollack if this were visual, Monk if this were musical, is enough to enthrall the audience:

"He could find another man, sweet and kind; they could retire to a house upstate with flowing windows, where the roads are framed in green and there are only the assured rhythms of farm equipment, occasional guests, the piling and melting of snow, mud in the spring, angry summers mollified by shade and wind. He could let this rage cut wrinkles into him and dissipate. He could let solace in.

"But he is here now. Subways mumble above his head, the tugboat shudders on its cables. Children swing from spindly walkways, singing songs over the thrum of music and machinery. Every second is another escape from death: it swings by, brushes your clothes, and then wheels around, cheated and livid, and you plant your feet on the crumbling rock, curl your hands into fists. Come and get me." (pg. 111)

As authorities and Wendell Apogee, González's gay lover, track him through Darktown, an underlayer of New York that serves as the dryer to lost socks, the scenes become ever more surreal, wheeling in every direction, mixing with alien life (forms and style), swimming in apocalyptic madness toward the final days on earth. No matter if you lose track of this wild path. Enjoy the dizzy ride.

Slattery is a new voice, and we have too few of those in these cautious days of publishing. Tor, the book's publisher, is to be commended for giving platform to a literary spaceman, singing his literary blues in fresh style.

~Zinta Aistars for "The Smoking Poet," Spring 2008 Issue

There are many good reviews for this book already - they helped me decide to buy this book in the first place. Check them out. The best praise I can personally give this book (that hasn't already been said) is this: After reading Spaceman Blues I bought two more hard back copies and gave them to my friends.

This book is good stuff and if it signals a trend in the genre then I am officially stoked about our reading futures.

"Pynchonesque" was an accurate preview; this is a multi-cultural Pynchon brought to the sci-fi set. New Yorkers will recognize the urban landscape. But most of all, this is gripping, dazzling, and fun. Clearly, the one previous review just "didn't get it", although I'd grant that he's right that a comparison with Gibson is not the right one. One more key thing: if you're a fan of the music scene, that is captured effectively here, too.

I suppose if you took a bunch of fictional genres and threw them in a blender, you might get something like Brian Francis Slattery's Spaceman Blues, an interesting if imperfect mix of science fiction, mystery, and superhero fiction, with a bit of apocalyptic fiction and romance thrown in for flavor.

The plot focuses around Manuel Rodrigo de Guzman Gonzalez, who I kept picturing as being a bit like the World's Most Interesting Man from those Dos Equis commercials. At the beginning of the novel, Manuel has disappeared, and actually the reader will mostly learn what Manuel is like through flashbacks and inferences. Manuel was a man with his finger in many pies and who touched many lives, none more so than Wendell Apogee.

"Apogee" is an appropriate surname for Wendell as his whole life orbits around Manuel, and without his center of gravity, he's been cast adrift. While others have been able to move on, Wendell can't, and goes on a quest to find his one-time lover. In the process, he will visit strange people and go to exotic places, most particularly another whole city that exists beneath New York. In the process, he will be transformed into the heroic Captain Spaceman, the only hope against the viciously super-powered Four Horsemen. It all somehow ties into aliens and a doomsday cult.

Amazingly, Slattery is able to tie all the loose ends together. Spaceman Blues is a wild ride, one that is fun and often funny, but one that may be a bit more sensation than real substance. With his distinctive style, off-beat characters and weird situations (also seen in his second novel, Liberation), Slattery has composed a unique novel, one that is enjoyable as much for its oddness as actual writing skill.

_Spaceman Blues _ is a wonderful, rollicking roller coaster of a novel that swings and sings. Brian Slattery's prose style enlivens every line, with sentences that spill into each other in a kaleidoscope of people, places and passions. His writing resembles a version of Thomas Pynchon (author of _Gravity's Rainbow_ and _V.) with his coruscating run-on sentences, only a lot more whimsically upbeat (and less obscure), mixed with Chuck Palahniuk's _Fight Club_. Slattery moves us into and out of character's histories, within and without geographic locations and back and forth in time. The influence of Slattery's musical background is evident; music and happy gatherings of people are spread throughout the novel. His unusual characters with their wild backgrounds wander in and out of fantastic situations: Wendell Apogee searches desperately for his well-connected, dangerously charismatic, mysteriously missing partner Manuel Rodrigo de Guzman Gonzalez; Lucas Henderson, unemotional survivor of a childhood cult, hunts down another: the "Church of Panic"; Diane, loved by four short Ecuadorian soccer-playing Kennedy Airport maintenance men, seeks after the heart of Lucas; Robert Lord Townshend Jr., heir to family fortunes, in turn courts Ma Xioa Ling, beautiful refugee from China, who ignores his attentions; Detectives Salmon and Trout's investigation of Gonzalez's disappearance sends them after Wendell and Masoud, a former Lebanese jet pilot who deals with memories of abandoning his brother by teaming up with Wendell to keep him safe from the authorities and much, much worse. And the Pan-Galactic Groove Squad tumbles through windows and into the streets to set people dancing with their rousing music, while ominous intimations of impending doom gather. Never has an apocalyptic vision been so joyful.

Something the characters in this fantastic novel have in common is their quest for something: Wendell and his lonely search for Manuel; Lucas and his church; Diane for Lucas' love; Robert for Ma Xioa's heart; Salmon and Trout for answers and Masoud for redemption. As their world tumbles around them, they come to terms with the unusual, the unexpected, the guileless and innocent ideas which rigid training and adult experiences have turned them away from, and which now may save them. _Spaceman Blues_ is about coming to believe in the power of the abstract, the intuitive, the magical. It sweeps you away on a magic carpet ride. I loved this novel. Readers of Jonathan Carroll, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury and J.K.Rowling, or anyone who enjoyed fables growing up, will love it as well.

As a lifelong avid reader of scifi, I have encountered many styles. This book is in the "stream of consciousness" style and flows poorly with little visible plot and is not well organized. I disliked the book immensley due to the style of writing. If you really love to read blogs, you may like it--I do not--I prefer a story.

It's not often that one comes in contact with a truly literary-style piece of science fiction with superheroes, trench coat aliens, and underground floating cities, let alone a literary-style piece of science fiction that works. Slattery's Spaceman Blues is a stunning, if not astonishing piece of fiction; the kind of book you want to read over and over, because each time you do you'll find something new that you missed before; the kind of book that reigns in the pulpy goodness of the Golden Age of science fiction and comics with a style that will draw in readers of Thomas Pynchon and E. L. Doctorow (in my opinion and based upon a limited exposure to those writers).

Spaceman Blues takes off with the disappearance of Manuel Rodrigo de Guzman Gonzalez, the boyfriend of Wendell Apogee. Wendell isn't willing to accept that Manuel is simply dead and sets out to find out what happened. But in doing so he finds himself chased by alien assassins and the unexpected hero to an underground society stricken with fear by the destructive force of beings that have more in store for the Earth than they are letting on.

With a diverse cast, each with their own stories and connections, Spaceman Blues is a rather unusual and exciting read. Every sentence seems packed with important information and Slattery's style manages to wander into the lives of his unique characters while still pushing the story forward; that wandering rarely harms the overall integrity of the story. For such a short novel, Spaceman Blues does so much: it takes our main character from being just a man to a superhero, digs into the lives of a multitude of characters, each with unique back stories and personalities, and gives respect to the pulp literatures of the last century by taking them to a new level while still engaging with their "classic" nature.

Readers of Spaceman Blues may see interesting mythological parallels, too. The plot itself feels like an allusion to the story of Orpheus, with Wendell descending into an underground world in search of his lover in much the same way as Orpheus had. There are interesting parallels to Biblical figures too, particularly the four horseman. These elements add to the depth of the work, giving it the sort of multi layered narrative not often found within inherently "popular" forms of literature, particularly because the way this work is written intentionally draws one to the language, to the writing itself and what Slattery is actually saying rather than what the basic points of the plot are.

Spaceman Blues is not without flaws, though. While I enjoyed the ending of Slattery's 219-page novel, I expect some readers will dislike the lack of a significant conclusion, and perhaps may find the pessimistic view at the end to be too literary, or unsatisfying (or depressing?). To add, Slattery's style is not an entirely approachable one in the sense that it is not written like the novels that embrace the "popular literature" style. He writes with a certain fluidity, if that is the proper term to use here, with sentences that would generally be considered run-ons, but work precisely because of the type of book Slattery was writing; occasionally his style works against him when he wanders too far in the narrative. If you want to read this book, go into it understanding that it is written in a long, literary style, rather than the style you might be more familiar with.

Despite its flaws, Spaceman Blues is a fast-paced (and short) read. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something a little different, because this work is certainly different, if not unique--a character story more than a plot story. It's also an example of why Tor is one of the pioneers of science fiction publishing: Slattery has an interesting vision that I'm glad to see get the attention it deserves. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to read more of Slattery's work in the future, because if Spaceman Blues is anything to go by, I expect he'll have a long career ahead of him.

Go check it out!

I've read Kurt Vonnegut for years always wanting to read an actual Kilgore Trout book (not Venus on the half shell). This is that book, but only better. Slattery creates a very unique world which he describes very vividly. He uses this world to twist and squeeze the characters in a race against time. Great, entertaining read!

I rarely lend books to friends to read (mostly cuz I never get them back), however this book was definitely lend-worthy. It was like an acid trip on paper, the Clockwork Orange of books. But you must be into its moving parts as it jumps from genre (science fiction to sappy gay love story to comic-book superhero to time travel) like a thrown stone on a flat lake. It's the kind of book where you read a paragraph and then as you move on to the next paragraph you say to yourself "wait a minute, let me read that last one again" and suddenly you find yourself in the midst of a silent "wow". It's that kind of read - funny, thought-provoking, and definitely lend-worthy. I'm giving it another spin in a couple weeks. As soon as I get it back from my friend.

I didn't care about any of the characters in this novel. Of course, more time was spent reading about various parties that were going on and how people were drinking/getting stoned/having sex... maybe I would have appreciated this book more if I was once part of a rave scene or did drugs in my youth. As it stands, I found I related to nothing and no one in this book.

Even getting it at the rock-bottom price of $1.31 from Amazon after reading about it in a forum thread, I thought it would be worthwhile, but even with its short length (glorified novella) I find that my time would have been better spent watching Syfy original presentations. At least I would have gotten a laugh out of how terrible they are... this book couldn't even manage that.