This debut novel is hailed by sci-fi luminary Harlan Ellison as a "mad tornado of words." After Manuel Rodrigo de GuzmAn GonzAlez disappears, his lover Wendell Apogee searches through New York City's "Darktown" to find him. Along the way, he encounters everything from black market dealers to alien assassins. "Slattery's debut is a kaleidoscopic celebration of the immigrant experience ... Pynchon crossed with Steinbeck, painted by DalI ..." -Kirkus Reviews
"There's a blurb on the cover of this by by Harlan Ellison that starts with, "What a breathless, mad tornado of words!" Which is true. Sometimes I get on the L and the train is going so fast that it's a little a scary but mostly exhilarating, that's kind of the way the book reads. Spaceman Blues is about Wendell Apogee's search for his lost love, Manuel Rodrigo de Guzman Gonzales. Along the way Wendell ends up at cockfights, an underground city, and massive, riotous parties. There is so much partying in this novel that if you have never partied before it will give you a hangover. Things start off weird, what with the disappearance of Manuel and the subsequent explosion that consumes his apartment, but then people start seeing things in the sky. Before you know what's what there are these guys in raincoats on some kind of hoverboards blasting people to cinders with their green flame shooting guns. We met characters such as detectives Salmon and Trout, who used to solve cases via riffing on more and more complex theories until the one case that has put a strain on their relationship; Diane, who keeps the company of several, possibly hive minded, Ecuadorians, and has never stopped loving anyone; Lucas, who was indoctrinated into the Lunar Temple, who proposed that the moon would crash into the earth in the near future, but it only turned out to be a helicopter being used by the feds; Masoud, former soldier turned pacifist, who now is helping Wendell out even if it means fighting, and a plethora of interesting characters. One of the biggest characters in the book is New York City. The "A Love Song" part of the title seems be directed to NYC from the author. And then you got the Church of Panic running around. AND then the spaceships show up. I have a habit, not sure if it's good or bad, that whenever I read a novel I like I almost immediately start thinking about how it would look like as a movie, not as in who plays who because I don't know too many of the actor types, if it was up to me Jason Statham and Jackie Chan would meet the Mummy, in space. More as in what the novel would look like stylistically. Spaceman Blues would be a high speed, highly charged anime with art that would be so sharp that it would cut you if you saw it in HD. If you want to go for a somber novel about the minutiae of melancholy in relationships that doesn't involve mayhem then you should avoid Spaceman Blues, but then you'd be depriving yourself of a way fun read. I got this book from the 1-3 dollar cart from a bookstore I frequent for 2 bucks, what a deal!"
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Abraham (4 out of 5 stars)