Spaceman Blues: A Love Song

Painted in browns and grays and sparked by sudden fires, Spaceman Blues is a literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel, the debut of a true voice of the future, and a cult classic in the making.

When Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González disappears, Wendell Apogee decides to find out where he has gone and why. But in order to figure out what happened to Manuel, Wendell must contend with parties, cockfights, and chases; an underground city whose people live in houses suspended from cavern ceilings; urban weirdos and alien assassins; immigrants, the black market, flight, riots, and religious cults.

Painted in browns and grays and sparked by sudden fires, Spaceman Blues is a literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel, the debut of a true voice of the future, and a cult classic in the making.

“For Fans Of: the surreal odyssey of Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man [and] Plan 9 from Outer Space . . . For all its colorful characters and gonzo thrills, Slatterys debut is first and foremost a moving portrait of [his protagonist] Wendell's griefs.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Hes written a breezy, funny, formally playful book that, as apocalyptic novels go, is a helluva cheerier beach read than Cormac McCarthys The Road, and so visual it cries out for a film treatment . . . Early reviews of Spaceman Blues threw around the names of Pynchon, Doctorow, and Dick as stylistic touchstones. But Slattery should really be considered alongside NYC homeboys like Lethem and Shteyngart, the former for his loving tweaks of vintage pulp, the latter for his sharp immigrant comedy.”—Will Hermes, The Village Voice 

“Spaceman Blues is a welcome Band-Aid for those still mourning the loss of Kurt Vonnegut and his uniquely wacky, satirical brand of sci-fi. Theres also a touch of Paul Austers flair for genre blending and New York mythologizing . . . A strange and whimsical mash note to the city, Slatterys apocalyptome proves that this newcomer is as thoughtful and irreverent as doomsayers come.”—Time Out New York (four stars)

“The book is a marvel: funny, weird, touching, a joy to read not just for its music and its imagination, but for the generous and intelligent view of life that it offers: a view of life that is neither sentimental nor cynical, full of a certain type of hope but never blind to the miseries hope can cause. Spaceman Blues is a cousin and equal of some recent novels that have maintained my faith in the ability of fiction to simultaneously possess meaning, beauty, and vision, but its a singular book, offering its own riffs on the joys and pains of life and its own rifts across the surface of our shared delusions and commingled dreams.”—Matthew Cheney, Las Vegas Weekly

“What a breathless, mad tornado of words! When it shakes itself awake the earth trembles and the helpless reader is dragged gladly into its light. I havent had this much fun with a book in years.”—Harlan Ellison

“It happens only very rarely—you read a book by a new author, and all you can say is ‘wow. That was the case with Spaceman Blues: ‘Wow. To say anything more would mean the inevitable descent into cheap clichés—‘hooked by the first paragraph, ‘dizzying, ‘a visionary roller-coaster ride, ‘reminiscent, if anything, of Thomas Pynchon in its scope, its explosive imagination, the swirling, jazzy flow of the prose. So much can and should be said about Mr. Slattery's debut—but I think Ill just stick with a simple ‘wow—or if you prefer a visual summation, try an exclamation point on fire.”—Jim Knipfel, author of Slackjaw

“Brilliant . . . Its got the edgy paranoia and secret reality plotting of the best of Phil Dick, wrapped inside a contemporary stylistic sensibility that stands proudly against Miéville or Doctorow, with a heavy leavening of Nueva York emigre culture to give the work a distinctly American voice—the brawling, postmillennial, multicultural America of twenty-first century New York. This is the transmogrification of Phillip Roths New York by way of The Matrix and a double handful of wild-ass street drugs into something all too recognizable.”—Jay Lake, author of Mainspring

“An extraordinary story that hovers between, beneath, above, but never in a familiar territory. But it hovers on thin margins—so much is recognizable, and yet . . . The thick reality of the informal economy as science fiction is one image that comes to mind. The specificity of this unsettlement becomes a way of seeing what you can otherwise not see.”—Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages

“Spaceman Blues is a strange new creature: apocalyptic SF with the stylistic pyrotechnics of a beat poet on speed. There is nothing else out there like it, a vaulting, twisted song of decadent and desperate parties, grief and superheroes, sex and memory, and almost incidentally, the end of the world. This book leaves a glowing handprint on the mind which will not soon fade.”—Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Orphans Tales: In the Night Garden

“Spaceman Blues is a brave, kinetic novel—a heady, original mixture of the surreal and the postmodern. It never stops moving and it never lets up. A spectacular new voice.”—Jeff VanderMeer, World Fantasy Award-winning author of City of Saints and Madmen

"Connecticut resident Slattery's debut is a kaleidoscopic celebration of the immigrant experience thinly disguised as science fiction. As New York bakes in the heat, Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González's apartment explodes. There's no sign of Manuel, but nobody—especially Manuel's friend and lover Wendell Apogee—believes Manuel is dead. Since Manuel left no trace in any official record, police investigators Herman Trout and Lenny Salmon come to Wendell for help. Wendell, with no idea where Manuel went, slogs through a brawling, seething succession of parties, clubs, cockfights, restaurants and apartments populated by desperate immigrants, sometimes in the light of day, sometimes in a mysterious underground realm where railroad carriages hang suspended from the roof of a vast cavern. He narrowly avoids death at the hands of crime boss El Flaco, who believes Manuel has stolen his wife Lavinia away, and dodges attacks by four weird figures clad in purple raincoats that, mounted on zooming scooters, kill people with green death rays. Immediately dubbed the Four Horsemen, the hunters seem invulnerable to bullets and explosives. Advised by his friend Masoud Aziz that he must change his identity and stop looking for Manuel, Wendell notices that the Horsemen seem bent on killing all the members of the Church of Panic, a cult that believes the Earth is threatened with invasion by space aliens. A pathologist, meanwhile, ponders body parts fished from the East River that definitely aren't human. Pynchon crossed with Steinbeck, painted by Dalí: Impossible to summarize, swinging from the surreal to the hyper-real, a brilliantly handled, tumultuous yarn that, for all its blazing pyrotechnics, has but a single point to make."—Kirkus Reviews

"Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González disappears, his apartment is consumed by an explosion, and most of the city mourns as though he's dead. The police aren't convinced, and after they question Wendell Apogee, Wendell decides to find out for himself. He doesn't foresee the madhouse things he then proceeds to do—asking questions during a cockfight that gets raided, finding an apocalyptic cult based on valid scientific evidence, going to an underground city in which the best bar is a train car hung from a cavern ceiling. He is changed forever. When aliens come for him wielding weapons from Manuel's apartment, Wendell has to shake up his ordinary life and become someone able to fight such seemingly unstoppable foes. And, wouldn't you know it, the aliens are just forerunners of something bigger and far more devastating than anyone suspected—anyone, that is, except a few who stumbled on certain evidence and created an apocalyptic cult. Spaceman Blues is a mad ride related by a pulp sensibility filtered through the nonstop freneticism of New York's subcultures, real and imagined."—Regina Schroeder, Booklist

“The book jacket describes Spaceman Blues as a ‘literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel, and it not only lives up to the hype, but may include a genre or two more besides . . . The book weaves a mixture of gritty war elements with hardboiled Hammett-like detective mystery, poetic romance reminiscent of Isabel Allende, and science fiction that brings Stanislaw Lem to mind—into something that seems fresh and compelling.”—School Library Journal

"Editor/writer/musician Slattery's chaotic debut takes readers on a headlong trip to the end of the world. Manuel González, a legendary New York City party animal, has disappeared and his apartment has exploded, leaving behind only the memories of his thousands of friends and enemies. His lover, Wendell Apogee, is determined to find out what happened. So are police inspectors Herman Trout and Lenny Salmon, who uncover a web of bizarre characters, from Lucas Henderson, former Lunar Temple cult member, and Arturo 'El Flaco' Domínguez, González's worst enemy, to a washed-up '80s pop band the Marsupials. As Wendell tracks González through Darktown, 'the place where you find lost things,' the prophecies of the apocalyptic Church of Panic begin coming true: aliens threaten to invade Earth, and Wendell must become superhero Captain Spaceman and save the planet. The story itself doesn't make much sense, but Slattery has a grand time showing off the colorful underground culture of cockfights, raves and endless intoxication that keeps things moving in his hallucinatory vision of New York."—Publishers Weekly

Painted in browns and grays and sparked by sudden fires, Spaceman Blues is a literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel, the debut of a true voice of the future, and a cult classic in the making.