Mr. Spaceman

As an alien visitor prepares to make contact with humanity on the eve of the millennium, he beams a tour bus onto his ship and communes with the outrageous assortment of passengers.

An alien with a heart of gold beams up 12 people on a casino-bound bus on the eve of the millennium in a last-ditch effort to understand humanity before making his long-planned descent to earth in Butler's boundlessly imaginative tale of self-discovery. Desi, who first appeared in the short story "Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover" (Tabloid Dreams, 1997), has been hovering over the U.S. (and watching our TV programs) for some 30 years, collecting the words, memories and yearnings of a few chosen people in a great machine on board his spaceship. Although he is the only remaining representative of his species, he is not alone; keeping him company are his curvaceous human wife, Edna Bradshaw, and their cat, Eddie. With the Wonders of Modern Technology at his disposal (Butler uses capricious capitalization throughout the narrative, to convey Mr. Spaceman's voice and delivery), Desi "interviews" some of the 12 gamblers, bringing forth their voices via the "memory machine" in a series of dramatic monologues that showcase Butler's talent for capturing vernacular and also his gift for parable. Each voice bears witness to a culture-defining event of the 20th century, from the first airplane flight in 1903 to the Branch Davidian debacle at Waco. But before he must make himself known to the world (and in so doing, reveal the "great and fundamental truth of the cosmos"), Edna prepares an unforgettable Alabama-style Last Supper for her spaceman lover and his 12 guests. Through Desi's alien eyes, Pulitzer Prize-winning Butler makes poignant observations about the power (and inadequacies) of language, the logic of dreams and the universal hope for redemption. He balances the playfulness of alien lore with the weight of religion, marrying the comic and the tragic with mastery. In Butler's view, our stories all have certain inevitable endings. This novel raises fin de siecle literature to new heights and turns inevitability on its head. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A surprisingly sweet and droll first-person account of the vexed attempts of an alien to understand the bafflingly unpredictable human race. The Pulitzer Prizewinning Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, 1993, etc.) has wandered far from his usual guilt-haunted terrain here, displaying a remarkably deft hand for gentle satire. A spaceman has been circling the earth for decades andin an attempt to make sense of humans and their ``complex and alien world''gently abducting people, interviewing them, and returning them to their homes (after clearing their minds of any recollection of his presence). His mission: During the last minutes of 1999, he is to descend to the planet and inform its populace that they are not alone in the universe. But the project gets more and more unpredictably complicated. He's fallen in love with Edna, a good-hearted beautician from Alabama whom he abducted from a WalMart parking lot. She's named him Desi (his own name being unpronounceable), set up housekeeping aboard the spaceship, and doesnt mind that he is short, thin, gray, and has eight fingers on each hand. Desi has abducted 12 people, on a bus trip to a casino, to have one last talk before his annunciation. Butler, not shy of controversy, has much fun with the religious overtones inevitably invoked. Some of the 12 insist, despite Desi's denial, that he is a divine being. ``We always knew there was someone bigger and better watching over us,'' one says. ``One era, it's a carpenter. A whole other era, it's a spaceman.'' Desi goes down to earth as midnight nears, having chosen a suitably public place for his arrival. But he hasn't counted on how accepting, even appreciative, humans can be of that which is odd and unsettling. His mission, he discovers, is really only beginning. Light, mischievous, satisfying entertainment. (First printing of 50,000; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Tired of Y2K worries and millennial hype? Don't let that discourage you from reading this book, a warmly comic fable set on December 30, 1999. Butler, best known for his Vietnam-era fictions (e.g., 1993's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain), here explores the final frontier. The narrator is Desi, an E.T. look-alike who has spent decades observing Earth and gently abducting Americans to listen to their stories. On New Year's Eve, he'll tell the world's earthlings about life on other planets. In part, this novel succeeds because of the abductees' richly told stories--marvelous soliloquies full of wonder and yearning. But even more important is Desi. His first-person ruminations about the human condition, told in a crazed American English that's been cobbled together from bits of advertisements, slang, and the Alabama speech of Edna, his human wife, are as poignant as they are funny. A charming novel brimming with love; recommended for all public libraries.
---Brian Kenney, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.