Where is Manuel Rodrigo de Guzman Gonzalez? What is the Church of Panic, whose followers float three inches off the ground? What's really going on under New York City? The answers are a lot bigger than you think they are.
Spaceman Blues Media
Here is the first chapter of the book.
Here, I rock parts of Spaceman Blues, backed up by excellent musicians.
Here is an interview about Spaceman Blues on the Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC (the New York affiliate of NPR), August 7, 2007.
Here is a longer interview, about Spaceman Blues and other topics, on the Bat Segundo Show, hosted by Mr. Segundo, September 13, 2007.
Here is an even longer interview with myself and my editor, Liz Gorinsky, also about Spaceman Blues and other topics, on Hour of the Wolf, hosted by Jim Freund, WBAI, August 11, 2007.
Here, I field Jason Boog's Five Easy Questions at The Publishing Spot.
Here, I take the Page 69 Test, courtesy of Marshal Zeringue.
Here is an interview with Brad Lockwood at the plucky Brooklyn Eagle.
Reviews of Spaceman Blues: A Love Song
"Slattery's debut is a kaleidoscopic celebration of the immigrant experience ... Pynchon crossed with Steinbeck, painted by Dali: Impossible to summarize, swinging from the surreal to the hyper-real, a brilliantly handled, tumultuous yarn."
"Call it what you want; surrealist, transrealist, post-modern, absurdist, slipstream, fabulist, literary fantastic ... whatever, there's no word that does justice to Spaceman Blues. A few here might remember me mentioning a promise to review what I thought was one of the most original novels of the year. Well, here it is."
"For fans of the surreal odyssey of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man [and] Plan 9 from Outer Space ... A-."
Simon Vozick-Levinson, Entertainment Weekly
"Spaceman Blues plunges us into the not-so-dire, nearly-dystopian future that we're living in at this moment.... For readers who love the language, who read for the sheer joy of having words zip through their brains like el-trains through the sleazy neighborhoods of New York, well, Spaceman Blues is the ticket. You will not need to check your brain at the door, though you might need to check it afterward. It's still there, I assure you. It's just been changed."
"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 (see Motherless Brooklyn), the latter for his sharp immigrant comedy (see Absurdistan).... he's written a breezy, funny, formally playful book that, as apocalyptic novels go, is a helluva cheerier beach read than Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and so visual it cries out for a film treatment."
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. There's also a touch of Paul Auster's flair for genre blending and New York mythologizing.... A strange and whimsical mash note to the city, Slattery's apocalyptome proves that this newcomer is as thoughtful and irreverent as doomsayers come."
"It is impossible to be sane around Slattery's prose. His words make you want to find someone to dance with, someone you can lick tequila off of afterward.... Slattery doesn't just use words, he treats them right."
"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."
Dana Cobern-Kullman, School Library Journal
"In a manner that would make Vonnegut crack a wry smile, Slattery props up the corpse of the American Dream and parades it through the waking dream that is his novel."
"The very best [New York novels] ... like the work of Auster, Disch, Lethem, Pynchon, and now this first novel by Slattery, melt down the city, and tease from its facelessness strange new secrets and half-truths. This poignant and hilarious Orphic tale gives us a New York as libidinal memory demands it be, with vast caverns below, purple-clad doom-saying monks above, and lots of partying between."
Dustin Kurtz, McNally Robinson bookstore
"Spaceman Blues is a mad ride related by a pulp sensibility filtered through the nonstop freneticism of New York's subcultures, real and imagined."
"What's most notable about Spaceman Blues is its intensity of feeling--of the characters towards one another, of the characters towards their city, and of the author towards both. Spaceman Blues is indeed a love song--an exuberant, exhilarating, captivating one, and one that as many people as possible should read and enjoy."
"I imagine that Spaceman Blues is going to pop up on a lot of year's best lists, and if it doesn't, it damn well better. This is a cult novel of the highest order, and probably one of the most original books I've read this year."
"The blues turn sadness into beauty, and the beauty of Spaceman Blues comes from its willingness to face the sadness with a cold eye and a big heart, to not turn away or cop out or get all drippy with either self-love or self-hatred. Yes, there are aliens and superheroes and secret worlds in this novel, but it's truer than many a tale with more ordinary folks and physics, because it's not blind to either joy or heartbreak, and it never takes an easy way out."
Advance Praise
"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 haven't had this much fun with a book in years."
"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 cliches--'hooked by the first paragraph,' '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 I'll just stick with a simple 'wow'--or if you prefer a visual summation, an exclamation point on fire."
"Brian Slattery's Spaceman Blues is brilliant. It's got the edgy paranoia and secret reality plotting of the best of Phil Dick, wrapped inside a contemporary stylistic sensibility that stands proudly against Mieville or Doctorow, with a heavy leavening of Nueva York emigre culture to give the work a distinctly American voice--the brawling, postmillenial, multicultural America of twenty-first-century New York. This is the transmogrification of Philip Roth's New York by way of The Matrix and a double handful of wild-ass street drugs into something all too recognizable."
"With prose that effortlessly glides from one surrealist scene to another, Brian Slattery proves to be not only a visionary of the absurd, but also a genuinely talented postmodern voice."
"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."
"This book caught me in a quick-spun net of words, and I was mesmerized. I can only describe it as a fanciful apocalyptic science fiction love story, dressed in an ode to New York City... This novel is music, it reads like slam poetry, and it made me want to dance."
Darcy Lambert, the Odyssey Bookshop
"The voice is frenetic yet confident, a font of vivid imagery, wild happenings, and unapologetic narrative freedom."
"Spaceman Blues is a brave, kinetic novel--a heady, original mixture of the surreal and postmodern. It never stops moving and it never lets up. A spectacular new voice."
Spaceman Blues: A Love Song is available through your local bookseller, Powell's, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.