Spaceman Blues

June 25, 2007
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.

August 1, 2007
Adult/High School-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. Mainly the backstory of how Wendell Apogee becomes Captain Spaceman, hero of Earth, against the apocalyptic invasion of aliens, the novel hops, skips, and jumps genres in a genuinely engaging, entertaining read. The love story of the title is Wendell's. Boy meets and gets boy, loses boy, and becomes something much bigger while searching for boy again. Slattery has created a fully realized world, including an underground city of suspended boxcars and buses, connected by catwalks, beneath New York. All the characters, even the most incidental, are fully fleshed out; readers get the feeling of a full city's worth of stories woven into Wendell's quest and played out against the backdrop of the end of the world as we know it. 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 mindinto something that seems fresh and compelling."Dana Cobern-Kullman, Luther Burbank Middle School, Burbank, CA"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2007
Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmn Gonzlez disappears, his apartment is consumed by an explosion, and most of the city mourns as though hes dead. The police arent convinced, and after they question Wendell Apogee, Wendell decides to find out for himself. He doesnt foresee the madhouse things he then proceeds to doasking 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 Manuels apartment, Wendell has to shake up his ordinary life and become someone able to fight such seemingly unstoppable foes. And, wouldnt you know it, the aliens are just forerunners of something bigger and far more devastating than anyone suspectedanyone, 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 Yorks subcultures, real and imagined.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)