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Mr. Spaceman
"There are three things about this planet which are too wonderful for me. Make that four things. The way of dreams in the mind; the way of tears in the eye; the way of words in the mouth; and the way of my wife Edna Bradshaw when she acts like a cat and love-nibbles me into her arms." This is the voice of Desi, the hero of Robert Olen Butler's novel Mr. Spaceman, who has kept a quiet vigil above the Earth for decades while studying the confusing, fascinating, and frustrating primary species of our planet, occasionally venturing to the planet's surface to hear their thoughts and experience their memories using his empathic powers. Now, on December 31, 2000, he prepares for the final phase of his mysterious mission, which begins when he beams a tour bus bound for a Louisiana casino aboard his ship. The twelve passengers will be the last humans whose lives he will experience before he positions his spaceship in full and irrefutable view of the people of Earth, and descend to the planet's surface to proclaim his presence to all of humanity at the turn of the millennium. Poignant, funny, and charming, Mr. Spaceman is filled with unexpected twists and turns, a tribute to the powers of love and understanding and the essence of what it means to be human.
223 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
34 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
Robert Olen Butler
86 books452 followers“I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.”
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
September 1, 2011
3 and 1/2 stars
I don't generally get along with fables, so when I saw this work described as such on the inner flap that didn't bode well for me, though I also know inner flaps lie, so I hoped that would be true here. At first, it didn't seem like a fable at all (good) and then when it did, it was done in a humorous way as if it were mocking itself (very good!).
From hearing this author speak several times, I also detected his writing philosophy within this novel, so then it read at times as meta-fiction (also very good). The concentration on words and their meanings (including chuckle-inducing uses by the spaceman of contemporary slogans), the importance of 'yearning' (the spaceman comes to believe this is the defining characteristic of humans and I know his creator also believes this), the mention of the place 'from where you dream' and the way the spaceman can become one with each of his 'visitors' (his characters) all point toward this.
The one big issue I had was that the narration is a bit repetitive, even though I understand why it is. I wasn't sure how I felt about the book until the ending, which caused me to smile as I saw it coming. It 'made' the book for me, but to tell you why would be to spoil it. ROB is a brilliant, imaginative writer and the last couple of chapters confirm that.
I don't generally get along with fables, so when I saw this work described as such on the inner flap that didn't bode well for me, though I also know inner flaps lie, so I hoped that would be true here. At first, it didn't seem like a fable at all (good) and then when it did, it was done in a humorous way as if it were mocking itself (very good!).
From hearing this author speak several times, I also detected his writing philosophy within this novel, so then it read at times as meta-fiction (also very good). The concentration on words and their meanings (including chuckle-inducing uses by the spaceman of contemporary slogans), the importance of 'yearning' (the spaceman comes to believe this is the defining characteristic of humans and I know his creator also believes this), the mention of the place 'from where you dream' and the way the spaceman can become one with each of his 'visitors' (his characters) all point toward this.
The one big issue I had was that the narration is a bit repetitive, even though I understand why it is. I wasn't sure how I felt about the book until the ending, which caused me to smile as I saw it coming. It 'made' the book for me, but to tell you why would be to spoil it. ROB is a brilliant, imaginative writer and the last couple of chapters confirm that.
August 11, 2009
A unique meditation on language, human connection & comunication, & yearning most of all, which Mr. Spaceman finds to be the defining characteristic of earthlings. It is a creative, witty, & wise book that increasingly draws you into biblical metaphors & cadences, but is really only setting you up for a different kind of ending: earthlings have both a tendency to reject the alien & a desire for a savior; the spaceman is neither--he just wants to participate in their yearning. This was the most FUN I've had with a book since the last Tom Robbins novel.
December 25, 2008
A recommended read to science fiction readers -- from an author not known for science fiction. The first page is worth the price of the novel -- a beautiful piece of writing from the alien point of view. The poignancy takes a comic turn, but it works, it works. Enjoy.
May 26, 2019
This is the third book of Mr. Butler's to come my way (after
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
and, more recently,
A Small Hotel
. The guy is certainly versatile, although his focus on the Gulf Coast area remains a constant through all these, as does his ability to create a wide variety of thoroughly believable characters. At this point I'll gladly read anything else he writes.
The story in question concerns an alien stationed in a vehicle high above the Earth's surface. He has been studying humans and human culture for a long time, occasionally doing a catch-and-release in which he beams random people aboard and sort of interviews them in a way that preserves the essence of their thoughts and values, before wiping their memories of him and returning them to their former lives. Previous subjects have included a cowboy actor, who taught him how to crack his knuckles; a young woman who'd witnessed the Wright brothers' first flight; and Edna Bradshaw, a former hairdresser from Bovary, Alabama, who is now his wife.
Hopefully the above conveys that this is a departure from your standard sci-fi story. This alien is quick to assure everyone, "I am a friendly guy," and he tries very hard to get past the shock caused by his strange appearance by spouting memes from popular culture. Words in general bother him, however. His race is telepathic, and so spoken language seems inadequate and distracting. He says, "I have always scorned these bits of sound." What he seeks to do with the people he meets, via a peculiar form of fingertip contact, is to convey "an ontological music, beyond words, beyond sounds." But people stubbornly continue to use words, often idiomatically, which means he's usually a few beats behind in understanding them.
For example, when he beams aboard a van full of casino-bound gamblers, and Edna Bradshaw prepares a welcoming buffet for them, he's at first very distressed when she says they'll have "finger food."
Aside from exploring the nature of communication, the story also deals with the question of why people always want something other than what they have. Our alien says he too seeks something, although in his case it's "a life without yearning." He has reached the point of longing to find even one person from Earth "to sit before me and speak its inner words and be, if not happy, then at least content, and if not content then at least drably unconsidered and bland. One might expect such lives in abundance down there, growing like wheat. But I have found not even one. ... I wish to say to each life that sits before me and has just finished speaking, 'Arise, and be not afraid.'"
Do you detect a slightly biblical edge there? Well, that aspect of the story is just warming up. It turns out the van contains twelve people, from various walks of life. One of them is particularly exuberant and declares that he is the new incarnation of Christ. Their time with him culminates in a sit-down meal (again prepared by Edna Bradshaw) in which green "Presbytarian Punch" is served—a beverage he says is "precisely the color of a spaceman's blood. Of my blood. Drink this and know that I love you all." Next he passes around a basket of Edna's homemade buttermilk biscuits. This is preparatory to the moment in which he will return them to their former lives (this time with memories intact, perhaps to go on talk shows and whatnot) and then, because he has been directed to do so by his superiors, he will reveal himself to the throngs below.
There's a clear sense that this will not turn out well. He admits, "I yearn for any moment but the moment that awaits me a few hours from now." But don't look here for spoilers.
What stands out for me most in this story is the lively interface of personalities, spaceman vs gay bus driver vs black lawyer vs Vietnamese immigrant vs teenage runaway, vs (of course) Edna Bradshaw. I would dearly love to hear an audio version read by a voice actor capable of rendering all those accents. Even in print, I laughed out loud several times, turning heads of nearby strangers who, like me, were compelled to spend the day sitting in a jury lounge. For me, it was a day well spent.
The story in question concerns an alien stationed in a vehicle high above the Earth's surface. He has been studying humans and human culture for a long time, occasionally doing a catch-and-release in which he beams random people aboard and sort of interviews them in a way that preserves the essence of their thoughts and values, before wiping their memories of him and returning them to their former lives. Previous subjects have included a cowboy actor, who taught him how to crack his knuckles; a young woman who'd witnessed the Wright brothers' first flight; and Edna Bradshaw, a former hairdresser from Bovary, Alabama, who is now his wife.
Hopefully the above conveys that this is a departure from your standard sci-fi story. This alien is quick to assure everyone, "I am a friendly guy," and he tries very hard to get past the shock caused by his strange appearance by spouting memes from popular culture. Words in general bother him, however. His race is telepathic, and so spoken language seems inadequate and distracting. He says, "I have always scorned these bits of sound." What he seeks to do with the people he meets, via a peculiar form of fingertip contact, is to convey "an ontological music, beyond words, beyond sounds." But people stubbornly continue to use words, often idiomatically, which means he's usually a few beats behind in understanding them.
For example, when he beams aboard a van full of casino-bound gamblers, and Edna Bradshaw prepares a welcoming buffet for them, he's at first very distressed when she says they'll have "finger food."
Aside from exploring the nature of communication, the story also deals with the question of why people always want something other than what they have. Our alien says he too seeks something, although in his case it's "a life without yearning." He has reached the point of longing to find even one person from Earth "to sit before me and speak its inner words and be, if not happy, then at least content, and if not content then at least drably unconsidered and bland. One might expect such lives in abundance down there, growing like wheat. But I have found not even one. ... I wish to say to each life that sits before me and has just finished speaking, 'Arise, and be not afraid.'"
Do you detect a slightly biblical edge there? Well, that aspect of the story is just warming up. It turns out the van contains twelve people, from various walks of life. One of them is particularly exuberant and declares that he is the new incarnation of Christ. Their time with him culminates in a sit-down meal (again prepared by Edna Bradshaw) in which green "Presbytarian Punch" is served—a beverage he says is "precisely the color of a spaceman's blood. Of my blood. Drink this and know that I love you all." Next he passes around a basket of Edna's homemade buttermilk biscuits. This is preparatory to the moment in which he will return them to their former lives (this time with memories intact, perhaps to go on talk shows and whatnot) and then, because he has been directed to do so by his superiors, he will reveal himself to the throngs below.
There's a clear sense that this will not turn out well. He admits, "I yearn for any moment but the moment that awaits me a few hours from now." But don't look here for spoilers.
What stands out for me most in this story is the lively interface of personalities, spaceman vs gay bus driver vs black lawyer vs Vietnamese immigrant vs teenage runaway, vs (of course) Edna Bradshaw. I would dearly love to hear an audio version read by a voice actor capable of rendering all those accents. Even in print, I laughed out loud several times, turning heads of nearby strangers who, like me, were compelled to spend the day sitting in a jury lounge. For me, it was a day well spent.
January 8, 2018
I get what he wanted to do...but honestly, I was a little bored, and for such a short book I had to struggle a lot to get through it.
1. My first and biggest problem is that, as a scifi and fantasy fan, I despise it when 'literary' authors use scifi elements as device to prove their point. Scifi is a legitimate and often very philosophical genre in its own right. You can't just pop a space alien into your book and say "hur hur, look at me, I'm using lame nerd culture to explore language in a way that no one ever has" because, spoiler alert, REAL scifi does that almost constantly.
2.
3. Speaking of real scifi, I read this in conjunction with The Lefthand of Darkness which explores all of the things in Mr. Spaceman, only it does so better and more succinctly, without judging the subject matter. If you want to read a book about a spaceman revealing himself to the inhabitants of a clueless planet, read The Lefthand of Darkness instead.
1. My first and biggest problem is that, as a scifi and fantasy fan, I despise it when 'literary' authors use scifi elements as device to prove their point. Scifi is a legitimate and often very philosophical genre in its own right. You can't just pop a space alien into your book and say "hur hur, look at me, I'm using lame nerd culture to explore language in a way that no one ever has" because, spoiler alert, REAL scifi does that almost constantly.
2.
3. Speaking of real scifi, I read this in conjunction with The Lefthand of Darkness which explores all of the things in Mr. Spaceman, only it does so better and more succinctly, without judging the subject matter. If you want to read a book about a spaceman revealing himself to the inhabitants of a clueless planet, read The Lefthand of Darkness instead.
April 7, 2007
I had to give a presentation on Butler's writing during Morrow's "Innovative Fiction" class - the day Butler was visiting our class. This ended up being quite unfortunate; in preperation I read his two previous collections of short-stories, which I loved, but the book we were reading for the class, "Mr. Spaceman," was not only the worst novel we read durring the class, its one of the worst novels I've ever read. The plot is basically a sequil to one of his stories from "Tabloid Dreams," but what worked as 12 page fairy-tale died when stretched to a full novel. Cheesy, cloying, and utterly predictable, the subtle-as-a-sledge-hammer Christ imagery at the end pushed it over the top. And I had to figure out how to talk about it in front of a group of students without deeply offending the author. Awk-ward.
November 12, 2008
A quirky, fun book. Read this when you want to see an author truly flexing his imagination. This is the novel-equivalent of Venice, California's "Muscle Beach" with words and characters plumping up, and all the knotty, vein-y funny things, showing!
April 6, 2024
Tropes are impossible to avoid. So embrace them. With a trope you know roughly what game you're playing. The fun is had seeing where the goalposts get moved to. The trope in question here is: Alien Among Us. Good examples are Resident Alien, My Favourite Martian and even ALF. They're outsiders trying to make sense of what it means to human. Some, like Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still come with a warning. Others, like Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth come with a more personal agenda. In Mr Spaceman Desi, as we come to know him, has come to say, "Hi." His agenda? "Oh! You're not alone." It's basically First Contact only Desi is a lot cheerier than them Vulcans. As he says often, "I'm a friendly guy." And he is. He's sweet. For years he's been beaming up humans and interviewing them before wiping their memories and sending them back unharmed and unprobed. He is now down to the last twelve. Today's the day he has to make himself known to humanity and he still hasn't got a firm plan in place.
You know the game show Name that Tune—I'll name that tune in x notes—well, I kinda felt I knew where this book was going in two. The opening sentence is: "I am" and, if like me you had a religious upbringing, then that will mean something to you as will the fact there were twelve on that bus Desi beamed up. Yeah, another trope: 'A Spaceman Came Travelling.' What would happen if Jesus returned? Would they crucify him (metaphorically, if not literally) all over again? Okay, Desi isn't Jesus, he is quite firm on this point, but he's also not stupid. Although he likes to look for the good in people he realises that outside the safety of his ship mankind might not be quite as understanding and welcoming as many of his guests have been over the years. What to do?
While he's fretting about that he goes along as he's always done, interviewing. Technically they're not Q&A interviews. Desi taps into something within them and they tell their story, not so much their life story but what they're about, who they are and how they got there. Desi has spoken to hundreds over decades and clearly watched a great deal of television but he's still a long way from understanding humans despite having clealy become extremely fond of them.
The big question is: How to resolve Desi's problem. There's no way he's not going to fulfil his duty but how will he be received. To the honest when I read the chapter as he leaves the ship I kinda thought we'd be left wondering and it would've worked wonderfully. I was actually disappointed when I turned the page and there was more. And I was terrified the author would fumble the ball but he didn't. And I was so relieved.
The book is derivitive, yes, absolutely, but much like the alien in the recent film Jules we're presented with an alien that is both familiar—a grey as they tend to be called—and yet unexpected and, I'll say it again, sweet. In fact the whole novel is sweet but without, hats off here, becoming saccarine. A major achievement.
You know the game show Name that Tune—I'll name that tune in x notes—well, I kinda felt I knew where this book was going in two. The opening sentence is: "I am" and, if like me you had a religious upbringing, then that will mean something to you as will the fact there were twelve on that bus Desi beamed up. Yeah, another trope: 'A Spaceman Came Travelling.' What would happen if Jesus returned? Would they crucify him (metaphorically, if not literally) all over again? Okay, Desi isn't Jesus, he is quite firm on this point, but he's also not stupid. Although he likes to look for the good in people he realises that outside the safety of his ship mankind might not be quite as understanding and welcoming as many of his guests have been over the years. What to do?
While he's fretting about that he goes along as he's always done, interviewing. Technically they're not Q&A interviews. Desi taps into something within them and they tell their story, not so much their life story but what they're about, who they are and how they got there. Desi has spoken to hundreds over decades and clearly watched a great deal of television but he's still a long way from understanding humans despite having clealy become extremely fond of them.
The big question is: How to resolve Desi's problem. There's no way he's not going to fulfil his duty but how will he be received. To the honest when I read the chapter as he leaves the ship I kinda thought we'd be left wondering and it would've worked wonderfully. I was actually disappointed when I turned the page and there was more. And I was terrified the author would fumble the ball but he didn't. And I was so relieved.
The book is derivitive, yes, absolutely, but much like the alien in the recent film Jules we're presented with an alien that is both familiar—a grey as they tend to be called—and yet unexpected and, I'll say it again, sweet. In fact the whole novel is sweet but without, hats off here, becoming saccarine. A major achievement.
February 23, 2019
This has to be one of the strangest Science Fiction books I have ever read. I truly laughed and cried as I read it.
While Robert Olen Butler has written a lot of fiction and short stories, I was not only not familiar with his work I also did not know, when I picked out this book, that he wasn't a Sci Fi writer by trade. This last piece may be what allowed him to create such a unique story.
Mr. Spaceman is about an alien who has been observing the earth and its inhabitants for decades. His species, while having a mouth to sing and make sounds, does not speak but communicates with each other telepathically. Therefore Desi (no earth person can pronounce his real name so this is his nom de plume) has been trying to learn how words and language work so that he can communicate with us.
Along the way Desi meets Edna Bradshaw, a middle-aged Southern cosmologist, in a Walmart parking lot, falls in love, and brings her up to live with him in his invisible space ship as it orbits the earth.
In order to learn more about the human race, for decades Desi has been beaming various people up to his ship to study. He puts them into a trancelike state so that they can tell him about themselves, their feelings, their fears, and their language. He then returns them safely back to where he took them with no memory of their trip.
Desi's job is to appear at midnight at the millennium and announce his existence to the unsuspecting world. As the time grows closer for Desi to make his appearance on earth he gets more and more nervous about how he will be received. So, to do a bit of last minute cramming for the big test, Desi beams up a bus of twelve people on their way from Texas to a casino in Louisiana.
I've read a lot of science fiction and this is a scenario unlike any I have come upon before. As corny and sitcom as it sounds, Butler makes it work! His characters are believable, his writing engaging, and you really have no idea how it is going to end.
There are scenes in this book that are laugh-out-loud hysterical. There are scenes that are romantic and endearing. And there are scenes that rip the friendly facade off of the human face to reveal a frightened and dangerous species. Butler has written a story that takes you on a crazy roller coaster ride.
While I loved this book, I can see that it probably won't be everybody's cup of tea. However, if you are interested in trying something completely different Mr. Spaceman is a great ride to take.
While Robert Olen Butler has written a lot of fiction and short stories, I was not only not familiar with his work I also did not know, when I picked out this book, that he wasn't a Sci Fi writer by trade. This last piece may be what allowed him to create such a unique story.
Mr. Spaceman is about an alien who has been observing the earth and its inhabitants for decades. His species, while having a mouth to sing and make sounds, does not speak but communicates with each other telepathically. Therefore Desi (no earth person can pronounce his real name so this is his nom de plume) has been trying to learn how words and language work so that he can communicate with us.
Along the way Desi meets Edna Bradshaw, a middle-aged Southern cosmologist, in a Walmart parking lot, falls in love, and brings her up to live with him in his invisible space ship as it orbits the earth.
In order to learn more about the human race, for decades Desi has been beaming various people up to his ship to study. He puts them into a trancelike state so that they can tell him about themselves, their feelings, their fears, and their language. He then returns them safely back to where he took them with no memory of their trip.
Desi's job is to appear at midnight at the millennium and announce his existence to the unsuspecting world. As the time grows closer for Desi to make his appearance on earth he gets more and more nervous about how he will be received. So, to do a bit of last minute cramming for the big test, Desi beams up a bus of twelve people on their way from Texas to a casino in Louisiana.
I've read a lot of science fiction and this is a scenario unlike any I have come upon before. As corny and sitcom as it sounds, Butler makes it work! His characters are believable, his writing engaging, and you really have no idea how it is going to end.
There are scenes in this book that are laugh-out-loud hysterical. There are scenes that are romantic and endearing. And there are scenes that rip the friendly facade off of the human face to reveal a frightened and dangerous species. Butler has written a story that takes you on a crazy roller coaster ride.
While I loved this book, I can see that it probably won't be everybody's cup of tea. However, if you are interested in trying something completely different Mr. Spaceman is a great ride to take.
July 5, 2022
The concept was good and it had some high points, but a lot of it was really slow and repetitive.
May 18, 2017
A charming, bittersweet tale of a lone alien whose task it is to "interview" various abductees, in preparation for revealing his existence to mankind on the millennial celebration. He has taken on an Earth woman as wife, and she helps him do his last set of interviews of a group of people from a beamed aboard casino bus.
I enjoyed this book for its rich characters, including Desi the titular spaceman, who speaks largely in commercial phrases. But especially for his interviewees, who come from a diverse and interesting set of backgrounds - black, asian refugee, gay, communist, veteran, etc. And his very sweet wife Edna. Desi discovers how much of humanity revolves around yearning, and starts to take on some of the attributes of his new connections.
The only things I thought could have been better are his wife Edna, who although sweet and well drawn could have taken on a bigger role as a coprotagonist but was portrayed more as a sidekick, and also (minor spoiler) the ending, which although clever in its own way, involved too much manufactured danger and was somewhat of an anticlimax.
I enjoyed this book for its rich characters, including Desi the titular spaceman, who speaks largely in commercial phrases. But especially for his interviewees, who come from a diverse and interesting set of backgrounds - black, asian refugee, gay, communist, veteran, etc. And his very sweet wife Edna. Desi discovers how much of humanity revolves around yearning, and starts to take on some of the attributes of his new connections.
The only things I thought could have been better are his wife Edna, who although sweet and well drawn could have taken on a bigger role as a coprotagonist but was portrayed more as a sidekick, and also (minor spoiler) the ending, which although clever in its own way, involved too much manufactured danger and was somewhat of an anticlimax.
August 7, 2023
This book was full of so many wonderful creative ideas that captured humanity in a very specific lens, and used the structure of a fable to do so. I really liked how the author addressed the subject of yearning by having the spaceman gain human traits as the story goes on.
That being said, this book was very hard for me to get through. If I wasn’t stubborn to finish every book I start, I probably wouldn’t have finished this. It was very difficult for me to connect to the writing because it was from a spaceman attempting to mimic people from pop culture references. I also didn’t really find a lot of the interviews very interesting, especially because most of the time the characters would appear for a few pages only to not return for the rest of the story.
2.5 stars⭐️
That being said, this book was very hard for me to get through. If I wasn’t stubborn to finish every book I start, I probably wouldn’t have finished this. It was very difficult for me to connect to the writing because it was from a spaceman attempting to mimic people from pop culture references. I also didn’t really find a lot of the interviews very interesting, especially because most of the time the characters would appear for a few pages only to not return for the rest of the story.
2.5 stars⭐️
October 2, 2018
I Tried, It Was Trying
I took a break from trying at page 106. Took a nap. Then had a few more tries, dipping in at 175, then 200. Skipped for one final try at 224. Dang, Desi is just another artistic player at tye New Orleans Y2k New Year's party. Moving the to something else.
Don't ya just hate a disappointing, yet predictable, ending after a long slog?
I took a break from trying at page 106. Took a nap. Then had a few more tries, dipping in at 175, then 200. Skipped for one final try at 224. Dang, Desi is just another artistic player at tye New Orleans Y2k New Year's party. Moving the to something else.
Don't ya just hate a disappointing, yet predictable, ending after a long slog?
September 17, 2018
It seems a bit trivial to give this masterpIece a star rating but it's 5 stars to Desi. This book has haunted me for many years and I've just read it again. Heavy going in places but I am pleased to have met Mr.Spaceman.
February 27, 2019
A very interesting book. From my point of view, the story is really a mirror that reflects the true essence of people and how, regardless of our superficial differences, we are all flawed and damaged in very similar ways.
February 12, 2021
Well written
Author pulls together many of the phrases from media ads we have learned over the years and makes them into conversation. Very witty. His spaceman dialogues with the earthlings draws out our problems as a society. Well done.
Author pulls together many of the phrases from media ads we have learned over the years and makes them into conversation. Very witty. His spaceman dialogues with the earthlings draws out our problems as a society. Well done.
June 14, 2022
Absolutely loved this book, even if reading it more than 20 years after it was written. Funny yes, but so spot on about the human race at the millennium. And Louisiana, especially New Orleans, so much love for it.
May 31, 2019
Beautiful.
February 12, 2016
Desi sits in his spaceship, on the eve of the millennium, preparing to unveil his spaceman existence to a world that, despite his kind having studied us for decades, he barely comprehends. He finds the concept of language and words utterly alien (heh, see what I did there?) and tends to speak in strings of advertising slogans. He has a beloved wife he picked up from Earth, and a yellow cat, and now, one last task before the big reveal to humankind: He's abducted a bus full of tourists on their way to a casino, in order to learn about them. He's a Friendly Guy, a Regular Joe, despite being a skinny alien with cat eyes and 8 fingers on each hand. Desi thinks humanity can be summed up in one word: yearning, another thing he thinks is alien.
Yet this really isn't a sci-fi book at all.
It's a very beautifully written book, there are passages I just wanted to read and re-read and savour. I suspect one that you will either love or hate it though. It's a typical literary plot, as in, there really isn't one, or rather there is, but it's not the point. It's really an in depth exploration of the human condition, from one spaceman's point of view, and it covers a lot of ground: Racism, war, religion, history, parents and children and children and parents. A lot of ground indeed, for under 300 pages.
Anyway I'm just going to cop out on trying to sensibly review this: I liked it. A lot. And I highly recommend you check out the sample, you'll know within 2 pages if you hate it or not.
June 29, 2011
...this book is making me laugh out loud! The Spaceman remnamed DESI by his wife, has to learn all he can about earthlings. He ends up marrying Edna Bradshaw who he calls, Edna Bradshaw, every time he refers to her, a hairdresser from Louisiana. I can see why the author starts the book out with humor. The 'meat' of the book is the life-changing events of the persons that have come to be on his space ship for this time. And where did they come from? A bus driving to a casino! The events that these people share with the spaceman are serious themes any debate team could use as topics. I think I will read this book again in the future and in the interum I am looking forward to reading his Pulizer Prize winning book.
March 26, 2013
A bus is suddenly caught in the beam of an alien spacecraft and soon 12 people find themselves faced with Mr. Spaceman who wants to interview them before he reveals himself to the world News Year's Eve before the new millineum. The 12 guest soon discover that "Desi" is married to an earth woman and has a pet cat Eddie. This was an interesting read and we are very much in the mind of Mr. Spaceman. It's a short book, around 228 pages, but it sure shows us what, perhaps, an alien might find the human condition in should he reveal himself to the world. Many of the 12 share there thoughts with him so woven into the main store are little vinettes of human life and relationships. The ending was quite surprising. I only wish there was more.
August 9, 2015
This novel felt more like a cobbling together of various character sketches that were languishing somewhere in Butler's desk/hard drive. Of course it was impeccably written, but the ultimate premise is so silly that it was hard for me to take seriously even some of the more weighty topics broached by the text, such as racism and genocide, as well as the futility of human existence. It was a fun read, but I don't know that I'd want to reread it, nor can I think of anyone in particular to whom I'd recommend it...
November 12, 2013
I wanted to like this book. In the end it felt too contrived a mechanism to tell a collection of short stories. The Spaceman/Jesus metaphor was a little too over the top, especially considering how the Spaceman ends up. If religion were relegated to a back street in the French District of New Orleans, then maybe the satire would have struck home, but it isn't. I rather liked Desi (the compassionate Spaceman), but the book never quite came to life for me.
September 5, 2007
Enticing idea to have an alien visitor assimilating all of our (mostly) ridiculous pop culture icons and tendencies as a means of archiving human existence. But a bit too predictable and while it had some great, outrageously fun passages they were too few and far between. No spoiler entry here. You may or may not be pleased to reach the end and discover the payoff.
August 7, 2009
The main character is an alien from space, whose mission is to reveal himself to the population of the earth at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000. Over the years, he has kidnapped and studied many earthlings, and has even established a relationship with an earth woman. During the evening of December 31, 1999, he hosts a dinner party with some of his detainees on his spaceship.
July 20, 2012
Can we say "weird"? About one of a group of aliens who have been studying Earth and its human culture for about 100 years. This fellow is on a deadline to inform humans that they are around because (I think) their home planet is dying and they want to resettle here. Anyway, he's married to a human, which causes some complications. The ended was very unexpected. Interesting.
January 8, 2008
Some interesting characters and a couple of compelling monologues. But the overall story just wasn't enough to make me care about the titular hero. It wasn't bad at all. Just nothing special.
Still, seeing as it cost me 20 cents a library sale, I can't complain much.
Still, seeing as it cost me 20 cents a library sale, I can't complain much.
September 13, 2016
inspired
June 3, 2012
Not a book I would generally pick up but it was a book club choice. The story was odd and it was obvious that the author had an agenda.
April 8, 2015
Horrible book! I couldn't finish it. Not only was the story boring and humorless but there was endless vulgar language. The profanity was more than I could stand and I deleted it from my device.
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