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    First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think
    Unavailable
    First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think
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    First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think
    Ebook345 pages5 hours

    First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think

    By Evan Mandery

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “What a hilarious ride—the übersurreal meets The Daily Show.”
     —Tim Dorsey, author of Nuclear Jellyfish

     

    In the bestselling and rightfully cult-inspiring tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams comes First Contact—an hysterically funny satire about Presidential politics and intergalactic misunderstanding. This smart and biting novel by Evan Mandery—an author equally well-versed in the lives of the U.S. presidents, existential philosophy, and the Simpsons—offers much food for intellectual thought along with an all-you-can-eat buffet of laughs, as it chronicles the first close encounters between earthlings and a vastly superior extraterrestrial race from Rigel-Rigel. As the subtitle of First Contact so presciently informs us, “It’s Later than You Think.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 26, 2010
    ISBN9780061966187
    Unavailable
    First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think
    Author

    Evan Mandery

    Evan Mandery is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He is the author of two works of non-fiction and two previous novels, ‘Dreaming of Gwen Stefani’ and ‘First Contact’.

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    Reviews for First Contact

    3.5/5

    29 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Aliens have contacted the Earth, warning that we may be on a course for self-destruction, but the President of the United States is more concerned with the way his underwear keeps bunching up. Meanwhile, an alien physicist has calculated that the universe is about to end soon, which nobody is much concerned about at all. Also, there are alien PTA meetings, some insurance-scam car crashes, a boy-meets-girl story, and a lot of philosophizing. The author interrupts the story frequently to talk about himself and about what he's writing and to offer up various interesting facts, some of which are true. There's a odd obsession with raccoons, Chocodiles, and Sting (the musician). And most of the characters are, more or less, named after characters from The Simpsons.It is, in other words, a weird, wacky mess of a book. As such, it works better than you might expect; lots of stuff that could have just felt ridiculous and annoying is at least moderately clever and funny. But it never completely clicked with me, and maybe halfway though the book, it suddenly occurred to me why. Mandery is trying very, very hard to be Kurt Vonnegut (whom he actually name-checks repeatedly throughout the book). Or something like Kurt Vonnegut mixed with a touch of Douglas Adams and doused in a sauce of pop culture references. And, well, I approve of the literary taste that displays, just as I approve of the author's musical taste. (Hey, I like Sting!) But trying to be Vonnegut is pretty much inevitably doomed to failure. I'm honestly not sure how Vonnegut managed to be Vonnegut. And Mandery, although he has enough talent to mostly keep this insanity of a novel together, just doesn't have Vonnegut's depth, or Vonnegut's bite.
    • 4/5
      Clever, witty and hilarious. I haven't read something quite so entertaining in awhile. The book did slow down towards the end which was a bit disappointing but still kept it's charm.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good. Funny, if a bit too Hitchhiker's-y. Likable characters, relatively creative. Wouldn't want to reread it, but it was a decent way to spend a short amount of time.
    • 5/5
      I picked this book up on a whim. It looked like it could be fun, and it was.The story is of first contact with aliens and earth. The aliens want to meet the President of the USA. Of course he is a shallow, selfish, dingbat who believes in god and guns and doubts science. His handlers try to minimize the damage his stupidity does generally, but are in over their heads with actual aliens.The story is told from the Earth side by his aide, Ralph Bailey, and from the alien side by the Chief Negotiator and his wife (at home). The aliens are very laid-back, though they respond in-kind to violence. Ralph meets a young woman and falls in love. He tries to manage his courtship while trying to keep the stupidity of the President from killing them all. He also has to deal with manipulation and politics from those on the staff who see a way to use the situation to build up their power base.The Negotiator has problems with his wife and her having an accident and losing her license. The wife is trying to deal with their son who is doing poorly in school. She then becomes embroiled in a controversy about a teacher who is telling the students that the universe is going to end much sooner than expected. The parents don't dispute the science, just that teaching it to their children might frighten them.On one level it was a charming lighthearted romp based in absurdity. On another level it was quite apt satire of the various ridiculous attitudes and actions we have adopted in the modern world. It was the reference to the 'Parrot Sketch' that stole my heart though.
    • 4/5
      This is a very funny, quirkly little book that defies any one genre I could think of. For the record, I do not like science fiction, political books and could take or leave satire. This is a combination of all three and I loved it! It's a wildly tangential plot, but basically it is a story of the first alien contact with the United States, with a president who is a silly combination of the worst traits of Busch and maybe Clinton. The main character is Ralph, the President's attache and we follow him through the bizarre world of basically being a runner for the most important man in the country. While it's surely liberal in its approach, really, the humor is in politics itself, and human beings, the absolutely weird things we do. The aliens are much like us, so their worlds have the same petty concerns, e.g., teenager doing poorly in physics class, a guy who scams insurance policies by intentionally getting people to "rear end" him and making marriages work. Anyway, all the characters are great and in a unique twist, the author actually works himself into the story. While the book is hysterical on ponderings regarding such daily lifestyle things as Sting, the significance of "dying words", racoons that take up residence in homes and won't leave, food at the PTA and what constitutes "extra meat" on a Subway type sandwich ... there are also some very wonderful things said about living in the now and how dangerously close we come to detroying the world we love, the people on it and the heart of humans, in career and desire from the heart. I know it's an odd review, but this is an odd book, but in the very best of ways. I highly recommend things for something that definitely will take you off the beaten path, make you ponder, then laugh (hard), then share with your friends Oscar Wilde's dying words ("Either the wallpaper goes, or I do" - d. 1900).