From Library Journal
Mark Linn-Baker delivers a first-rate performance in this uproarious take on life inside the Beltway. John Oliver Banion, pompous Washington, DC, television talk-show host and columnist, is very proud of his powerful position on the social "A-list." Even the President of the United States must endure Banion's barbs on air and then attend a dinner party at his home later that week. However, Banion's urbane life is turned upside down when he is unceremoniously abducted and probed by aliens at his posh country club. What Banion doesn't know is that the "aliens" are really government agents who work for Majestic 12, an agency that fakes abductions in order to maintain public support for defense and space programs. Vastly different from Majestic 12's usual abductees, who are "just credible enough to spread the word but not so respectable that their testimony would precipitate urgent search for the truth," Banion galvanizes UFO believers and launches a crusade for government hearings into the alien situation. This well-written political and social satire from the author of Wry Martinis is highly recommended for all popular collections.ABeth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
...Buckley's satire is ... poised--always sharp but never sour.
From Kirkus Reviews
Buckley fils's fourth comic novel (following the riotous Thank You for Smoking, 1994) once again eviscerates contemporary economic-political phenomena, this time in the twin forms of a complacent TV talk-show host and of a secretive government agency that fakes alien abductions to encourage popular support for funding space exploration and Pentagon overkill. When Washington notable John Oliver Banion is kidnaped by the eponymous nonearthlings (who are in fact cheesily garbed operatives of ``MJ-12''), he believes, and spreads the gospel of extraterrestrial visitation among his devoted viewers, with imaginative and timely mock-catastrophic consequences. Buckley's eye for paramilitary and media-driven nonsense remains keen, and the book hums with hilarious one-liners. But neither the embattled Banion nor any of its lesser personalities remotely resembles a developed character. The dizzily mixed result isn't much of a novel, though its a highly amusing and likable entertainment. (Book-of-the- Month/QPB selections) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Little Green Men is a delicious, ingenious treat. Christopher Buckley is an author of many talents, with a range of abilities that includes a penetrating comic intelligence and a deft flair for storytelling that makes this novel a truly joyous page-turner."
--Joseph Heller
What distinguished literary critics are saying about Christopher Buckley
"One of the best and surest political humorists in America."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"One of the rarest specimens, the authentically comic writer."
--The Boston Globe
"One of the best social satirists of his generation."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A superb writer of politically incorrect satire."
--Entertainment Weekly
"Washington's pre-eminent satirist."
--The Washington Monthly
"A smoother, funnier and more refined heir apparent to Art Buchwald's throne."
--Publishers Weekly
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Inside Flap
istopher Buckley published one of the most acclaimed and successful comic novels of the decade, Thank You for Smoking. Now Buckley returns to the strange land of Washington, D.C., in Little Green Men, a millennial comedy of manners about aliens and pundits . . . and how much they have in common.
The reluctant hero of this hilarious novel is John Oliver Banion, a stuffy Washington talk-show host, whose privileged life is thrown into upheaval when aliens abduct him from his exclusive country-club golf course.
But were his gray-skinned captors aliens . . . or something far more sinister? After Banion is abducted again--this time in Palm Springs--he believes he has been chosen by the extraterrestrials to champion the most important cause of the millennium, and he embarks on a crusade, appearing before a convention of UFO believers and demanding that Congress and the White
From the Back Cover
The strange land of Washington, D.C., is teeming with aliens, politicians, and other bizarre life-forms. Beltway insider and stuffy talk show host John Oliver Banion finds his privileged life turned topsy-turvy when he is abducted by aliens from his exclusive country-club golf course. When he is abducted a second time, he believes he has found his true calling and, in the most pasionate crusade of his life, demands that Congress and the White House seriously investigate the existence of extraterrestrials and UFOs. Friends and family, meanwhile, urge Banion to seek therapy before his reputation is ruined for good.
A comic tour de force from "one of the best and surest political humorists in America" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), Little Green Men is an uproacious comedy of manners that proves once and for all that the truth is out there. Way out there.
About the Author
Christopher Buckley is a novelist and editor of Forbes FYI magazine. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two children and dog, Duck. In 1998, he was inducted into the Légion d'honneur by the president of the Republic of France for "extraordinary contributions to French culture," despite the fact that his French is barely sufficient to order a meal in a restaurant. He has been an adviser to every president since William Howard Taft, a remarkable achievement, since he was born in 1952. His next book, a refutation of the theories of the physicist Stephen Hawking, will be published this fall by Princeton University Press.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"Ten seconds."
John O. Banion stared unblinkingly into the TV camera's cyclops eye, keeping his famous cool under the baking glare of the Videssence lights. It pleased him that he was more at ease than the person seated opposite him, who as it happened was the most powerful man in the world.
"Five seconds." The technician counted down with an outstretched hand. With his huge headset, he could have been a crewman on an aircraft carrier signaling for the launch of an
F-14.
"Three, two . . ."
The theme music was cued, a variation on a Handel trumpet voluntary with echoes of Aaron Copland. The TV critic for The Washington Post had called it "Fanfare for the Self-Important Man." Still, nothing like a few bars of brass to get the Establishment's hemoglobin pumping on Sunday mornings as it sipped its third cup of coffee and scanned the newspapers for mentions of itself.
"Sunday . . ."
A satisfying opener, implying, as it did ownership of the entire day, and the Sabbath at that. The announcer's voice was familiar. It had taken four meetings between Banion, his producers, and the sponsor, Ample Ampere, to settle on it. Ample Ampere had wanted James Earl Jones, but Banion said that he couldn't hear the voice of James Earl Jones without thinking of Darth Vader, hardly an appropriate tone setter for such a high-level show as his. Ampere countered with Walter Cronkite. No, no, said Banion, Cronkite, the beloved former TV anchorman, was too avuncular, too upbeat. The voice must have such gravity as to suggest that if you missed the program, you were not a serious person. Only one would do--George C. Scott, the voice of General Patton.
". . . an exploration of tomorrow's issues, with today's leaders. And now . . ."--Banion had dictated the slight pause in the manner of Edward R. Murrow's wartime "This . . . is London" broadcasts--"your host . . . John Oliver Banion." The Post critic had written: "Drumroll, enter praetorians, household cavalry, concubines, elephants, rhinos, captured slaves, eunuchs, and other assorted worshipers."
Banion looked owlishly into the lens through his collegiate tortoiseshell eyeglasses. He seemed perpetually on the verge of smiling, without ever giving in to the impulse. He was in his late forties, but could have been any age. He had looked this way since his second year at Princeton. He had a round face that was handsome in a bookish sort of way. His graying blond hair was unstylishly cut, on purpose. He disdained salon haircuts as marks of unseriousness.
"Good morning," Banion said to the camera. "Our guest today is the president of the United States. Thank you for being with us this morning."
"My pleasure," lied the president. He had loathed John O. Banion ever since Banion had corrected him on a point of history at a White House dinner, in front of the French president. He would much--much--rather have stayed at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountain Park outside Washington, on this Sunday morning. He chafed at being told by his press secretary that Banion insisted on a live interview in the studio. What was the point of being the most powerful man on earth if you had to grovel before these assholes, just because they had their own TV--
"Sir, it's the top-rated weekend show. And it looks like he's going to be moderating the debates this fall."
"All right, but you tell him, no commercials. I won't sit there twiddling my thumbs while they break for commercials every five minutes. It's unpresidential."
"Mr. President," Banion said, "I want to ask you why, in light of your administration's below-par performance in a number of areas, you haven't fired at least two-thirds of your cabinet, but first . . ."
It was a trademark Banion opener: establish the guest's inadequacy, then move along to the even more pressing issue. The president maintained glacial equanimity. For this he had gotten up early on Sunday and helicoptered all the way back to Washington. The press secretary would suffer.
". . . let me ask you about something else. We have a report that NASA, the space agency, is planning to advance the launch date of the final stage of the space station Celeste to right before the presidential election this fall. Would you call that a triumph of American aerospace engineering, or of politics? You can take credit for both, if you'd like."
The president smiled, suppressing his desire to pick up the water pitcher and smash it against the forehead of this supercilious twerp. But inside his brain alarms were sounding like those on a depth-charged submarine. How did Banion know about the launch date? They'd gone to pains to put in so many buffers between the White House and NASA on this exquisitely delicate matter that no one would be able to trace the decision to the Oval Office.
"John," he began, in his slow, overly patient tone of voice that suggested he wasn't sure English was your first language, "the credit for Celeste's dazzling success has to go, first and foremost, to hundreds and thousands of men and women who have worked their hearts out on this project from the very beginning. . . ."
Banion looked over his glasses in the manner of a disappointed schoolteacher and jotted notes on his clipboard. He did this not because any of the drivel exgurgitating like foam from the presidential mouth warranted recording but because it made his interviewees nervous.
". . . to make sure that America will not only be number one here on earth but number one out . . . there."
"Before we return to whether the timing of the launch was politically manipulated," said Banion, "let's talk for a moment about the wisdom of spending so many billions of dollars on a space station. So far all it seems to have accomplished is to provide a platform for studying the effects of weightlessness on copulating fruit flies."
"That's--"
"Three and a half years ago, only days after a disastrous and, if I may, ill-advised military operation in North Korea, you gave a speech at an aerospace plant in the Mojave Desert in California in which you called for completing an orbital space station. You called this 'an urgent national priority.' Some cynical voices at the time suggested that, like President Kennedy, who announced the man-on-the-moon initiative right after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, you were trying to get people's minds off the Korean debacle. But leave that aside for a moment--"
"Let me--"
"If I may? And leave aside the fact that Celeste's biggest contractors are in California and Texas, two states you almost lost four years ago and which you desperately need to win this time. Let me ask you, after four years of cost overruns that would have made the emperor Caligula blush crimson, what does the nation have to show for this celestial boondoggle, aside from three-point-four-million-dollar zero-gravity coffeemakers and one-point-eight-million-dollar toilets?"
"With all due respect, I'm sure there were some people in the court of King Ferdinand and Isabella who objected to the cost of the facilities on Columbus's boats."
"I don't recall that there were facilities on the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María."
"My point is that you can't really put a price on the future."
"With all due respect, whenever a politician says you can't put a price on something, you can be sure it's going to be a whopper. The fact is that you can put a price on anything. In this case, it's twenty-one billion dollars and counting, as they say at Cape Canaveral. This is a huge sum of money. What's more, it's being said that your reelection committee should report this as a campaign donation by the American people."
"Fine," said the president, "but let me tell you what I hear when I travel around this country in support of Celeste. I hear people saying, 'This is excellent. This is something we can all be proud of.' "
"Fine. So what are the American people getting for their billions?"
The president pressed play and, straining against the weariness of reciting it all for the two hundredth time, began to tick off the bountiful spin-offs that Celeste would bring to earth: glorious advances in--you name it--machinery lubricants, long-distance telephone networks, sewage treatment, robotic wheelchairs, insulin pumps, pacemakers, research on cures for osteoporosis, diabetes, uh, radiation-blocking sunglasses, energy-conserving air-conditioning . . . too numerous to mention, really.
Banion listened to this life-enhancing litany with the chin-quivering air of a man at pains to stifle a yawn. Sensing that he had better come up with something more millennial than Celeste's contribution to the field of ultrasound scanning, the president gave a gripping description of what the AOR--atmospheric ozone replenishment--module, part of the launch package, would accomplish once it became operational, namely squirting ozone back into the atmosphere to cover the O-Hole, which now stretched from the Falklands to Madagascar, wreaking havoc on plankton and emperor penguins alike.
Still Banion looked faint from boredom. The president dragged out the LAWSI module, the ultimate--if slippery--argument for Celeste's relevance. If in doubt, refer to the large asteroid warning system indicator, which theoretically could detect whether some astral death star this way was heading. The top people at NASA and the Pentagon had been cautioning him from becoming too evangelical on this particular aspect of Celeste. It was tricky business, getting the citizenry in a lather over the prospect of death-by-gigantic-meteor, especially this close to the millennium, when every fruitcake in the pantry was screaming Apocalypse.
"But what," Banion said, "are we supposed to do if we find ou...
Hollywood and Washington never fail to spark satire. Wonder why? A feared TV commentator loses all credibility after his alien abduction. However, the little green men come from a rogue government agency, not outer space, as part of an ongoing, 50-year-old hoax. Complications, needless to say, ensue. The excellence of this tape stems from the playable text and felicitous casting. Possessing just the right wise-guy quality, narrator Mark Linn-Baker always sounds like he's on the verge of laryngitis. What range he has he uses well. What he lacks, he makes up for in focus and in the fun he shares with listeners. The producers use a pinch of musical underscoring--a minor distraction in an otherwise immensely listenable offering. Y.R. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
