The Butterfly Kid

Greenwich Village Trilogy #1

by Chester Anderson

This is the first novel in the "Greenwich Village Trilogy." Anderson's semi-autobiographical novel has a main character named after himself, and a supporting character named after his roommate at the time. Aliens are supplying a new kind of drug, known as "Reality Pills," which cause your LSD hallucinations to become physically real.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Aliens, Speculative Fiction, Drugs, Novels

190 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Chester Valentine John Anderson was a novelist, poet, and editor in the underground press.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester...

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chester Anderson’s The Butterfly Kid is listed as the number one weirdest science fiction novel ever written. With the likes of such bizarre sf whoppers as Dr. Bloodmoney, Ubic, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer, A Voyage to Arcturus, Panda Ray, Flesh and Gold, Dhalgren, Time Snake and Superclown, to name just several (I’m sure avid sf fans could list many other out of sight titles), that’s really saying a mouthful.

I suspect The Butterfly Kid got the nod for its combination of hallucinations from acid trips materializing to create pandemonium all through New York City, giant blue alien lobsters speaking impeccable English, and a torture machine that forces its victims to watch the complete adventures of Donald Duck on a wide screen with full sensory participation.

And that’s just for starters. Once this groovy (THE all-purpose adjective - keep in mind the novel published in 1967), supercool Greenwich Village hippie hipster narrator gets going, there's no stopping him. The Butterfly Kid makes for one fabulously fun read with the following flashing, swirling strobe light highlights:

CHESTER: None other than author/musician/hip philosopher Chester Anderson is the narrator and main star of this literary show. That’s right, Chester wrote himself into his own novel. Interestingly, Chester’s observations on human nature prove key to his understanding the ways he can take action to deal with menacing outer space aliens.

One of my favorite Chester quotes from when he realizes the orchestra playing Handel's Water Music behind him in the hallway is his own personally drug induced hallucination: “Every now and then a false note rang out through the otherwise exceptional ensemble. Not a wrong note, mind you, just a slightly out of tune one. Bassoon, from the sound of it. This bugged me mainly because, the orchestra being merely an external figment of my own imagination, the false notes were my fault. The implications were humiliating.”

THE DUDES: Chester also wrote good friend Michael along with a few other of his pals into the novel. Michael is one of the heroes in this tale (once he roused himself from snoring in his sleep, that is). Also worth noting, Michael J. Kurland is a prolific author of science fiction and wrote The Unicorn Girl, sequel to Butterfly. The third volume in this modish Greenwich Village Trilogy is The Probability Pad by T.A. Waters.



THE BUTTERFLY KID HIMSELF: Fresh from Fort Worth, Texas, young guitar playing Sean manifests all varieties and sizes of butterflies right there in broad daylight in Washington Square Park. Turns out he isn’t a magician; he dropped a super colossal LSD-type hallucinogenic “reality pill.” Too bad the John Voight character also fresh from the state of Texas didn’t likewise have "reality pills" courtesy of aliens in the 1969 film, Midnight Cowboy - if he did, he and Ratso Rizzo could have had some real fun in the Big Apple.



HORNEY HONEY: Of course, being a hippie in Greenwich Village involves getting nude, getting stoned and having loads of great sex. Sativa is a singer in Chester’s rock-n-roll group The Tripouts. Sativa is lovin’ the sex with her new sweetie pie – none other than the aforementioned tall, handsome, blonde Sean who crashes in Chester’s pad. Chester figures all those wild sounds Sativa is making in the next bedroom with Sean are good for her singing voice. That’s the way to put a positive spin on it, Chester!

STRANGERS FROM A STRANGE PLANET: As the book's author, our main man shifts his imagination to overdrive in coming up with those aliens who plot to take over the world with the help of "reality pills." Not little green men from Mars but ten foot lobsters who can change colors, from blue to pale green to iridescent. And the way the head lobster speaks, I bet he has a British accent.

THE BAD GUY: There’s Laszlo Scott the poet wannabe who is in league with the aliens. Our Greenwich Village author gives Laszlo the ultimate wicked quality for the villain – he stinks like a skunk on a bad day. And Laszlo’s loft looks like a trash heap with loads of misspelled anarchist slogans scrawled on the walls. Laszlo’s redeeming qualities are . . . well, sorry to say, he has none. The dude changed his name from an all-American kinda name to Laszlo Scott when he came to NYC cause he thought it was cool. If Laszlo only knew his ultimate fate, I suspect he would have spent his time bathing and reading quality literature rather than planning the conquest of the human race. What some no-talent poets won't do to grab the spotlight.

SAVING THE WORLD: : Would you believe the climax to this hippie novel features dozens of groovy, far-out technicolor hallucinations creating an upbeat 1960s version of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds? Dig it, baby, with the future of the human race on the line, Chester and his band of stoned longhairs come through with flying Peter Max psychedelic colors.



FUN FACTS: Chester's hippie bus in The Bufferfly Kid (see below quote) predates that famous bus of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters by exactly one year since Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was published in 1968. Hippie buses and vans were the thing back in those swingin' sixties. A second fun fact: although Chester sets his novel in the late 1970s, the language, attitudes, fashion and culture all belong uniquely to the sixties.



"That was our most treasured possession, that bus. It was an old Army surplus ground-effect troop carrier, made in 1969 or so and obsolete before delivery, that we'd converted into a mobile rock-n-roll dream pad. It could seat sixteen and sleep dozens, depending on how friendly they were, and was equipped with hot and cool running everything. . . . We toured the Midwest in it last summer." - Chester Anderson, The Butterfly Kid

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Merry lobstery Christmas! Come take a Reality Pill and make all your trippiest dreams come true!

Or rather, sidle up to your best buds, take as much LSD or tokes that you like, and welcome the alien invasion, man. Don't forget to jam and rap! This is gonna be one wildly imaginative ride. :)

Welcome to the hippiest days of NYC when walking hallucinations roam the streets or transform them, where milling crowds take the drugs that let their imaginations change reality, where six-foot pacifist lobsters in Jesus Robes enlist a devoted hippie pacifist to fight their wars for them.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Honestly, I've read a good number of mind-blowingly imaginative books that revel in the strange and the wonderful and just don't care whether or not you're on any mind-altering substances. Hell, I've written a few books like that, myself. But after all this time and a rather huge bibliography to draw from, I can honestly rank this one up there with the very best. :)

Context is important. This came out at the height or the very end of the beginning of the LSD heyday in 1967. Chester Anderson more than capitalizes on the movement... he puts himself right in the tale. As a character. With reality slipping all the time.

This is a real trip and a half to read and imagine. I bet he had a fantastic time writing it. :) It takes courage, strength, and fortitude to let quite this much of yourself hang out for the world to see.

Of course, I really should mention that it would work just as well to read this in today's age for one good reason. Comics and superheroes play a huge part. Context-wise, back then, it was usual for kids and a very select number of the counterculture to still love Marvel. Not like today where the love has gone totally mainstream.

So, for the day, it's not exactly normal to read about dropping acid and going totally green-lantern in the middle of NYC. I'm a huge PKD fan, but even he never pulled something quite this extroverted. :)

Merry trippy Christmas! :)

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read. It reminded me of my teen years, and walking and driving around the city, doing things teens do (nuff said about that).

The author writes with quick, quirky humor.

Anderson puts himself in the story – metafiction. The characters take “reality pills,” an interesting concept, where hallucinations produced by the mind become reality until the drug wears off. It reminds me of Stay-Puff in Ghostbusters but in a mass quantity and a large population of creators.

The climax hinges on a battle based on the ability to hallucinate reality, which gives a new definition to “psychological warfare.” It read like a humorous B-rated movie.

The quick wit reminds me of David Gerrold in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, who wrote for Star Trek (including “The Trouble with Trebles”) and “The Martian Child.” In his short stories he uses this kind of humor, which I enjoy.

He also reminds me of P.K. Dick with the weirdness but lighthearted, not so deep and serious.

The book read like an acid trip (I assume, based on insinuations in the narrative), which I have never personally experienced.

Thank you to my dear Goodreads friend for sending me this pleasurable read!

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Times have certainly changed. This book was written back in the days when spiking your roommate's orange juice with LSD could be considered just a practical joke, instead of what it is today: a criminal offense. On the other hand, in those days publicly smoking pot could net you some serious jail time, while today the green stuff is legal in various states. Drugs of all kinds were perceived by many as new, exciting and fun, instead of being the daily bread of their grandchildren who, in the new millenium, think nothing of putting their elementary kids on antidepressants, or taking them themselves for years on end.

A companion piece to The Unicorn Girl, I found Anderson's volume of the Greenwich Village Trilogy better written and more engaging than Kurland's attempt. Huge blue lobsters from an alien galaxy are bent on taking over the Earth. It's up to Anderson, Kurland, and their flower-powered friends to save the planet, the day and the New York City water supply. Unfortunately, I have yet to unearth a copy of The Probability Pad, not even online, so I'll never know how it all turned out.


(By the way--ever notice how all extraterrestrials refer to our planet as Terra, in every sci-fi movie, book or comic you've ever seen? Do you suppose other life forms speak Latin?)

[DoctorM · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange and clever and funny little novel from that lost (or just maybe wholly imaginary) world of Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s. It has...psychedelics, aliens, hippies, a hovercraft bus, chocolate egg creams, and Handel's "Water Music". (Yes, I read this as a junior high kid and wanted to go to Anderson's Greenwich Village--- and I desperately wanted to try a chocolate egg cream) It all comes off a bit precious now, but it does hold up as a sci-fi comedy and as a memory of Other Days. If you can find a copy, read it and laugh aloud and remember when St. Marks was...groovy.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it first appeared, this was a wonderfully imaginative counter-culture new-wave vision of sf, with lots of humor and sly observations of traditional tropes of the genre. It had a terrific cover by Gray Morrow, and was just the thing to read in your beanbag chair under your groovy peace and love posters with The Doors cranking on the turntable. It's now interesting primarily from a historical perspective, but holds up remarkably well.

[prcardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Storyline: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 4/5
World: 2/5

The Butterfly Kid is best appreciated by approaching it as a work of fiction with some science fiction trappings rather than as a work of coming from the science fiction genre. It is a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. kind of novel, little concerned with plot and more interested in tone. The foreword gives a succinct preview of Anderson’s tone. It is worth quoting in full.

I always feel vaguely cheated by first-person novels wherein the name of the narrator is not the name of the author. This is irrational, but there it is. I never claimed to be particularly rational.

Therefore, I made myself a character in this book, using my own real name (with, of course, my permission). Having gone thus far, I modeled the character of my friend, roommate and manager on my real-life friend, roommate, and (quondam) manager Michael Kurland (with whom I collaborated on Ten Years to Doomsday--advert.), using, with his permission, his real name.

Both of these characters, however, are purely fictitious. They are only based on us; they are not in reality us. All other persons, all places, situations and events, are 100 percent fictitious (would you believe 95 percent?), and any resemblance to real persons, places et cetera is both coincidental and ridiculous.

This is especially true of Greenwich Village, where most of this story happens. Do not be deceived: there is no Greenwich Village. Never was.

Pure fiction, all of it. Ask anyone who’s lived there.

Chester Anderson

And there is more where that come from. I kind of hated this but not so much to blind me to its merits. I hated it because it is one of those jovial drug-binging environments where the primary preoccupation for characters is the escape from reality. I also hated it because it was basically one long inside joke. Anderson draws in his friends and their favorite hangout spots and delights in reminiscing (and exaggerating) their antics. My most heartfelt hatred for this book comes because it is so eminently smug. Our author thinks he and his cohort so very cool, is completely aware of how much of a spectacle they put on, and fully enjoys performing life as art. There is a thick layer of self-deprecation overlaying this smugness, however. Anderson is at least able to see himself and his friends the way outsiders do, aware of what makes them deserving of derision. One cannot help but grinning at a lot of the scenes, despite of—or perhaps because of—their ridiculousness. Anderson is also regularly witty, with a biting humor the complements the tale, the environment, and the characters. The whole thing reaches that level of awfulness where different standards of evaluation and appreciation have to be used. So, I kind of hated it, but it sure was a spectacle.

This would have made for a cult classic if filmed as an adult-themed cartoon in the 1960s and meant to be viewed while on LSD.

[Lucy Batson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly psychedelic look at what happens with giant blue lobsters distribute drugs in Greenwich Village that are a lot wilder than what was currently circulating. Chester Anderson's only major work aged surprisingly well given the very specific setting it occurs in.

[Leftjab · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great literature by any means, but kinda zany and fun, especially if you don’t get annoyed by the late 60s hippie vibe. Oh it’s here. Big time.

I did not live through the 60s, but there seems to be three distinct periods: The pre-60s, right up to JFK’s assassination, which was a world of folk singers, beat poetry, and post-bop jazz. You know, when jazz stopped being dance music and became art. Then you have the 60s proper, where the Beats of the 50s discovered LSD, Ken Kesey drove the magic bus, the whole thing climaxing with the Summer of love in 67, Sgt Pepper and the like. Then around 69, the optimism wore off (though Woodstock was in 69, that was the last stand in a way, well symbolized by Jimi playing the National Anthem to a dwindling crowd of mud-soaked hippies probably still tripping), the media went from SDS and student protests to serial killers and drug addicts. Hopes were assassinated. The cities declined, the Beatles got super ironic and then split up, and we’ve descended into the nice comfortable suburban commodified haze of the 70s-80s-90s up through September 11th.

I read a book about the freak folk movement that traced its origins in 60s folk – not the Inside Llewyn Davis, Dylan before going electric, Dave Van Ronk/Greenwich Village Coffeehouse folk but the later hippie folk of Incredible String Band, The Fugs, and Pearls Before Swine.

I bring up Pearls Before Swine because their (his) first album – One Nation Underground, from 1967 – feels to me a bit like The Butterfly Kid. I think Tom Rapp was still a teenager when he got a bunch of hippies into the studio and came up with One Nation Underground – a collection of earnest, silly, and a little ripe-on-the-vine songs (there’s one where they spell out F-U-C-K using Morse Code!). Tom Rapp would go on to record several more albums that would grow in stature and maturity (I like The Use of Ashes) before Rapp followed his left-leaning inclinations and became a successful Civil Rights Attorney.

Anyway, that sense of innocence and hippie know-how permeates The Butterfly Kid (which seems to be set in a then-future 1970 though it came out in 1967.) which is fun, light (though the nonchalance with which all of the characters discuss LSD seemed a bit off to me), and sometimes makes little sense, but when the basic plot involves blue crab aliens trying to dose the Croton Reservoir with a powerful hallucinogen, and it’s up to our author and his friends (all on various substances) to stop them, you aren’t going here for a deep meditation on life, the universe, what have you.

If the 60s hep-speak doesn’t completely turn you off, then it’s a worthwhile curio. Don’t say you haven’t been warned, though it is a groovy trip, daddy-o.

[Caseyazalea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A group of tripped-out hippies in the flower-power heyday of Greenwich Village are all that stands between Earth and an invasion of polite but sadistic alien blue lobsters. Chester and his two best hippie buddies (three real guys, the other two published sequels to this book) lead the motley crew of pacifists against the alien invasion.

An underground, little-known classic of the late 60's-early 70's era of hippies and cheap paperback science fiction. Original cover price on my rare, second-hand copy is a whopping 60 cents. And am I ever happy to have stumbled upon this copy in a used paperback book store, because it's out of print and apparently hard to find now.

This was a re-read; I think the last time I read it was in the early 80's. I love this little book to pieces. Hippies are my spirit animal, mythical beings that I aspire to become more like (but never will, because, among other things, they tend to be social and communal by nature, and I am not either of those things). In spite of its inherent early-70's sexism, I loved hanging out with these guys, and I would like to live in their world, at least for a while. Minus the 7-foot-tall blue lobsters, of course. But that's nothing a few hippies toked up on Reality Pills can't handle.

Groovy.

[Glenn Amspaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the going gets weird, the weird save the world. This is such a fun what-if from from the Summer of Love. There's a beautiful sweetness to it, even as the characters and writers know the summer will end. I was lucky; my high school library had a copy. Looking at the library number stamped on the card (early 80's tech), it was apparent I was the only one reading this book, several times a year. Was bummed at my 10 year reunion: someone had already stolen it from the library.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been years since I read this quirky book, but thought of it today while reading some list of the 100 best SF books. The Butterfly Kid was not on the list, but it got me thinking of my personal favorites and here we are. I have fond memories of it and need to hunt down a copy and read it again. See if nostalgia and reality match up.

[Margaret Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in the early 70's at the height of sex n drugs n rock& roll and loved it -- not sure how, forty years later, I would feel about it. It suddenly pooped into my head this morning - and I googled "book with giant blue lobsters giving humans LSD" and here it is!!!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greenwich Village in the '60s, man, what a time and place. Coffee houses and folk music, the era of Dylan. The openness of summer, the nation at a crossroads. Ambitious kids with pacifism in their hearts and transcendence in their veins. Remember that time a dozen of them had to fight back against giant lobster aliens plotting world domination with hallucinogenic "Reality Pills"?

No, you weren't there for that? Me neither.

Whether you find that era a fun historical study, or you flat-out romanticize it, or you really were there, or none of those apply and you just appreciate a good change of scenery - The Butterfly Kid will pick you up and drop you in a real McCoy of a different world. I can think of some mesmerizing, adventurous modern-day fiction - The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice, for instance - that turns back on the happy golden haze of hippiedom in order to tell a non-hippie story. These can be gambles, but when they succeed, it's very fun. It's a different story entirely when, as with The Butterfly Kid, you pick up an immediate product of its times.

So what is this book? Well, in short: sci-fi meets psychedelia. By "sci-fi" I mean "alien invaders who conduct themselves far too diplomatically for their dastardly plans". And by "psychedelia" I mean... whoo, well, a little bit of everything. Drugs, coffee, free love, rock bands with your buddies ('Baroque & Roll' - how 'bout that), cops on your tail, a Scooby-Doo-esque bus, and that one un-hip total square with his poems nobody likes who sells out to the invaders.

All these elements - and the way they coalesce into a band of heroes frequently unwilling and of questionable character and maturity for the tall task of saving Earth - coalesce into a raw sociocultural snapshot that's funny, and weird, and rather sheepishly lovable. The Butterfly Kid is just like Lebowski and Inherent Vice in that it stars heroes who'd rather eschew the ginormous problem into which they've been thrust and just hang out and get stoned.

There's a subtle, but important, difference, though. Lebowski and the rest were written with the benefit of hindsight - the knowledge of how history would turn out - whereas Butterfly Kid was authored before that crest of freeing-your-mind, as Hunter Thompson put it, broke and retreated. And so neither Chester Anderson, nor his buddies who inspired characters in this book, nor the general community for whom he wrote, had any way of knowing the Manson murders were just a few years away.

No one knew how the future was going to turn out - but you could certainly imagine that what Greenwich Village was like and stood for throughout the 1960s was going to stay that way forever. A book like Butterfly Kid is therefore able to craft its universe with a weirdly excited optimism, even though it's steeped in self-aware irony and frequently poking fun at the poor decision-making of its heroes. In fact, even though it's supremely self-aware - a condition that usually jettisons seriousness and engenders detached, cerebral observation - the reality of how much history was still unsettled in 1967 allows The Butterfly Kid to craft a surprisingly cozy world.

So if you decide to tackle this book, the first thing you'll notice is the pacing. It's hip, frenetic, funky: a hundred beats a minute. Tertiary descriptions and parenthetical trains of thought wind up hijacking the narrative, ceding back control once they climax in some sort of witty, unexpected punchline. Which is not at all to say this book is rambling or disconnected. It's very easy to read. Its rhythm and flow are obvious byproducts of a counterculture that you either were around for or you weren't, but in either case the comic timing is - if a little outlandish at first - easy to get a feel for.

Easy to get a feel for, fine... but is it self-indulgent? Well, if you look at the time and place this book represents, then yeah, probably a degree of self-indulgence is inevitable. But it's a background factor. All the weird, witty comic timing is ultimately in service of reflecting the characters themselves: a community of people with good hearts who are nevertheless beset by indecisive bewilderment.

In our present-day culture we also have plenty of irony, self-awareness, and comic indecisiveness, but - at least in my experience - too often these elements become like escapist crutches, shielding us from reality, or helping us pretend reality is something it's not. Despite all the ironic, self-aware, indecisive humor of The Butterfly Kid, its characters are more like beachgoers standing in the sea, letting the waves of reality hit them - hard. This drug-fueled book is, in fact, not at all about escaping reality, but rather facing it and fighting back.

Well, maybe I should backpedal: The Butterfly Kid, though it has a clear beginning, middle, and end, is not necessarily the type of tightly constructed narrative that's about anything at all. Its hallucinatory internal rules require substantial suspension of disbelief, its characters resolve problems with very weird rabbits pulled from very funky hats, and its climactic all-hands-on-deck final battle is... good heavens, what a chaotic mess.

And what a thing of beauty. It's a full-fledged war of attrition that pits humans (well, fourteen hippies, anyway) against aliens. It enacts rules of engagement for the sole purpose of staging a mind-over-matter battlefield in which there are no rules. And then it's a colorful psychedelic explosion of everything and the kitchen sink: from missiles and killer robots to polite man-eating snakes and bloodthirsty demon children.

This book is pretty far-out, and definitely silly, but man, I loved it. When I found out that it forms part one of a trilogy, each book by a different author, I put parts two and three on my to-do list right away. It's just got this authenticity, at least for me, that made it an irresistible page-turner. The rhythm of its comic timing is probably not for everyone - some might find it too overeager to be cute and clever - but in my subjective view the brisk pace harmonized with the comedy perfectly fine.

The one mechanical critique I will levy is that The Butterfly Kid is a perfect case study in why authors shouldn't feel obligated to incessantly substitute other verbs for "said Mike" every time a line of dialogue ends. Butterfly Kid really runs the gamut on dialogue verbs, and while it doesn't always slow the action down, sometimes it definitely made things clunky. My edition of the book, at least, also has a modicum of typos here and there. Which I'd normally shrug off, but with a book like this, were those typos original and/or intentional in the first place? You never can tell.

Kudos, on the other hand, to the nevertheless lovely paperback edition Dover Publications put out. Until this 2019 re-release, the rare and out-of-print Butterfly Kid had been lost to time and/or eBay scalpers. It's exciting to have all three books of the Greenwich Village trilogy freshly available, and the otherworldly violet pop of the cover art, along with the helpful intro from the author of The Last Unicorn, sure doesn't hurt.

What kind of mischief will Part Two have in store for these wacky counterculturals? Only time will tell.

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dover Books (in addition to the publisher featured here; Dover is in the business of reissuing books at very moderate prices) has rescued this gem of sixties sci fi/ fantasy pastiche. Non-violent six foot blue lobsters are intent on conquering the earth by first softening people up with “reality pills,” which function a little like acid, only the things people conjure are real, shared reality as long as the trip lasts. The lobsters intend these as chaos generators, and to present themselves as welcome benevolent dictators.
Non-violence is important to the lobsters’ self-concept, a vulnerability. Their conception of torture is richly comic, as is the rest of the book, although things do proceed to an all-out (violent) battle by the end.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a little well known classic from the 60s and it's a sort of time travel as well as a sort of literary acid trip.
It's weird and extremely fun to read.
You can't help appreciated the depiction of an era as well as the giant blue lobster and bizzarre world building.
It was a fun and exciting read, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[James DiGiovanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Kind of a cartoony YA adventure story but with lots of drugs and sex. The prose reads like someone desperately trying to sound as hip as possible. Not terrible, but not deep or very interesting. I expected more because of its cult status but it just wasn’t nearly as imaginative or weird as so many of the lost classics of the late part of the SF New Wave were.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

One word review: Weird. This highly imaginative book was written over 50 year ago, and has a 60s feel. It's a bit campy, usually in a good way. Recommended to those with an open mind and who like lots of hallucinations in their stories.

I really appreciate the copy for review!

[?0?0?0 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the sort of funny and enjoyable otherworldly trip that makes it clear we'd all be better off if portions of the 60's were to return (to at least this vanilla monoculture), even if arriving there meant we needed the aid of a craft of, "man I'd like hurt you but I'd rather not, dig?" aliens.

[Stijn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trippy as f***. The slang made it maybe a bit less readable for non-native English speakers. Most of all, it's a wild ride. Don't worry about the plot or the characters, enjoy your psychedelics and embrace your hallucinations.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars!

Delightful. I think I went into this thinking I would roll my eyes at it but maybe be mildly entertained, but instead I was delighted from beginning to end. A thoroughly silly tale with ridiculous details and relatable characters. Please read this if you stumble across it.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immense fun. I still get an inner laugh when I think of it.

[Chris Maloney · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enchanting book that will capture your imagination.

[Andy Teage · Rating 3 out of 5]

Total bollocks, but I enjoyed it in my teens, and I was delighted to find it again in my seventies. I'm being far too generous with my stars.

[Jonathan Palfrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

The late Chester Anderson (1932–1991) had the basic ability to tell a story, which is what makes this novel somewhat readable. It doesn’t guarantee that the story will be interesting, and whether you find the story interesting is of course up to you.

It seems to me that Anderson’s primary aim was to document the wackiness of life in New York in 1967. He added to the mix a perfunctory story about aliens trying to take over the Earth by giving out Reality Pills, but that was mostly just his way of raising the already-high level of wackiness.

I like science-fiction, but as science-fiction this novel is crude and amateurish. I can take a certain amount of 1960s wackiness, but my appetite for it is limited. Thus, my priorities are quite different from Anderson’s.

I’m amazed that this attempt at fiction was actually nominated for the 1968 Hugo Award. It lost to Zelazny’s Lord of Light, but it had no real business being in the contest at all.

Apart from the story, such as it is, the characterization is poor. The male characters seem blurred and ill-defined; there are female humans present, but they generally function as semi-sentient sex toys—apart from the overweight Harriet, who’s allowed to use her brain briefly at one point.

The second part of this trilogy, The Unicorn Girl, was written by Michael Kurland, who went on to write plenty of other books. It has a slightly similar flavour and a touch of amateurishness, but it’s more imaginative, more fun, and the characterization is better (male and female). It wasn’t nominated for a Hugo: there ain’t no justice.

In this trilogy, the heroes of each book are the author and his friends: so Chester Anderson and Michael Kurland appear as characters in both part 1 and part 2. Rather oddly, T. A. Waters doesn’t appear in part 1, although he appears in part 2 and writes part 3.

[an infinite number of monkeys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straight-up history of Greeenwich Village in the mid '60s, after the tourists started coming, but before the rents got too high. That time and place that gentrifiers everywhere have tried (and failed) to re-create since. The scene is laid out here in all its glory, or something; the music the clothes, the creativity, the chemical recreation, the paranoia, the man, all are sent up equally. It seems now as if that's what they were all there for. Maybe blue lobsters didn't actually try to take over the planet using the Village as their base, and maybe the assorted longhairs and heads didn't fend them off with their own weapons, but it probably felt that way on some days.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giant blue alien lobsters come and introduce a psychedelic drug in 1967 that makes your hallucinations real. They plan to use it for world domination. The village hippies are all that stand in their way and there is a kid who can create living butterflies. I have already said too much.
I had never heard of Chester Anderson prior to purchasing this book, but if everything he writes is this gonzo bizarre and crackling with imagination I may have found a new favorite author.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

A fine but unexciting book about aliens coming to take over Earth and a group of hippies stopping them by taking drugs which make real hallucinations. I think it's supposed to be funnier than it is. Just fine, no more and no less. Oh, and the use of 60's slang is very unfortunate and grating.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

1967. Hippies, the Village. Awesome book. Aliens come and introduce a psychedelic drug that makes your hallucinations real. They plan to use it for world domination. Hippies find out about the plot and set out to stop them by using the drug against them.

[Dorian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read or even seen a copy since I read it and I still remember laughing out loud reading it. Kind of embarassing on the bus on the way to work.

Just found a used copy and decided to reread to see if it held up for me.