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Little Green Men
Despite the scepticism of his friends, Washington talk-show host John O'Brien is convinced he was abducted by aliens. When it happens a second time, he realises he has been chosen to to help persuade the White House to take alien abduction seriously. But are his abductors really aliens?
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
115 people are currently reading
1470 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Buckley
99 books952 followersChristopher Buckley graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1976. He shipped out in the Merchant Marine and at age 24 became managing editor of Esquire magazine. At age 29, he became chief speechwriter to the Vice President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. Since 1989 he has been founder and editor-in-chief of Forbes Life magazine.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
He is the author of twelve books, most of them national bestsellers. They include: The White House Mess, Wet Work, Thank You For Smoking, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, No Way To Treat a First Lady, Florence of Arabia, Boomsday and Supreme Courtship.
Mr. Buckley has contributed over 60 comic essays to The New Yorker magazine. His journalism, satire and criticism has been widely published—in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Washington Monthly, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Esquire, and other publications. He is the recipient of the 2002 Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. In 2004 he was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
He is the author of twelve books, most of them national bestsellers. They include: The White House Mess, Wet Work, Thank You For Smoking, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, No Way To Treat a First Lady, Florence of Arabia, Boomsday and Supreme Courtship.
Mr. Buckley has contributed over 60 comic essays to The New Yorker magazine. His journalism, satire and criticism has been widely published—in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Washington Monthly, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Esquire, and other publications. He is the recipient of the 2002 Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. In 2004 he was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 335 reviews
March 20, 2017
Satires usually stretch the truth, but I'm confident that if a respected public figure told the world aliens were real, this is exactly how it would play out.
October 12, 2023
WONDER WHERE UFOS COME FROM?
Perhaps it requires a rarefied sense of humor to appreciate Christopher Buckley, but you wouldn’t know it from the sales figures on his books. Anyone who can write a novel with endlessly eccentric characters named Sir Reginald Pigg-Vigorish, Col. Roscoe J. Murfletit, General Tunklebunker, and Deputy FBI Director Bargenberfer may be reaching the pre-adolescent in me, but he makes me laugh, dammit, and I’m not going to apologize for it, so there! Which, of course, is why I rushed to read his charming little novel about where UFOs come from.
SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF WHERE UFOS COME FROM
In Little Green Men, not only does Buckley make me chuckle and wheeze with immoderate glee, but he also solves the mystery of the UFOs! Could anyone possibly wish for more?
Like so many of Buckley’s satirical novels, Little Green Men tells the story of a hapless (though in this case willing) victim of the absurd circumstances surrounding him. They’re mostly by a witless supporting cast with names such as those listed in the opening paragraph. Buckley’s antihero here is John Oliver Banion, a pompous Sunday-morning public affairs television talk show host. Not so incidentally, he possesses a pedigree that looks just a little bit like Christopher Buckley’s (including Yale, of course). In fact, Buckley is never better than when skewering People Like Us, and he does it with such skill that I can almost imagine him cackling in the background as he types away.
WELL, THEY’RE NOT ACTUALLY LITTLE GREEN MEN. THEY’RE SILVER.
One fine day John O. Banion is slicing into the rough on his exclusive country club golf course when he is abducted and “probed” by aliens. These are not Little Green Men, actually, but silver ones whom UFO taxonomists call Tall Nordics. The action that radiates from this inexplicable event is far too complicated, and far too unlikely—not to mention funny—to sum up. So I’ll leave it to you when you read this beautifully crafted little book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Buckley is the author of twelve satirical novels and eight other books, including two travelogues and a memoir of his parents. He writes on his website that he “is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor and memoirist. His books have been translated into sixteen foreign languages. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter.” Buckley has also written for newspapers and magazines and has lectured in over 70 cities around the world. He received the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.
Buckley was born in New York City in 1952, the son of William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008), a founder of the conservative movement in America. (He was, famously, editor-in-chief of the National Review and host of the weekly television show, Firing Line.) In 2008, the son defied his father to vote for Barack Obama instead of Republican George W. Bush—and went public with the news. He is not a fan of Donald J. Trump, either. Buckley is married and has two children and four step-children.
Perhaps it requires a rarefied sense of humor to appreciate Christopher Buckley, but you wouldn’t know it from the sales figures on his books. Anyone who can write a novel with endlessly eccentric characters named Sir Reginald Pigg-Vigorish, Col. Roscoe J. Murfletit, General Tunklebunker, and Deputy FBI Director Bargenberfer may be reaching the pre-adolescent in me, but he makes me laugh, dammit, and I’m not going to apologize for it, so there! Which, of course, is why I rushed to read his charming little novel about where UFOs come from.
SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF WHERE UFOS COME FROM
In Little Green Men, not only does Buckley make me chuckle and wheeze with immoderate glee, but he also solves the mystery of the UFOs! Could anyone possibly wish for more?
Like so many of Buckley’s satirical novels, Little Green Men tells the story of a hapless (though in this case willing) victim of the absurd circumstances surrounding him. They’re mostly by a witless supporting cast with names such as those listed in the opening paragraph. Buckley’s antihero here is John Oliver Banion, a pompous Sunday-morning public affairs television talk show host. Not so incidentally, he possesses a pedigree that looks just a little bit like Christopher Buckley’s (including Yale, of course). In fact, Buckley is never better than when skewering People Like Us, and he does it with such skill that I can almost imagine him cackling in the background as he types away.
WELL, THEY’RE NOT ACTUALLY LITTLE GREEN MEN. THEY’RE SILVER.
One fine day John O. Banion is slicing into the rough on his exclusive country club golf course when he is abducted and “probed” by aliens. These are not Little Green Men, actually, but silver ones whom UFO taxonomists call Tall Nordics. The action that radiates from this inexplicable event is far too complicated, and far too unlikely—not to mention funny—to sum up. So I’ll leave it to you when you read this beautifully crafted little book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Buckley is the author of twelve satirical novels and eight other books, including two travelogues and a memoir of his parents. He writes on his website that he “is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor and memoirist. His books have been translated into sixteen foreign languages. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter.” Buckley has also written for newspapers and magazines and has lectured in over 70 cities around the world. He received the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.
Buckley was born in New York City in 1952, the son of William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008), a founder of the conservative movement in America. (He was, famously, editor-in-chief of the National Review and host of the weekly television show, Firing Line.) In 2008, the son defied his father to vote for Barack Obama instead of Republican George W. Bush—and went public with the news. He is not a fan of Donald J. Trump, either. Buckley is married and has two children and four step-children.
March 7, 2016
Much as I enjoy a good satire, they are quite difficult to find. At least the nonpolitical ones. So naturally one must settle for the political ones, for which Buckley is pretty famous. And so this is a story of a pompous self important wealthy and well connected Princeton educated Washington pundit whose life gets turned upside down when he experiences an alien abduction, and then another one. Ripping into the stupidity/gullibility of the general population and the confused, obfuscating ways of the government Buckley gets a lot of mileage out of a fun idea that goes a long way to explain all manner of extraterrestrial existence. Published in 1998, it reads straight out of the 80s, and there aren't many particularly likeable characters, but it's entertaining enough to pass the time, though it doesn't even come near Buckley's latest, the very awesome Relic Master. Then again, I find medieval history infinitely more interesting than (semi)modern politics, so it's all a matter of personal preference. Fun light read.
October 28, 2019
John Oliver Banion [note his initials] hosts an influential political talking-head show on TV. He has a beautiful house in Georgetown, a permanent spot on the A-list of every Washington hostess of note, and commands lecture fees of $25,000 and up. Life is good -- until he's abducted by aliens at the 4th hole of the Burning Bush golf course. And, ummm... probed. And abducted again a few weeks later, on his way to give a lecture to the American Auto Consumer Association, a trade group for foreign-car dealers.
Nathan Scrubbs is Manager of Abductions for Majestic-12. a super-secret bureau that was started in 1947 to convince Joe Stalin that the US had found advanced alien technology at the Roswell crash site. Like all government programs, it's acquired a life of its own:
"A country convinced that little green men were hovering over the rooftops [would be] inclined to vote yea for big weapons and space programs."
In recent years, MJ-12 has turned to abductions and cattle-mutilations to maintain belief in UFOs. Staff mathematicians have devised a credibility algorithm for determining who to abduct next. Usually the program picks overweight housewives, but credibility figures are down, and Scrubbs has decided he needs a more prominent abductee....
Banion's wife, agent and TV-show sponsor are, well, not pleased when he begins a high-profile campaign to uncover the truth about alien abductions. But the UFO fans love it -- he's the most respectable spokesman they've ever had. Soon he has no wife, a new sponsor, a new hit TV show, and is calling for a "Millennium Man March" on Washington, to demand congressional UFO hearings. Except his televised call-to-arms is mysteriously interrupted with clips from "Space Bimbos from Planet Lust," a simulcast on the Yearning Channel...
I can't say much more without spoiling the fun, but no plot outline can convey Buckley's sly humour, surreal plot, equal-opportunity skewers and deadpan delivery. I find it remarkable that he can keep delivering wonderful one-liners, deadly digs at thinly-disguised ("Senator Bore") politicos, and weird but almost-believable scenarios for 300 pages. Buckley notes that the CIA actually did run such a scam in the early 60s. And he quotes First Friend/felon Webster Hubbell's assignment from President Clinton: "One: who killed JFK? And two, are there UFOs?" Which may account for Mr Clinton expressing an interest in Buckley's project that "seemed to go beyond the merely polite." Or are these more put-ons?
Suffice it to say that, if you liked "Thank You for Smoking," Little Green Men is for you. And if you missed "Smoking", you have *two* treats in store.
My 1999 review, with footnotes:
https://www.sfsite.com/08b/lit63.htm
Nathan Scrubbs is Manager of Abductions for Majestic-12. a super-secret bureau that was started in 1947 to convince Joe Stalin that the US had found advanced alien technology at the Roswell crash site. Like all government programs, it's acquired a life of its own:
"A country convinced that little green men were hovering over the rooftops [would be] inclined to vote yea for big weapons and space programs."
In recent years, MJ-12 has turned to abductions and cattle-mutilations to maintain belief in UFOs. Staff mathematicians have devised a credibility algorithm for determining who to abduct next. Usually the program picks overweight housewives, but credibility figures are down, and Scrubbs has decided he needs a more prominent abductee....
Banion's wife, agent and TV-show sponsor are, well, not pleased when he begins a high-profile campaign to uncover the truth about alien abductions. But the UFO fans love it -- he's the most respectable spokesman they've ever had. Soon he has no wife, a new sponsor, a new hit TV show, and is calling for a "Millennium Man March" on Washington, to demand congressional UFO hearings. Except his televised call-to-arms is mysteriously interrupted with clips from "Space Bimbos from Planet Lust," a simulcast on the Yearning Channel...
I can't say much more without spoiling the fun, but no plot outline can convey Buckley's sly humour, surreal plot, equal-opportunity skewers and deadpan delivery. I find it remarkable that he can keep delivering wonderful one-liners, deadly digs at thinly-disguised ("Senator Bore") politicos, and weird but almost-believable scenarios for 300 pages. Buckley notes that the CIA actually did run such a scam in the early 60s. And he quotes First Friend/felon Webster Hubbell's assignment from President Clinton: "One: who killed JFK? And two, are there UFOs?" Which may account for Mr Clinton expressing an interest in Buckley's project that "seemed to go beyond the merely polite." Or are these more put-ons?
Suffice it to say that, if you liked "Thank You for Smoking," Little Green Men is for you. And if you missed "Smoking", you have *two* treats in store.
My 1999 review, with footnotes:
https://www.sfsite.com/08b/lit63.htm
February 7, 2010
Christopher Buckley scares me a lot.
Not only is he a Washington insider, he's the son of a respected writer. So this stuff could all be real.
And if it is, we're hosed.
Another excellent book from Buckley, this one concerning UFOs, aliens, and government conspiracy. I found this to be laugh out loud funny. FAR funnier than "Thank You For Smoking" or "Florence of Arabia", I think I'll be doing my star-gazing from inside hereafter.
An excellent filleting of Sunday news shows, presidential elections, and space programs. You may consider this a three and a half star review.
Not only is he a Washington insider, he's the son of a respected writer. So this stuff could all be real.
And if it is, we're hosed.
Another excellent book from Buckley, this one concerning UFOs, aliens, and government conspiracy. I found this to be laugh out loud funny. FAR funnier than "Thank You For Smoking" or "Florence of Arabia", I think I'll be doing my star-gazing from inside hereafter.
An excellent filleting of Sunday news shows, presidential elections, and space programs. You may consider this a three and a half star review.
August 18, 2015
It is becoming increasingly difficult to satire modern politics as the reality is a depressing joke enough. If you think the UK has it bad, that is nothing compared to the two party lobby based system in American that is riper for corruption than a PC still running Windows 95. Christopher Buckley is an author who specialises in exploring political and corporate corruption in a slightly off centre fashion. ‘Little Green Men’ is a great example of this – the book explores the relationship between the government and the media, but also the government and its people. You may think that it is all about The Executive keeping their knowledge of aliens hidden, but Buckley is a far savvier author than that and suggests perhaps that there are conspiracies wrapped in conspiracies.
When leading political TV personality John O. Banion is kidnapped by aliens he decides to turn his powerful investigative lens on little green men. The government are not too bothered by this, but Banion in a terrier and he is close to learning the truth. Buckley manages to produce a book that belittles almost every sphere of American life from the rich to the poor. In fact, the book at times is almost too cynical as no one is pleasant. It even takes almost the entire book for Banion to become a person you can actually like.
‘Little Green Men’ is the type of biting satire that feasts on the hand of the reader. Buckley’s cynical viewpoint means that some of the more interesting ideas in the book are left slightly unpalatable as they are told to us by characters we do not like. It was also difficult at times to understand the complexities of the US political system and only my degree level understanding helped me to wade through some more of the US-centric language and institutions. Despite the layers of complexity between the reader and the meat of the book, the ideas on offer are very interesting and fun to read. A little more cheer and slightly less sneer would have pushed this book even higher.
When leading political TV personality John O. Banion is kidnapped by aliens he decides to turn his powerful investigative lens on little green men. The government are not too bothered by this, but Banion in a terrier and he is close to learning the truth. Buckley manages to produce a book that belittles almost every sphere of American life from the rich to the poor. In fact, the book at times is almost too cynical as no one is pleasant. It even takes almost the entire book for Banion to become a person you can actually like.
‘Little Green Men’ is the type of biting satire that feasts on the hand of the reader. Buckley’s cynical viewpoint means that some of the more interesting ideas in the book are left slightly unpalatable as they are told to us by characters we do not like. It was also difficult at times to understand the complexities of the US political system and only my degree level understanding helped me to wade through some more of the US-centric language and institutions. Despite the layers of complexity between the reader and the meat of the book, the ideas on offer are very interesting and fun to read. A little more cheer and slightly less sneer would have pushed this book even higher.
August 5, 2021
THE GREAT COMPLETIST CHALLENGE: In which I revisit older authors and attempt to read every book they ever wrote
Currently in the challenge: Isaac Asimov's Robot/Empire/Foundation | Margaret Atwood | JG Ballard | Clive Barker | Christopher Buckley | Jim Butcher's Dresden Files | Lee Child's Jack Reacher | Philip K Dick | Ian Fleming | William Gibson | Michel Houellebecq | John Irving | Kazuo Ishiguro | Shirley Jackson | John Le Carre | Bernard Malamud | Cormac McCarthy | China Mieville | Toni Morrison | VS Naipaul | Chuck Palahniuk | Tim Powers | Terry Pratchett's Discworld | Philip Roth | Neal Stephenson | Jim Thompson | John Updike | Kurt Vonnegut | Jeanette Winterson | PG Wodehouse
Up to this summer, I had read exactly two novels by the master political satirist Christopher Buckley -- his first, Thank You for Smoking, and his latest, The Relic Master -- and they both ended up being so brilliant that I decided that I should probably take the time to read the six other novels he wrote between these two. I just finished the first of that series, which I'm taking on in chronological order, Little Green Men which in this case came out in 1999, three years after Thank You for Smoking; but it unfortunately turned out to be a disappointment compared to the other two. See, while his first novel had such an outrageous concept that it made it easy to picture it actually coming to life (a lobbyist for the tobacco industry has a nervous breakdown, decides his industry should actively embrace the most demonic aspects of their trade, and ends up becoming hugely successful because of it), always the sign of a truly great political satire, in Little Green Men the central concept is only outrageous enough to have inspired a lot of eye-rolling while I was reading it, which made it not nearly as enjoyable an experience. (The idea basically is that the CIA has been the cause of every single UFO sighting since Roswell, originally done as a dirty-trick psych-op to make Stalin paranoid, then continued as a way of assuring big budgets for the military and NASA; after a low-level agent in this shadow department gets passed for a promotion, he drunkenly one night targets a George-Will-type intellectual conservative talk-show host as the newest victim of an "abduction," and his credentials-backed story inspires millions of "millennial-anxious" fellow believers to follow him as the leader of a new cult.)
It's a funny book, make no mistake, with great little moments of pitch-black hilarity and intelligence sprinkled throughout; but it takes a whole lot more suspension of disbelief to picture the ultra-zany plotline actually happening, features weaker characters than in the other two books of his I've read (the love interest invented for our hero is an especially wincing one, in this "white-male political-satirist nerds should never write romantic subplots" kind of way), plus is just a subject that feels like a lot of deliberate machinations went into Buckley choosing it to write about in the first place. (He keeps quoting a statistic throughout the book that showed, as of the late 1990s, supposedly a whopping 80 percent of Americans believed that alien life exists, and this entire novel many times feels like that Buckley randomly came across that poll one day and thought, "Now, how do I build a 300-page story around that fact?") And this of course is always a big danger with satirists as well; that after an accidentally great first novel, their attempts at catching lightning in a bottle again always result in more and more diminishing returns, as the labor they put into finding a good subject for satirizing becomes plainer and plainer to see. I've got a bit of a happy spoiler going for me in this case -- I know that his latest novel from 2016 is truly great, so I can rest assured that the books before that at least aren't going to bottom out into unreadability -- but certainly when I take on his next novel in this series, 2002's No Way to Treat a First Lady (in which a Hillary-Clinton-like character catches her President husband cheating on her, and accidentally kills him inside the White House while whipping an antique spittoon at his head in anger), I'll be going into it with my expectations not set as high this time.
Christopher Buckley books being reviewed for this series: Thank You For Smoking (1994) | Little Green Men (1999) | No Way to Treat a First Lady (2002) | Florence of Arabia (2004) | Boomsday (2007) | Supreme Courtship (2008) | They Eat Puppies, Don't They? (2012) | The Relic Master (2015) | The Judge Hunter (2018) | Make Russia Great Again (2020)
Currently in the challenge: Isaac Asimov's Robot/Empire/Foundation | Margaret Atwood | JG Ballard | Clive Barker | Christopher Buckley | Jim Butcher's Dresden Files | Lee Child's Jack Reacher | Philip K Dick | Ian Fleming | William Gibson | Michel Houellebecq | John Irving | Kazuo Ishiguro | Shirley Jackson | John Le Carre | Bernard Malamud | Cormac McCarthy | China Mieville | Toni Morrison | VS Naipaul | Chuck Palahniuk | Tim Powers | Terry Pratchett's Discworld | Philip Roth | Neal Stephenson | Jim Thompson | John Updike | Kurt Vonnegut | Jeanette Winterson | PG Wodehouse
Up to this summer, I had read exactly two novels by the master political satirist Christopher Buckley -- his first, Thank You for Smoking, and his latest, The Relic Master -- and they both ended up being so brilliant that I decided that I should probably take the time to read the six other novels he wrote between these two. I just finished the first of that series, which I'm taking on in chronological order, Little Green Men which in this case came out in 1999, three years after Thank You for Smoking; but it unfortunately turned out to be a disappointment compared to the other two. See, while his first novel had such an outrageous concept that it made it easy to picture it actually coming to life (a lobbyist for the tobacco industry has a nervous breakdown, decides his industry should actively embrace the most demonic aspects of their trade, and ends up becoming hugely successful because of it), always the sign of a truly great political satire, in Little Green Men the central concept is only outrageous enough to have inspired a lot of eye-rolling while I was reading it, which made it not nearly as enjoyable an experience. (The idea basically is that the CIA has been the cause of every single UFO sighting since Roswell, originally done as a dirty-trick psych-op to make Stalin paranoid, then continued as a way of assuring big budgets for the military and NASA; after a low-level agent in this shadow department gets passed for a promotion, he drunkenly one night targets a George-Will-type intellectual conservative talk-show host as the newest victim of an "abduction," and his credentials-backed story inspires millions of "millennial-anxious" fellow believers to follow him as the leader of a new cult.)
It's a funny book, make no mistake, with great little moments of pitch-black hilarity and intelligence sprinkled throughout; but it takes a whole lot more suspension of disbelief to picture the ultra-zany plotline actually happening, features weaker characters than in the other two books of his I've read (the love interest invented for our hero is an especially wincing one, in this "white-male political-satirist nerds should never write romantic subplots" kind of way), plus is just a subject that feels like a lot of deliberate machinations went into Buckley choosing it to write about in the first place. (He keeps quoting a statistic throughout the book that showed, as of the late 1990s, supposedly a whopping 80 percent of Americans believed that alien life exists, and this entire novel many times feels like that Buckley randomly came across that poll one day and thought, "Now, how do I build a 300-page story around that fact?") And this of course is always a big danger with satirists as well; that after an accidentally great first novel, their attempts at catching lightning in a bottle again always result in more and more diminishing returns, as the labor they put into finding a good subject for satirizing becomes plainer and plainer to see. I've got a bit of a happy spoiler going for me in this case -- I know that his latest novel from 2016 is truly great, so I can rest assured that the books before that at least aren't going to bottom out into unreadability -- but certainly when I take on his next novel in this series, 2002's No Way to Treat a First Lady (in which a Hillary-Clinton-like character catches her President husband cheating on her, and accidentally kills him inside the White House while whipping an antique spittoon at his head in anger), I'll be going into it with my expectations not set as high this time.
Christopher Buckley books being reviewed for this series: Thank You For Smoking (1994) | Little Green Men (1999) | No Way to Treat a First Lady (2002) | Florence of Arabia (2004) | Boomsday (2007) | Supreme Courtship (2008) | They Eat Puppies, Don't They? (2012) | The Relic Master (2015) | The Judge Hunter (2018) | Make Russia Great Again (2020)
July 13, 2019
My favorite thing about this book is how tight it is. There's no fluff, just three hundred pages of clever, well paced chaos. It's a silly book about small mistakes (delightfully) escalating into major problems. It's a fun read; you'll finish it in a week. Definitely recommended.
August 6, 2019
4.5
Christopher Buckley is another new writer to my library and I have to thank the film Thankyou for Smoking as the reasoning, without the library having at least one book by Buckley I wouldn't have chanced this book. Little Green Men is quite a fun and weird concept, but when you view the books of Buckley, you tend to see a satire pattern growing. I enjoyed the book and consumed it in my regular binge style on the train, unlike the slower paced books I come across.
The characters are interesting and when you have a politically humorous focused novel, the characters need to be carefully constructed. Buckley has a lot of fun with his characters and the more outlandish the plot development, the more the characters played well together. The straight laced nature of the characters is the best part of the book. When Banion suffers the humiliating abduction and goes on a crusade, you can really see someone taking such a detour and jumping into the world of alien abductions.
The plot device is quite different and tends to tilt to the bizarre. The concept is quite simplistic but the turn of events didn't fit any storytelling model I was expecting. I can see why writers have attempted to adapt this for film. When a film like Thankyou for Smoking exists, Little Green Men could exist as well. The clever story beats allow this film to bounce around and just when you think this is heading into cliché storytelling, it takes another path. I was pleasantly surprised by the plotting of this novel.
Why the 4.5?
Little Green Men wasn't the home run I wanted by the end. Yes, it was great and had a lot of fun along the way, but I felt the conclusion lingered for too long. There could have been a better ending and I was a little underwhelmed by the wrap up. I'm interested to check out more of Buckley's books and I have already asked the library to hunt down another. I don't expect to visit Buckley again during 2019, but I have enough faith the remaining books he has authored carry the same enthusiasm and rich satire within.
Christopher Buckley is another new writer to my library and I have to thank the film Thankyou for Smoking as the reasoning, without the library having at least one book by Buckley I wouldn't have chanced this book. Little Green Men is quite a fun and weird concept, but when you view the books of Buckley, you tend to see a satire pattern growing. I enjoyed the book and consumed it in my regular binge style on the train, unlike the slower paced books I come across.
The characters are interesting and when you have a politically humorous focused novel, the characters need to be carefully constructed. Buckley has a lot of fun with his characters and the more outlandish the plot development, the more the characters played well together. The straight laced nature of the characters is the best part of the book. When Banion suffers the humiliating abduction and goes on a crusade, you can really see someone taking such a detour and jumping into the world of alien abductions.
The plot device is quite different and tends to tilt to the bizarre. The concept is quite simplistic but the turn of events didn't fit any storytelling model I was expecting. I can see why writers have attempted to adapt this for film. When a film like Thankyou for Smoking exists, Little Green Men could exist as well. The clever story beats allow this film to bounce around and just when you think this is heading into cliché storytelling, it takes another path. I was pleasantly surprised by the plotting of this novel.
Why the 4.5?
Little Green Men wasn't the home run I wanted by the end. Yes, it was great and had a lot of fun along the way, but I felt the conclusion lingered for too long. There could have been a better ending and I was a little underwhelmed by the wrap up. I'm interested to check out more of Buckley's books and I have already asked the library to hunt down another. I don't expect to visit Buckley again during 2019, but I have enough faith the remaining books he has authored carry the same enthusiasm and rich satire within.
January 10, 2008
The story focuses on John O Banion, the host of the it Sunday morning political talk show, and what happens to his life when he is abducted by aliens (actually not real aliens, but rather MJ-12, the covert US government department charged with fabricating the entire UFO phenomenon in order to increase military funding). The story is really about a man’s reaction to discovering “truth”, and what he will risk (his comfortable life) in order to spread that truth. Overall, a quick read with one recurring annoyance: Buckley’s snarky one-liners meant to bring a chuckle to the lips of the intelligentsia. Some samples: “Many WASPs are reluctant to throw things [after a fight] for fear of having to explain afterward to the insurance company” or “His office was located here [in the basement of the Social Security Administration] on the theory that no congressional investigator ever dared look into Social Security” or “You *&%$ WASPs! You get a babe like this in a hotel room and say to yourself, Oo, how romantic not to *%%$ her.” I imagine such barbs to be written while the author is smoking a pipe and sipping on a dry martini. Bon mot! Bon mot! That mot is so bon! Those who like to feel smart and clever might enjoy feeling smart and clever reading this one; those who have experienced the Beltway life might also appreciate his quips. For me, I tired after the first several dozen zings. The other annoyance is that the book feels rushed at the end, and the finale wraps up rather quickly in just a few pages. Still an entertaining read. I’m astonished this hasn’t already been turned into a feature film as the characters, climactic situation, and conspiracy theory plot seem made for an adaptation.
October 9, 2018
I like satire (A Modest Proposal is one of my favorite stories), but this one wasn't sharp enough for me. This may be partly because it was written in the late 1990s and hasn't aged well (I'm not sufficiently versed in what insider Washington was like in the late 90s to know if it would have been substantially more on point then). Basically, the government invented UFOs and aliens to confuse the USSR and China, and a secret government agency has continued to keep aliens relevant with more and more outrageous activities (now including alien abductions and probing). A minor player in this agency is denied a promotion, feels badly treated, and works the bureaucracy so that a major network news host is kidnapped by "aliens." This knocks the DC establishment out of kilter.
More than anything, this book disappointed me because it took little jabs at seemingly every bit of DC inside baseball the author was acquainted with rather than focusing in on the most scorn-worthy portions of our body politic and relentlessly critiquing those with satire. This, along with several lines the author came back to over and over (e.g., polls say 80% of Americans believe in UFOs), made the writing seem sloppy, or maybe not well edited. I tolerated this book, but I think I may have enjoyed it if the author made the same points in around 20% less space by taking out everything that wasn't part of his most important critiques of US politics.
More than anything, this book disappointed me because it took little jabs at seemingly every bit of DC inside baseball the author was acquainted with rather than focusing in on the most scorn-worthy portions of our body politic and relentlessly critiquing those with satire. This, along with several lines the author came back to over and over (e.g., polls say 80% of Americans believe in UFOs), made the writing seem sloppy, or maybe not well edited. I tolerated this book, but I think I may have enjoyed it if the author made the same points in around 20% less space by taking out everything that wasn't part of his most important critiques of US politics.
July 12, 2024
Fun book and some pretty prescient political satire given it was written in 1999. Overall I think it’s outstripped by Buckley’s more famous Thank You for Smoking - it didn’t necessarily feel like Buckley was treading new ground. The smooth-talking somewhat amoral protagonist enmeshed in D.C. politics is thrown into a caper that teaches him a lesson. 🤷. Sounds familiar.
Decently funny and appealing for Buckley fans like myself.
Decently funny and appealing for Buckley fans like myself.
July 26, 2019
Wow I just CONSUMED this book. This book was a burger and fries and apparently I was starving. In the week that I read this I was enraptured by Buckley’s engaging, deep, hilarious, and varied characters and caricatures of the political elite. Even for someone like me who knows little to nothing of the goings-on in DC I found all of his jokes and general satire to be spot on. Loved loved loved this book, incredibly entertaining. Please read.
October 25, 2022
I picked up this novel because I liked the premise: flying saucers and alien abductions are really a secret US government program to bamboozle Russia and China. Christopher Buckley certainly knows his was around DC and that's what makes the political satire so delicious. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but entertaining. 3.5 stars.
December 31, 2022
Written in 1999 it echoes eerily today. The protagonist is put on trial for conspiracy to incite a riot in Washington DC. One of the main plot points is the gullibility of large swaths of America looking for a cause and someone to follow. Buckley is an excellent satirist in that he can make the dark message funny.
August 28, 2017
A fun read.....Christopher Buckley doesn't disappoint.
June 11, 2019
This is pitch-perfect satire. My dad had recommended this to me a long time ago and I put off reading it, but once I was in, I was immersed. Such a fun, different read.
June 5, 2021
Clever premise that at moments had me smiling, but overall I thought it was meh. A lot of characters introduced but none seemed to achieve any greater depths or to truly come to life. There's one clear main character and everyone else seems underdeveloped. I wanted to like this way more.
June 1, 2023
little character development but that’s not really what i came to this book for anyway
August 4, 2021
Imagine if a man that was a mix of Chuck Todd and Tucker Carlson got "abducted" by aliens and then used his platform to become the face of the alien abduction movement.
Very funny, need to read more Christopher Buckley.
Very funny, need to read more Christopher Buckley.
December 24, 2013
The key to an April Fools' Day prank is plausibility. Tricksters crave that perfect blending of the ordinary and the ludicrous that can spin victims into a moment of comic panic.
Years ago, a friend of mine and I taught at a conservative private college in the Midwest. One semester, he hung a series of his quiet, muted paintings of the Maine coast in the school lobby. My stage was set. Using office stationary, I wrote him a letter - from the chairman of the college - complaining about the shockingly pornographic nature of his paintings. I concluded gravely, "The trustees will be meeting soon to discuss your employment status."
Kids: Don't try this at home. My friend swallowed it hook, line, and sinker - and then swam off in a rage toward the chairman's office. Fortunately, someone caught him, or the trustees would have soon met to discuss my employment status.
April 1 is obviously Christopher Buckley's favorite holiday, too. Today the comic author releases a hysterical novel called "Little Green Men." It's a prankster's greatest fantasy.
The story opens on Washington's most pompous and feared political commentator. Every Sunday morning, John Banion runs the capital's most powerful elected officials through a brutalizing interrogation on his top-rated TV show, sponsored by a leading maker of electrocution chairs.
Senators and presidents sweat under Banion's owlish gaze, but "in a medium glutted with sound bites, people were happy to come on and have 20 minutes of national TV exposure all to themselves, even if Banion sometimes extracted an admission price of flaying them alive, on air."
Far from Banion's rarefied world, Nathan Scrubbs is "waiting for his computer to advise him that somewhere in Indiana another housewife had been abducted and sexually probed by aliens in a flying saucer."
Poor Scrubbs works for a supersecret government organization called MJ-12. His job is to keep "the taxpaying U.S. citizenry alarmed about the possibility of invasion from outer space, and therefore happy to fund expansion of the military-aerospace complex."
The project had started modestly by towing pie-shaped reflective disks around the desert sky, but "when the thrill of disabled vehicles and freaked-out pets wore off," MJ-12 had to start staging alien abductions. "This was trickier," Buckley notes. "For one thing, it meant finding dwarfs with security clearance. For this reason, aliens have gotten considerably bigger over the years."
In a moment of recklessness, Scrubbs decides to defend the nation's new space station by converting its most vociferous critic: John Banion.
Before high-ranking officials can call off their faux invaders, Banion is abducted - twice! - by aliens and becomes the world's most famous UFO proponent, the "Paul Revere of the Milky Way."
Washington has endured all kinds of shocking conversions, surprises, and transformations, but for this there is no precedent. His wife pleads, his friends intervene, the press attacks, and his sponsor cancels, but no one can derail Banion's efforts to awaken the American people to the alien threat.
He quickly repackages himself on a new TV show that looks "like the bar scene from 'Star Wars.' " More powerful than ever, though with a decidedly different group of fans, he calls for a Millennial Man March on Washington to demand congressional hearings on alien abduction.
"My name is John O. Banion," he tells the adoring millions on the Capitol steps, "and I am an abductee."
"Ich bin ein kook," reads the next day's headlines.
Buckley's collection of alien fanatics is worth more than a ton of antimatter. (The Tall Nordic Singers perform "We Are the World" during the Millennial Man March.) It's a decidedly bawdy book, with that classic Monty Python mixture of highbrow satire and lowbrow ribaldry. His flights of comedy zigzag through the story like UFOs over Area 51, and his ear for the ridiculous is out of this world. Tuck "Little Green Men" away for a quiet night in the crop circles.
http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0401/p1...
Years ago, a friend of mine and I taught at a conservative private college in the Midwest. One semester, he hung a series of his quiet, muted paintings of the Maine coast in the school lobby. My stage was set. Using office stationary, I wrote him a letter - from the chairman of the college - complaining about the shockingly pornographic nature of his paintings. I concluded gravely, "The trustees will be meeting soon to discuss your employment status."
Kids: Don't try this at home. My friend swallowed it hook, line, and sinker - and then swam off in a rage toward the chairman's office. Fortunately, someone caught him, or the trustees would have soon met to discuss my employment status.
April 1 is obviously Christopher Buckley's favorite holiday, too. Today the comic author releases a hysterical novel called "Little Green Men." It's a prankster's greatest fantasy.
The story opens on Washington's most pompous and feared political commentator. Every Sunday morning, John Banion runs the capital's most powerful elected officials through a brutalizing interrogation on his top-rated TV show, sponsored by a leading maker of electrocution chairs.
Senators and presidents sweat under Banion's owlish gaze, but "in a medium glutted with sound bites, people were happy to come on and have 20 minutes of national TV exposure all to themselves, even if Banion sometimes extracted an admission price of flaying them alive, on air."
Far from Banion's rarefied world, Nathan Scrubbs is "waiting for his computer to advise him that somewhere in Indiana another housewife had been abducted and sexually probed by aliens in a flying saucer."
Poor Scrubbs works for a supersecret government organization called MJ-12. His job is to keep "the taxpaying U.S. citizenry alarmed about the possibility of invasion from outer space, and therefore happy to fund expansion of the military-aerospace complex."
The project had started modestly by towing pie-shaped reflective disks around the desert sky, but "when the thrill of disabled vehicles and freaked-out pets wore off," MJ-12 had to start staging alien abductions. "This was trickier," Buckley notes. "For one thing, it meant finding dwarfs with security clearance. For this reason, aliens have gotten considerably bigger over the years."
In a moment of recklessness, Scrubbs decides to defend the nation's new space station by converting its most vociferous critic: John Banion.
Before high-ranking officials can call off their faux invaders, Banion is abducted - twice! - by aliens and becomes the world's most famous UFO proponent, the "Paul Revere of the Milky Way."
Washington has endured all kinds of shocking conversions, surprises, and transformations, but for this there is no precedent. His wife pleads, his friends intervene, the press attacks, and his sponsor cancels, but no one can derail Banion's efforts to awaken the American people to the alien threat.
He quickly repackages himself on a new TV show that looks "like the bar scene from 'Star Wars.' " More powerful than ever, though with a decidedly different group of fans, he calls for a Millennial Man March on Washington to demand congressional hearings on alien abduction.
"My name is John O. Banion," he tells the adoring millions on the Capitol steps, "and I am an abductee."
"Ich bin ein kook," reads the next day's headlines.
Buckley's collection of alien fanatics is worth more than a ton of antimatter. (The Tall Nordic Singers perform "We Are the World" during the Millennial Man March.) It's a decidedly bawdy book, with that classic Monty Python mixture of highbrow satire and lowbrow ribaldry. His flights of comedy zigzag through the story like UFOs over Area 51, and his ear for the ridiculous is out of this world. Tuck "Little Green Men" away for a quiet night in the crop circles.
http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0401/p1...
January 8, 2012
Grade: D+
Synopsis:
This is the story of a resolute right-wing television news commentator who is ‘abducted by aliens’ twice. As one might expect, he responds to the first abduction with tight-lipped denial, but responds to the second abduction with unbridled acceptance. The protagonist then becomes willing to reduce his celebrity life to rubble to find the truth about alien abductions. This leads into Part 2, where the author explores the bureaucratic red flags that are raised when a renowned media figure tries to spread ‘fantastic’ ideas to the public and how the protagonist deals with them in his quest for honest answers.
Positive:
I feel that this author did well covering the intricacies of the subject, in that, there are only a few inconsistencies in the plot. The main character had some likable personality traits hidden beneath his abrasive exterior, and the rest of the cast supplemented the story well. Parts of the book are undeniably well-written; enough to keep the reader engaged throughout. The author had plenty of fun with the subject matter, which is important for both the reader and the author alike.
Negative:
The punchlines of most of the jokes become predictable and stale by Part 2. Never did I feel that the author allowed himself to follow the train of thought that aliens could actually exist, and the protagonist reflected it; the main character’s stance seemed veiled by superficiality. Overall, I felt that the plot was unsatisfying. Most of the characters lacked spontaneity (and most other components of the Human Element) and seemed more like placeholders to keep the plot in motion than personalities to which the reader could identify.
My honest opinion:
Aside from some minor twists, this book is exactly what I thought it would be. I’m really not sure why I continued reading it. Mostly, I wanted to know what would happen if someone like Bill O’Reilly was ‘raped by aliens’, I guess. Now that I’ve said that out loud, I think I might be a twisted son of a bitch.
My favorite new word:
Mammon (n.) - the personification of wealth and avarice as an evil spirit (from Wordnik / Wiktionary)
My favorite quotation:
“Doesn’t anyone have imagination enough not to believe in something?” #ThoughtProvoking
My least favorite quotation:
“Around them, scattered like masticated hamster bedding material, newspapers were piled and strewn.” #PoorWriting
Further reading:
Mahatma Gandhi (http://www.mkgandhi.org/bk123.htm)
Synopsis:
This is the story of a resolute right-wing television news commentator who is ‘abducted by aliens’ twice. As one might expect, he responds to the first abduction with tight-lipped denial, but responds to the second abduction with unbridled acceptance. The protagonist then becomes willing to reduce his celebrity life to rubble to find the truth about alien abductions. This leads into Part 2, where the author explores the bureaucratic red flags that are raised when a renowned media figure tries to spread ‘fantastic’ ideas to the public and how the protagonist deals with them in his quest for honest answers.
Positive:
I feel that this author did well covering the intricacies of the subject, in that, there are only a few inconsistencies in the plot. The main character had some likable personality traits hidden beneath his abrasive exterior, and the rest of the cast supplemented the story well. Parts of the book are undeniably well-written; enough to keep the reader engaged throughout. The author had plenty of fun with the subject matter, which is important for both the reader and the author alike.
Negative:
The punchlines of most of the jokes become predictable and stale by Part 2. Never did I feel that the author allowed himself to follow the train of thought that aliens could actually exist, and the protagonist reflected it; the main character’s stance seemed veiled by superficiality. Overall, I felt that the plot was unsatisfying. Most of the characters lacked spontaneity (and most other components of the Human Element) and seemed more like placeholders to keep the plot in motion than personalities to which the reader could identify.
My honest opinion:
Aside from some minor twists, this book is exactly what I thought it would be. I’m really not sure why I continued reading it. Mostly, I wanted to know what would happen if someone like Bill O’Reilly was ‘raped by aliens’, I guess. Now that I’ve said that out loud, I think I might be a twisted son of a bitch.
My favorite new word:
Mammon (n.) - the personification of wealth and avarice as an evil spirit (from Wordnik / Wiktionary)
My favorite quotation:
“Doesn’t anyone have imagination enough not to believe in something?” #ThoughtProvoking
My least favorite quotation:
“Around them, scattered like masticated hamster bedding material, newspapers were piled and strewn.” #PoorWriting
Further reading:
Mahatma Gandhi (http://www.mkgandhi.org/bk123.htm)
July 28, 2010
Buckley's premise: Uncle Sam benefits by the proletariat believing in aliens - citizens will vote for funding for defence and space exploration - and it'll have the additional benefit of scaring the Russians into thinking we carry a secret knowledge. However, the tabloid-reading-public are not long wooed by a random UFO sighting, so the super-secret gov agency set up to handle alien affairs begins to specialize in crop circles, cattle multilation, and eventually human abduction...to escalating ramifications.
Sounds funny, no? Well, there are parts that are terrific, but overall the plot is as flimsy as a house of cards. Randomly a disillusioned gov employee targets a highly visual talkshow host for alien abduction?? Twice?? This talkshow host happens to be nothing more than a rather boring smoothe talker who likes pretty women and who is surrounded by a series of painfully stereotypical characters pulled right out of Humor 101. Unlike the best of Hiaasen's or Barry's or Moore's books you don't even get a crotchety old bugger for which to cheer, and instead are left to plow through the book w/ a notably unbated breath.
Sounds funny, no? Well, there are parts that are terrific, but overall the plot is as flimsy as a house of cards. Randomly a disillusioned gov employee targets a highly visual talkshow host for alien abduction?? Twice?? This talkshow host happens to be nothing more than a rather boring smoothe talker who likes pretty women and who is surrounded by a series of painfully stereotypical characters pulled right out of Humor 101. Unlike the best of Hiaasen's or Barry's or Moore's books you don't even get a crotchety old bugger for which to cheer, and instead are left to plow through the book w/ a notably unbated breath.
January 18, 2016
"Little Green Men" is a text I was ready to love. Although it begins quite nicely, the book limps to its tepid conclusion leaving the reader feeling like so much more could have been done with this very intriguing premise. Mr. Buckley is a witty, and at times, funny writer, but this novel seems to be among his minor achievements. This frustrated me even more as its premise is one of his more promising.
One of this text's major flaws is its plodding conclusion. The last two chapters of the book and its epilogue kill the fast paced, and clever, romp of nineteen chapters that preceded it. Another major flaw is that Mr. Buckley inserts some caricature and half drawn characters into key plot roles. These characters come and go in the plot with little or no explanation, and the character of Roz is so unbelievably written that she detracts from the novel whenever she appears.
Having said that, it is not the worse thing you could read, and Buckley is more entertaining then many other writers. He is still one of the best Washington DC satirists out there, and if you are not overly familiar with his others works, then you will be plenty satisfied by this one.
One of this text's major flaws is its plodding conclusion. The last two chapters of the book and its epilogue kill the fast paced, and clever, romp of nineteen chapters that preceded it. Another major flaw is that Mr. Buckley inserts some caricature and half drawn characters into key plot roles. These characters come and go in the plot with little or no explanation, and the character of Roz is so unbelievably written that she detracts from the novel whenever she appears.
Having said that, it is not the worse thing you could read, and Buckley is more entertaining then many other writers. He is still one of the best Washington DC satirists out there, and if you are not overly familiar with his others works, then you will be plenty satisfied by this one.
September 17, 2009
Political satire is not my usual cup of tea but I did enjoy reading this book. I liked the main character, Jon O'Banion. Even when faced with the most remarkably ridiculous situations, he seems to muddle through and always insists on standing behind what he believes to be the truth no matter the personal cost. By the end of the story, he seems to have discovered that there are better things to life than being on the "A list".
August 6, 2018
Am I tiring of Christopher Buckley, or was this book really not as good as the others? I tend to think it is the latter. The plot this time lacked the intriguing twists and turns, the characters weren't as deep or likable, and the jabs at the media and government were more blunt than in the other books by Buckley that I've read. I went into this book excited that the topic would be fun, but it just wasn't all that exciting or humorous.
November 3, 2013
Great story idea, came across like a shorter, paranoid, conspiracy filled Bonfire of the Vanities. Even with the helpful translations into normal English, a lot of the references left me feeling cold, maybe as I had little understanding of North American pop culture in the late millenium. Thought the ending was a little anticlimatic.
November 11, 2012
I had just finished Phantom and knew that I needed to absorb the book so turned to a lighter, humerous read. Christopher Buckley fills that need for me.
Not his best but I often smiled during the reading so it accomplished its purpose.
Not his best but I often smiled during the reading so it accomplished its purpose.
April 29, 2008
From the same author as "Thank You For Smoking," this amusing modern-day romp uses satire & wit to move the story along. I enjoyed it, and may seek out other titles from this author in future.
May 31, 2016
A fun, light, funny novel. I was thinking that there aren't a lot of fiction writers who write books that are funny. This is one. I will read more books by this author.!
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