Slattery, Brian Francis

PERSONAL:

Education: Williams College, B.A. (cum laude), 1997; Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, master's degree, 2003. Hobbies and other interests: Playing fiddle and banjo.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New Haven, CT. Agent—Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary Agency, New Haven, CT. E-mail—bfs@bfslattery.com.

CAREER:

Interact Nova, Hirakata, Japan, teacher of English, 1997-98; Guggenheim Foundation, New York, NY, assistant program officer, 1998-2001; Journal of International Affairs, New York, NY, senior editor, 2002-03; freelance writer and editor, 2003—. Consultant, Health Literacy Project.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Very Short Fiction Award, Glimmer Train, 2000-01, for "The Things That Get You."

WRITINGS:

Spaceman Blues: A Love Song (novel), Tor (New York, NY), 2007.

Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six after the Collapse of the United States of America (novel), Tor (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of International Affairs, Gotham Gazette, and New Haven Advocate.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brian Francis Slattery is a freelance writer whose nonfiction work focuses on public policy and the arts. He is also the author of a novel, Spaceman Blues: A Love Song. The book is a pastiche of genres, including mystery, science fiction, and superhero story. It is a frenetic tale, full of strange characters, but beneath the action-packed narrative, the author touches on deeper themes about individual growth and love. A Kirkus Reviews writer described it as a "kaleidoscopic" narrative that uses the science-fiction genre as a means to explore the immigrant experience. The result, according to that reviewer, reads like "Pynchon crossed with Steinbeck, painted by Dali: Impossible to summarize, swinging from the surreal to the hyper-real, a brilliantly handled, tumultuous yarn."

The story is set in New York City, where a man named Wendell Apogee acquires an alternate identity as Captain Spaceman, defender of the earth against alien attack. Most of the narrative concerns the events that led to Wendell's transformation into Captain Spaceman. It began when Wendell's lover, Manuel, turned up missing. Although there had been an explosion in his apartment, Manuel had not perished in it; he was simply gone. The police, unable to make progress with their investigation into Manuel's disappearance, ask for Wendell's help. Unsure of what to do and with no idea where to look, Wendell plunges in nevertheless.

The narrative follows him through a string of homes, clubs, parties, cockfights, fights between humans, and even into a weird underground world beneath New York, where train cars hang suspended from the ceiling of a cavern. He has to face a crime boss who thinks his wife has left him for Manuel, and he is pursued by scooter-riding creatures in purple raincoats who are armed with death rays. When the aliens show up, Wendell must cast aside "his ordinary life and become someone able to fight such seemingly unstoppable foes," stated Regina Schroeder in Booklist. "The story itself doesn't make much sense," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "but Slattery [clearly enjoys] showing off … his hallucinatory vision of New York." More praise came from Dana Cobern-Kullman, who, in a School Library Review, remarked that the author's fictional world was "fully realized" and populated with characters who are "fully fleshed out." The reviewer compared Slattery's work with that of Dashiel Hammett, Isabel Allende, and Stanislaw Lem and concluded that Spaceman Blues is a "fresh and compelling" novel.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2007, Regina Schroeder, review of Spaceman Blues: A Love Song, p. 51.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2007, review of Spaceman Blues.

Publishers Weekly, June 25, 2007, review of Spaceman Blues, p. 39.

School Library Journal, August, 2007, Dana Cobern-Kullman, review of Spaceman Blues, p. 144.

ONLINE

Brian Francis Slattery Home Page,http://www.bfslattery.com (January 27, 2008).