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    Little Green Men: A Novel
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    Little Green Men: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Little Green Men: A Novel
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Little Green Men: A Novel

    Written by Christopher Buckley

    Narrated by Mark Linn-Baker

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In 1994, Christopher Buckley published one of the most acclaimed and successful comic novels of the decade, Thank You for Smoking. Now Buckley returns to the strange land of Washington, D.C., in Little Green Men, a millennial comedy of manners about aliens and pundits . . . and how much they have in common.

    The reluctant hero of this hilarious novel is John Oliver Banion, a stuffy Washington talk-show host, whose privileged life is thrown into upheaval when aliens abduct him from his exclusive country-club golf course.

    But were his gray-skinned captors aliens . . . or something far more sinister? After Banion is abducted again--this time in Palm Springs--he believes he has been chosen by the extraterrestrials to champion the most important cause of the millennium, and he embarks on a crusade, appearing before a convention of UFO believers and demanding that Congress and the White House seriously investigate UFOs. His friends and family suspect that Banion is having some kind of manic-depressive midlife crisis and urge him to seek therapy before his credibility as a pillar of the punditocracy is ruined.

    So John Oliver Banion must choose: keep his establishment status or become the leader of millions of impassioned and somewhat scruffy new friends who want to expose the government's secret alien agenda.

    Little Green Men proves once and for all that the truth is out there. Way out there. And it reaffirms Christopher Buckley's status as the funniest humanoid writer in the universe.

    Coming soon from Christopher Buckley: One of Our Whales Is Missing

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 5, 2000
    ISBN9780553750362
    Unavailable
    Little Green Men: A Novel
    Author

    Christopher Buckley

    Christopher Buckley is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor, and memoirist. His books include Thank You for Smoking, The Judge Hunter, Make Russia Great Again, and The Relic Master. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.

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    Reviews for Little Green Men

    3.5/5

    179 ratings13 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Not Buckley's best. Definitely has that snark and commentary (both subtle and not-so-subtle) that I know and love from him, but not nearly as strong as his other works. The end got a little silly as well. Overall, not bad, but not great.
    • 3/5
      Alien abductions are staged by a paragovernmental organization in order to increase military funding. A political talk show host is abducted and starts a quest to legitimize the UFOs-have-landed community.Buckley is funny, as per usual, although I found the abductions a little skeezy. There is something unsettling about the concept of a ungoverned group whose job it is to drug people and make them think they've been probed by aliens.
    • 5/5
      I have a friend, John, who has long been a fan of Christopher Buckely's novels and I've never been able to get into them. But, I have another friend, Jeannie (isn't is amazing to have such good friends?) who just sent me his latest and either the timing was right or this is the best one. Buckley's tongue has been graphed into his cheek. This is about the covert (very covert) operation of the federal government to convince the populace that there are actually UFO's. The program was put into place to garner support for the insanely expensive space program. The story is hilarious and borderline plausible.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book so so much when I first read it 15 years ago. It's really aged, though, upon a 2021 reread.
    • 3/5
      Funny book...maybe it helps to be a Washington insider? Maybe not. I enjoy books that unsentimentally make fun of people.
    • 3/5
      Alien abductions are staged by a paragovernmental organization in order to increase military funding. A political talk show host is abducted and starts a quest to legitimize the UFOs-have-landed community.Buckley is funny, as per usual, although I found the abductions a little skeezy. There is something unsettling about the concept of a ungoverned group whose job it is to drug people and make them think they've been probed by aliens.
    • 5/5
      What a diabolical mind Christopher Buckley must have! When he's not making pro-smoking lobbyists sympathetic characters, he's imagining a First Lady on trial for assassinating her husband or young people advocating compensated euthanasia of the elderly as a way to save Social Security. But I doubt that his devious mind has composed a more delicious plot than in "Little Green Men."Combining bloviating pundits, obscure government bureaucracies, and ecstatic UFO believers, this brilliant novel focuses on the increasingly farcical consequences of the purported alien abduction of John Oliver Banion. An inside-the-Beltway talk show host with an ego to match his three name persona, Banion has enough popularity to demand displays of obeisance from even the President himself.When the media power player is abducted by aliens while playing golf at an exclusive country club, however, his focus drifts from politics to the larger issue of possible alien invasion. This exploration leads him into the subculture of extraterrestrial enthusiasts. As the highest profile abductee ever, Banion becomes a leading voice alongside the kooks and pseudo-scientists, and eventually refocuses his career to use his celebrity to bring attention and credibility to what had been a fringe group.At times laugh-out-loud funny, this novel is a delight from start to end. The cross-group story allows Buckley to satirize certain self-righteous types, from political talking heads to conspiracy theorists, while spinning a tale that is a breezy page-turner.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this tale of dodgy extraterrestrials and conspiracy at the heart of Government. It sort of reminded me of the David Icke business that so entertained us in the UK twenty years ago, cranked up a few notches on the publicity scale and shipped across the Atlantic. The best thing about it was the humour. A brisk, bracing sort of satire that surprised me, I didn’t expect to find it as funny as I did given that it’s satirising the Establishment of a foreign country. But – a bit like The Simpsons – it’s humour that crosses international borders. Some of the character names suggested it might lean towards slapstick...Colonel Murfletit. The Dr Seuss-esque Speaker Meaker. And the frankly startling Karl Cuntmore (“Techno novelist supreme...and yet for all his tens of millions, he still looked like a man who had just been told there was a dead porcupine in his water tank”). Yet for all its daftness, there was nothing in this book I couldn’t at a stretch imagine actually happening. At times a vaguely preachy, messagey idea - to do with how shallow the protagonist’s life was when he was wealthy and admired – threatened to break out like a Boggart from a wardrobe, but it was mercifully kept in check.Calamity struck for me personally when I left the book behind in a local park when I was only twenty pages from the end. It was gone, totally disappeared. With some books I’d just shrug and move on. Others I would have guessed the end already. But in this case I had to buy another copy, just to find out what happened. So that’s got to be a point in its favour. And I genuinely hope that whoever stumbled upon my lost copy read it and enjoyed it as much as I did.
    • 3/5
      John Banion is probably the most politically influential man on US TV. One wrong word from him on his weekly show or his syndicated column in the Post could see a career go up in flames and even the President must pander to his wishes especially with an election looming. So when a disgruntled employee of the uber-secret Government department known as Majestic-12 selects him to be the next alien abductee a lot of events spiral out of control.The author uses this story to poke fun at just about anyone and everyone that's involved. From the UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy nuts to the President himself and the media circus that surrounds the goings on in Washington. There are some definitely laugh out loud moments along the way but I was left with the feeling that there should have been more to it than there actually was. It's certainly not put me off reading more from Mr. Buckley and I will at some point read more of his work.
    • 2/5
      I got just over two thirds of the way through and decided I really wasn't interested in what happened and quite simply couldn't finish it. I think this book really has to be your cup of tea. I didn't laugh, I didn't find it funny. When Nathan Stubbs doesn't get promoted he decides to take actions into his own hands and orders an alien abduction (well two actually) on the Washington talk-show host John Banion. John then decides to set the world to rights and I can't tell you if he did or not as I only got as far as his march/rally. At one point I was convinced my copy was a proof as there were a lot of typos in there but it wasn't. I therefore wonder if it is the American style. If you believe Little Green Men are your thing or not you have to like the writing style of this book. The plot itself is an excellent concept which is what I was hoping was going to keep me going. However, it's a good cure for insomnia.
    • 5/5
      I've read a few Christopher Buckley books this year, and found them all enjoyable, but I think that I have to say that this one is the best of the bunch. The other ones were generally smirky books, with a couple of laughs; this one had a good number of laughs, and the story didn't suffer for it at all.Here we have the story of John O. Banion, a bowtied, cane-carrying conservative columnist and TV host who's at the top of his game (this is said to be a take-off on George F. Will, if you know who he is). After a bad day, a guy at the alien abduction wing of the US government decides to abduct Banion, basically just on a whim. The repercussions of this are profound for just about everyone involved.The book's in two parts, how Banion loses his credibility, and then how he gets it back. Both parts are very funny, and still make some good pointed jabs at the nature of life in politics and media in DC, along with the UFO crowd and such. It's a fast read, roars along to a pretty good climax, and comes down nicely. The style and the dialogue are both quite sharp, much in line with his other works. If you want to start somewhere with Buckley, this is a good place to try.
    • 3/5
      After the famous host of a Sunday morning talk show, and Washington uber-insider, is abducted (twice) by space aliens, he becomes the pariah of the Beltway but the celebrity leader of three million UFO believers. This set up in the hands of America's funniest political satirist is sure to be entertaining. And it is. It is fun and funny and goes down like a bomb pop on the first hot day of summer. My only problem with Buckley's books is that they are never as good as the first one I read. That is, I think that whichever one someone reads first will be that person's favorite, because it is so surprising to read a clever, really funny, contemporary satirical novel. The first one sticks with you. So, for me, while I find all his books to be entertaining, none will compare with Thank You for Smoking, which made me laugh out loud from cover to cover.
    • 4/5
      Hilarious political/journalism novel. Just when you think the situation can't get any more absurd, it does. Minor complaint about the ending kept it from the 5th star, but still a good read (unless, of course, you are a conspiracy theorist, in which case you'll just be pissed off).