First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think

This book should be made into a movie immediately. When I started reading it I was hooked right away with characters that are original and funny, especially the clueless George W. Bush-like president and the faux-Jewish aliens. The writing has a beautiful flow and carries the reader seamlessly from scene to scene. I found myself laughing out loud beginning on page 2 and continued laughing all the way through the acknowledgments. I figured that the book would be just one big laugh. I was wrong. Not just funny, Mandery nimbly jumps back and forth between the heads of his characters to explore their feelings through every step of the tale. Still the events of the book are so funny don't be surprised if you stay up all night to finish the book. Just take my word for it and buy it. You will not be sorry.

With a humorous and poignant style consciously reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut and with just as much wit as Vonnegut, Evan Mandery delivers a novel that is not only intelligent but outrageously funny. It is not an exaggeration to say that I laughed out loud at nearly every chapter. First Contact is packed simultaneously with disgust for civilization and compassion for humanity. A smart, hysterically funny read. Buy this book. You won't regret it.

Do you hear that? That's the sound of Jon Stewart kicking himself, because he didn't write this hilarious book. Mixing politics, science fiction, philosophy, and love with a splash of pop culture references, Mandery has created a novel so funny that it's easy to forget how smart it is. Filled with fast-paced, witty dialogue, First Contact does the two things any great read does: It makes you laugh and makes you think.

First Contact transports and inserts the reader into a political science fiction hullabaloo. An intelligent read that is difficult to put down, the level of intimacy between the author and the reader can only be compared to two compatriots conversing in the middle of a busy café where hopes, dreams and the meaning of life are consumed along with whimsically-named foodstuffs. The novel presents a unique reading experience heavily influenced by the artistic stylings of Monty Python, Douglas Adams and a young Woody Allen. Mandery's bang on observations about real, everyday situations and relationships were dispensed in a playful, comedic manner that forewarns, "it's later than you think." This is one new author to watch spinning a tale dying to be played out on the big screen.

In this frenetic farce, which plainly owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Douglass Adams, //First Contact// offers a unique premise. Aliens from Rigel-Rigel arrive on earth for brunch with the President. They are enlightened, laid back lovers of Woody Allen and Bundt cake, who wish to share their knowledge. One problem - they are greeted by a President who is a shallow, science doubting, underwear-obsessed idiot, who assumes - partially on the basis of it being brunch - that the aliens must be Jewish. ""Well, I never heard that word [brunch] when I was a kid. We had breakfast, and then we had lunch like the good lord intended... I'll say now the same thing I said then: Don't understand it, ain't gonna eat it." The association of brunch with the Jews is yet another counter historical, anti-Semitic defamation, like Jews' responsibility for the death of Jesus, with the notable difference that everyone likes brunch..." Ralph Bailey, the President's attaché whose portfolio had consisted of fetching his boss's preferred lunch sandwich ("extra meat") from Blimpway and catering to the previously mentioned underwear issues, serves as liaison with the aliens. At the same time, he has found sudden happiness with his new girlfriend, Jessica Love. Mandery leaps about the galaxy, finding ways to celebrate topics, like Sting, the Simpsons, and Dr Pepper, even as he mocks censorship, political spin, government waste, insurance fraud, the fourth wall, law professors, and the galactic scourge known as the PTA (don't ask). At times the trip can be a bit dizzying, almost breathless, with even the author walking on and off the page, but the laughs never stop rolling. For fans of Douglas Adams and Christopher Moore, //First Contact// will leave you in stitches. Get it before the universe ends and makes reading it a lot trickier.