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A review by thewallflower00
Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton
4.0
Cory Doctorow cited it as one of the great books he was handing out in his early days in the bookstore. It sounded interesting, and luckily, a few days later, it was released under a CC license. I'm glad it was - it's a good read.
At some point during the late eighties, every television is America is hijacked by Buddy Holly, apparently broadcasting from some sort of biodome on Ganymede meant to look like "The Ed Sullivan Show". No one knows why this is happening, how, or what it means, but when Buddy Holly reads one of the signs in the studio "Call Oliver Vale for assistance", our main character who shares the same name knows he's in a heap of trouble.
My beef with the book is that it's not science-fiction. Humor, yes. Sci-fi, no. There's a strange broadcast, yes, but its existence is simply a macguffin to get characters moving. There are aliens, yes, but they never figure into the main plot. They don't act like aliens or do alien things. There are robots, yes, but its a robot dog who no one seems to care much about, especially when it regurgitates a beer can as a gift. There are no spaceships, lasers, xenobiotic life forms, or different planets. So why call this science-fiction? This is a chase novel with a science-fictiony-like thing at the beginning. It could be the same story without it.
At some point during the late eighties, every television is America is hijacked by Buddy Holly, apparently broadcasting from some sort of biodome on Ganymede meant to look like "The Ed Sullivan Show". No one knows why this is happening, how, or what it means, but when Buddy Holly reads one of the signs in the studio "Call Oliver Vale for assistance", our main character who shares the same name knows he's in a heap of trouble.
My beef with the book is that it's not science-fiction. Humor, yes. Sci-fi, no. There's a strange broadcast, yes, but its existence is simply a macguffin to get characters moving. There are aliens, yes, but they never figure into the main plot. They don't act like aliens or do alien things. There are robots, yes, but its a robot dog who no one seems to care much about, especially when it regurgitates a beer can as a gift. There are no spaceships, lasers, xenobiotic life forms, or different planets. So why call this science-fiction? This is a chase novel with a science-fictiony-like thing at the beginning. It could be the same story without it.