Waiting for the Galactic Bus

An extremely funny and moving book about what happens when the beings we call "God" and "The Devil" collaborate to prevent the conception of a possible Hitler. Young, conservative Charity and Roy are snatched from a seedy hotel room and taken on separate journeys through the afterlife, with the cooperation of theatrical and historical figures recruited to play supporting roles. Meanwhile, "Judgement Day" is coming for the two puppet masters as their long-lost past catches up to them.

An interesting if not totally successful satirical SF fantasy with echoes of 2001 and Hitchhiker's Guide with darker themes. The framing story involves two super-advanced immortal aliens, basically college students, who end up stranded on Earth about the same time as the monoliths of 2001. They do a little completely unauthorized twiddling with the one ape, leading to modern humanity, as represented by Roy Stride, a Nazi-wannabe, and Charity Stovall, his religious girlfriend. The aliens believe that the offspring of Roy and Charity would bring about a modern apocalypse. They decide that the only way to prevent this is to bring Roy and Charity to TopSide and Below Stairs, the Heaven and Hell that they created to house post-death human show more souls over the millenia. All of this fictional construction is to engineer a combination of farce and philosophy about human nature and religious bigotry.

Whether this works for you depends on your views of religion and tolerance for artificially constructed scenes to set up another auctorial monologue. When Heinlein did this, it drove me crazy, but I'm OK with Parke Godwin. show less

This is an interesting take on the Dante's Inferno story from way back when - here we get two beings on a higher plain (not God's, but Godlike, without the all-knowing) On a college road trip through the outer regions of the universe, they get left behind on an insignificant little planet (not exactly an accident, since the two brothers are rather annoying). To keep things interesting, they start monkeying around (ha ha, get it!) with the local primate population, accidentally creating humanity.

Now, jump a few millennium. We find humanity in its present 1988 splendor and a couple of nobody kids who if they get together, they have a high potential of creating the next Hitler. So, the two higher order beings (not Gods, just Godlike show more without the all-knowing) decide they have to do something about. Hence, the rewrite of Dante's inferno, only this time, it was all a stage to prevent two people from hooking up.

Its a very interesting book - it can be a bit irreverent at times, but always insightful. Its a great bit of writing. At times, it feels a bit dated, but it was written in 1988 - if I remember, right before the age of computers and cell phones. show less

This book was published in 1988. My guess is that it was written when Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984, after Godwin's head (like mine) nearly exploded. I just learned about it recently, when Jo Walton reviewed it on Tor.com. Godwin writes excellent novels. This is something rather different. He's ranting and raving about politics fueled by fear and hate, and the ways that fundamentalist religions (of every variety) feed into that. I think I'd have found it a bit quaint in 2000, but in 2010 with Glenn Beck foaming at the mouth on television, it's quite fresh again.

He's writes beautifully, and it's very funny. A favorite quote:

"'I don't like actors,' Grubb complained in a voice like a damp sock. 'I don't like writers. They're never show more as nice as their books. All they do is get drunk and arrogant and sick all over the furniture.'" show less

Two brothers get left behind during a romp through the universe. Bored they turn a rather unpromising ape into something that ends up "religious and lethal." Godwin's famous take on facism and how it breeds from percieved hopelessnes and racism. His two brothers end up somehow mistaken as God and Satan, they set up camp in two distinct spheres, give post life people what they want but still, somehow, that's not enough. Godwin likes to name drop like crazy in this book. He also likes to leave you trying to figure out who a certain character is without mentioning his name (he does this in the sequel too): Who is the answering machine? This is a fun romp of a read that will leave you thinking deeper thoughts by the end.

Two brothers, who have powers, but not much foresight, meddle an ape into becoming the Human Race we know and love today. Funny enough to mute the anger I sometimes feel toward my contemporaries.

Ok, the elliptical & convoluted sentence structure, I could put up with - after all, I'm guilty of creating amateur sailors' knots in my own writing. The lack of referents for the pronouns is somewhat more troubling (which is the 'he' this time?). But I almost put it down the third time I saw bad editing to the point of a missing word. When a sentence is supposed to have the word 'was' in it, make sure it really is there, please.

Still, I persisted. Until I realized that there was going to be a lot of yucky stuff about violent bigots and not-actually-smarter aliens messing around with us and religious & spiritual parables. No, no way, not fun, not a romp, not provocative, and most definitely not for me.