Chester Anderson’s The Butterfly Kid is listed as the number one weirdest science fiction novel ever written. With the likes of such bizarre sf whoppers as Dr. Bloodmoney, Ubic, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer, A Voyage to Arcturus, Panda Ray, Flesh and Gold, Dhalgren, Time Snake and Superclown, to name just several (I’m sure avid sf fans could list many other out of sight titles), that’s really saying a mouthful.
I suspect The Butterfly Kid
got the nod for its combination of hallucinations from acid trips
materializing to create pandemonium all through New York City, giant
blue alien lobsters speaking impeccable English, and a torture machine
that forces its victims to watch the complete adventures of Donald Duck
on a wide screen with full sensory participation.
And that’s just
for starters. Once this groovy (THE all-purpose adjective - keep in
mind the novel published in 1967), supercool Greenwich Village hippie
hipster narrator gets going, there's no stopping him. The Butterfly Kid makes for one fabulously fun read with the following flashing, swirling strobe light highlights:
CHESTER:
None other than author/musician/hip philosopher Chester Anderson is the
narrator and main star of this literary show. That’s right, Chester
wrote himself into his own novel. Interestingly, Chester’s
observations on human nature prove key to his understanding the
ways he can take action to deal with menacing outer space aliens.
One of my favorite Chester quotes from when he realizes the orchestra playing Handel's Water Music
behind him in the hallway is his own personally drug induced
hallucination: “Every now and then a false note rang out through the
otherwise exceptional ensemble. Not a wrong note, mind you, just a
slightly out of tune one. Bassoon, from the sound of it. This bugged me
mainly because, the orchestra being merely an external figment of my own
imagination, the false notes were my fault. The implications were
humiliating.”
THE DUDES: Chester also wrote good friend Michael
along with a few other of his pals into the novel. Michael is one of the
heroes in this tale (once he roused himself from snoring in his sleep,
that is). Also worth noting, Michael J. Kurland is a prolific author of
science fiction and wrote The Unicorn Girl, sequel to Butterfly. The third volume in this modish Greenwich Village Trilogy is The Probability Pad by T.A. Waters.
THE
BUTTERFLY KID HIMSELF: Fresh from Fort Worth, Texas, young guitar
playing Sean manifests all varieties and sizes of butterflies right
there in broad daylight in Washington Square Park. Turns out he isn’t a
magician; he dropped a super colossal LSD-type hallucinogenic “reality
pill.” Too bad the John Voight character also fresh from the state of
Texas didn’t likewise have "reality pills" courtesy of aliens in the
1969 film, Midnight Cowboy - if he did, he and Ratso Rizzo could have had some real fun in the Big Apple.
HORNEY
HONEY: Of course, being a hippie in Greenwich Village involves getting
nude, getting stoned and having loads of great sex. Sativa is a singer
in Chester’s rock-n-roll group The Tripouts. Sativa is lovin’ the
sex with her new sweetie pie – none other than the aforementioned tall,
handsome, blonde Sean who crashes in Chester’s pad. Chester figures all
those wild sounds Sativa is making in the next bedroom with Sean are
good for her singing voice. That’s the way to put a positive spin on it,
Chester!
STRANGERS FROM A STRANGE PLANET: As the book's author,
our main man shifts his imagination to overdrive in coming up with those
aliens who plot to take over the world with the help of "reality
pills." Not little green men from Mars but ten foot lobsters who can
change colors, from blue to pale green to iridescent. And the way the
head lobster speaks, I bet he has a British accent.
THE BAD GUY:
There’s Laszlo Scott the poet wannabe who is in league with the aliens.
Our Greenwich Village author gives Laszlo the ultimate wicked quality
for the villain – he stinks like a skunk on a bad day. And Laszlo’s loft
looks like a trash heap with loads of misspelled anarchist slogans
scrawled on the walls. Laszlo’s redeeming qualities are . . . well,
sorry to say, he has none. The dude changed his name from an
all-American kinda name to Laszlo Scott when he came to NYC cause he
thought it was cool. If Laszlo only knew his ultimate fate, I suspect he would have spent
his time bathing and reading quality literature rather than planning the
conquest of the human race. What some no-talent poets won't
do to grab the spotlight.
SAVING THE WORLD: : Would you believe
the climax to this hippie novel features dozens of groovy, far-out
technicolor hallucinations creating an upbeat 1960s version of H.G.
Wells’ The War of the Worlds? Dig it, baby, with the future of
the human race on the line, Chester and his band of stoned longhairs
come through with flying Peter Max psychedelic colors.
FUN FACTS: Chester's hippie bus in The Bufferfly Kid (see below quote) predates that famous bus of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters by exactly one year since Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
was published in 1968. Hippie buses and vans were the thing back in
those swingin' sixties. A second fun fact: although Chester sets his
novel in the late 1970s, the language, attitudes, fashion and culture
all belong uniquely to the sixties.
"That was our most treasured possession, that bus. It was an old Army surplus ground-effect troop carrier, made in 1969 or so and obsolete before delivery, that we'd converted into a mobile rock-n-roll dream pad. It could seat sixteen and sleep dozens, depending on how friendly they were, and was equipped with hot and cool running everything. . . . We toured the Midwest in it last summer." - Chester Anderson, The Butterfly Kid
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