This is a first novel by Halperin, a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is all about alienation (and well, in a manner of speaking - Alien Nation!). It is the story of a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy growing up in 1966 near Philadelphia. Danny Shapiro is a geek. His mother is chronically ill and he and his father tip-toe around the house in their efforts to avoid agitating her. Danny knows if he hadn’t been born, his mother would not be as ill as she is. Fundamentally Danny’s father loves him, but resents the fact his birth ruined his mother’s health. So what’s a boy to do? He is an only child and his family life is vague and mostly loveless. He definitely needs something in his life.
And for Danny the void is filled by an obsession with UFOs, which he shares with his closest friends Jeff and Rosa. To put it all in a nutshell, Danny tells us: “I investigate UFOs because unlike God, they are real and can be seen.”
The book opens with a journal entry where Danny tells us about an encounter with a UFO while standing in his front yard late one night. And this encounter fires the boy’s imagination and he and his friends become absorbed in UFO phenomena: the Men in Black, Area 51, any books they can find, any sighting they can find in library microfiche. The bulk of the novel is Danny’s wildly imaginative journal—his “real life” - the life of adventure and danger in a world much more edgy and exciting than the one outside his mind. While pursuing information about UFOs at the downtown library, Danny meets with older teenagers Julian and Rochelle. The journal chronicles Danny’s wild journey driving (at age 13!) with Julian all the way to Florida to meet up with Rochelle (who’s been on a mysterious trip to New Mexico). He is convinced the infamous Men in Black are after them and tells us of a frightening meeting in the Miami airport while waiting for Rochelle’s plane.
The story escalates and Danny is sucked into a subterranean world following a UFO that sinks into the earth. After wandering in an exceedingly gothic, bizarre landscape, he finds the space ship and gets trapped inside where he’s subjected to alien probing which ends with him certain he has been used to impregnate an alien! Trust me, at this point; events for Danny are downright hallucinogenic. Then the real world intrudes when Danny wins the National Bible Contest with an essay titled “Passage of Time in the Book of Job.” First prize: a trip to Israel.
But even there his fantasy life absorbs his visit and he meets up with Rochelle in Jerusalem—who apparently was the alien female he impregnated and their daughter, because of her manipulated genetic heritage, is not doing well.
A meeting with Julian (who’s now in the Israeli Army) leads Danny to the Negev. There he is shown the flying saucer he’d been abducted to previously sitting on a tower in a desert crater. And to be honest—I got a bit lost as the story leaves Israel, Danny and his alien child get on the disc which flies to Roswell and crashes. Next chapter, Danny is suddenly getting ready for college.
At the end, Danny flings his journal on his old bed and leaves his father’s house. UFOs don’t have any place in his new college life.
But there’s more to the UFOs in Danny’s psyche than can be symbolically left behind. And a letter from Julian muddles it all even further!
A fascinating though sometimes confusing book from a mainstream publisher that does not usually publish science fiction or fantasy, this is a very weird odyssey and coming-of-age novel. Check out Halperin’s lovely website at: davidhalperin.net. There’s some lovely artwork there. ~~ Sue Martin
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