The butterfly kid

The late Chester Anderson (1932–1991) had the basic ability to tell a story, which is what makes this novel somewhat readable. It doesn't guarantee that the story will be interesting, and whether you find the story interesting is of course up to you.It seems to me that Anderson's primary aim was to document the wackiness of life in New York in 1967. He added to the mix a perfunctory story about aliens trying to take over the Earth by giving out Reality Pills, but that was mostly just his way of raising the already-high level of wackiness.I like science-fiction, but as science-fiction this novel is crude and amateurish. I can take a certain amount of 1960s wackiness, but my appetite for it is limited. Thus, my priorities are quite different from Anderson's.I'm amazed that this attempt at fiction was actually nominated for the 1968 Hugo Award. It lost to Zelazny's [b:Lord of Light 43534546 Lord of Light Roger Zelazny https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547173710l/43534546.SY75.jpg 1011388], but it had no real business being in the contest at all.Apart from the story, such as it is, the characterization is poor. The male characters seem blurred and ill-defined; there are female humans present, but they generally function as semi-sentient sex toys—apart from the overweight Harriet, who's allowed to use her brain briefly at one point.The second part of this trilogy, [b:The Unicorn Girl 757054 The Unicorn Girl Michael Kurland https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348126935l/757054.SX50.jpg 743167], was written by Michael Kurland, who went on to write plenty of other books. It has a slightly similar flavour and a touch of amateurishness, but it's more imaginative, more fun, and the characterization is better (male and female). It wasn't nominated for a Hugo: there ain't no justice.In this trilogy, the heroes of each book are the author and his friends: so Chester Anderson and Michael Kurland appear as characters in both part 1 and part 2. Rather oddly, T. A. Waters doesn't appear in part 1, although he appears in part 2 and writes part 3.