Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede

By: Bradley Denton

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne

Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Conceived in the backseat of a car on the day Buddy Holly died, Oliver Vale turns on the TV one day to find Buddy Holly on every channel, and soon he is on the run from a pursuing mob of religious fanatics.

©1991 Bradley Denton (P)2015 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Hilarious and Rock & Roll

I love this book. I read it in the 90s and discovering the audiobook has been such a joy.

A ruckus race of rock and roll revival

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This has been my favorite book of all time from the first time I read it back in 1994 and I haven't gone wrong with a Bradley Denton novel. His fun style is hard to put down after you start and this is his best work (well, Blackburn is just as good.)

What did you like best about this story?

I love the back and forth of the story between Oliver's mother's diary, the different characters telling the story from their points of views, the larger-than-life circumstances and "chance" meetups that keep building until the climax explodes into existence with great satisfaction.

Which character – as performed by Kirby Heyborne – was your favorite?

Oliver Vale is so real, so humble and unassuming that you can't help but fall in love with him. Ringo, to me, is the most powerful character in this story. Yes, Ringo. The dog. He has a narrative part too.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, yes, yes. In fact, I may listen to it a second time right now that I finished it the first time.

Any additional comments?

Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Don McLean

I wish I could give this book 10 stars

There are a handful of novels I revisit every couple of years for their power to immerse me in imaginal landscapes that particularly feed my mind or my heart (or both) – Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, Philip K Dick’s VALIS, Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic...

At the top of that select list, the winner by far for the highest number of lifetime rereads is Bradley Denton’s Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede.

I read this book for the first time in 1991, when it was new. On a surface level, it’s exactly what you might expect from the title and cover image, a raucous comic SciFi novel with lots of action and zero “hard science” to bog the story down. So yeah, on that level, it’s exactly the fast-paced, entertaining romp the cover promises.

But there’s a lot going on beneath the surface of this novel.

This book’s real treasure lies in its characters, especially the protagonist, Oliver Vale, who we meet both in flashbacks and in the present, and his mother, who has been dead for five years when the story begins. We only meet Mother through the diary she started as a teen when she got pregnant with Oliver, and through Oliver’s flashback recollections of growing up at her side. There’s a beautiful tension throughout the book between Oliver’s childhood memories of life with Mother and the adult woman he discovers posthumously, reading her diary – as well as with the grownup Oliver who comes, via this tension, to view his childhood and his mother through more mature and compassionate eyes.

The setting is also a treasure. Oliver is born in 1959 to an unwed teen mother, and they grow up together in 1960s-1970s Kansas. Trapped in the American Midwest, where the Flower Power Counterculture of the ‘60s never took hold, mother and son evade judgmental conservatives around them through a religious devotion to Rock and Roll, both the music and the performers, ranging from Buddy Holly, to Elvis, to the Beatles, to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Lynyrd Skynyrd and beyond. Classic Rock (or just “Rock,” which in the 60’s and ‘70s had yet to age into “Classic” status) is the thread that holds their lives together – and which connects their lives to ours, we readers (of a certain age) who share this same music, these rock gods, these decades growing up in America.

I won’t drop any spoilers by revealing specific plot points. Rest assured the plot is fun. But plot in this novel is almost beside the point. The SciFi storyline, which compares favorably to the best ‘50s B-movie drive-in fare, really only exists to allow these characters, set in this time and pop cultural milieu, to unfold. And the characters are the real gold here. It’s Oliver and his mother that bring me back to this story again and again.

I really like Ringo the cyborg Doberman, too... :0)

A note to writers: I received this book in 1991 as a Christmas gift from a professor/mentor in my college writing program. He gave it to me in part because he and I shared a love for fringe culture, including flying saucers and the lost continent of Atlantis, which play a role in the story. But even more so, he wanted me, as a burgeoning writer, to take in the structure of the narrative, which frequently and masterfully switches perspectives between viewpoint characters and groups of characters, from first person to third, and from present to past, without causing a single moment’s confusion. Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede is a comic SciFi novel with a literary structure, or at least one that reveals the literary training of the author (Denton has an M.A. in English, plus a B.A. in astronomy, according to Wikipedia). Writers, read this book for the fun story and the great characters, but don’t miss parsing it for lessons on the mechanics of great writing, too.

I’ve read and reread my paperback copy of Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede more than a dozen times over the years. This most recent December 2020 reread was inspired by stumbling across the Dreamscape Media audiobook edition on Audible.com, narrated by that rock star of voice actors, Kirby Heyborne. His performance is brilliant. Back in 2009, Dahlia Street Motion Pictures started making a movie from this book, but that production was, again per Wikipedia, “ultimately abandoned, primarily due to funding.” That stinks, but thanks to Kirby Heyborne’s shining narration, the Dreamscape audiobook is seriously the next best thing. Think “mind movie.” It’s that well done.

If I could, I would give Bradley Denton 10 stars for his novel, and Kirby Heyborne 10 stars for his narration.

But five’s the max, so... 5 stars!

Close enough for Rock and Roll!

Fun story

The story is really well written. The individuals are interesting and you want to get to know each character more. The plot is bizarre as heck and makes me smile reflecting upon it.
I plan on seeking works by both the author and narrator.