Neon Green: A Novel

It's the summer of 1994 in suburban Chicago: Forrest Gump is still in theaters, teens are reeling from the recent death of Kurt Cobain, & you can enter a sweepstakes for a spaceship from Jupiter to land in your backyard. Welcome to Margaret Wappler's slightly altered 90s. Everything's pretty much the way you remember it, except for the aliens.

When a flying saucer lands in the Allens' backyard, family patriarch & environmental activist Ernest is up in arms. According to the company facilitating the visits, the spaceship is 100 percent non-toxic, & the green sludge it occasionally dumps in their backyard is totally biodegradable.

As Ernest's panic increases, so do his questions: What are the effects of longterm exposure to the saucer? Why is it really here, flashing & beeping uselessly in the backyard? And why, above all else, is Ernest the only one worrying about it? At Ernest’s suggestion, the family starts logging the spaceship’s daily fits & starts. But the daily log doesn't get them any closer to figuring out the spaceship's comically erratic behavior; instead it becomes the family’s preferred & often pithy communications platform, a humorous foreshadowing of the electronic messaging revolution to come. In fact, Ernest’s wife Cynthia & their children, Alison & Gabe, are less concerned with the saucer, & more worried about their father’s growing paranoia (not to mention their mundane, suburban existences). 

In unexpected ways, the Allens are forced to confront the truth about their relationship to the larger world, & what it means to be a part of it. Set before the arrival of the internet, Neon Green will stun, unnerve, & charm readers with its loving depiction of a suburban family living on the cusp of the future.

Margaret Wappler has written about the arts & pop culture for the Los Angeles Times & Rolling Stone. She can be heard weekly on the pop culture podcast, Pop Rocket.