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Buffalito Contingency Paperback – May 27, 2011

5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

Publishers Weekly: "Fans of old-fashioned SF will love this fast-paced, chaotic, and good-natured adventure full of semi-farcical humor and pleasantly believable aliens." Conroy has left Earth far behind and taken his hypnosis act beyond Human Space. It should be show business as usual, except for the energy being the size of a hundred suns that wants to study him, a plot to smuggle liquid gravity, a troupe of alien sex wrestlers, a hypnotized ghost, and Reggie his buffalito stuck in a saurian toilet... BUFFALITO CONTINGENCY is the exciting sequel to the popular BUFFALITO DESTINY.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

If you like hilarity along with your mayhem, or perhaps some mayhem with your hilarity, then Buffalito Contingency was written with you in mind.
--Walter Jon Williams, Nebula Award winning author of the Dread Empire's Fall series

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hadley Rille Books (May 27, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 243 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0982946775
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0982946770
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

About the author

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Lawrence M. Schoen
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Lawrence M. Schoen holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, is a past Astounding, Hugo, and Nebula, nominee, twice won the Cóyotl award for best novel, founded the Klingon Language Institute, occasionally does work as a hypnotherapist specializing in authors’ issues, and is a. cancer survivor.

His science fiction includes many light and humorous adventures of a space-faring stage hypnotist and his alien animal companion. Other works take a very different tone, exploring aspects of determinism and free will, generally redefining the continua between life and death. Sometimes he blurs the funny and the serious. Lawrence lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his wife and their dog.

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
2 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2012
Read the first book and purchased this along with it (just in case I liked the first, which I did...). I had to stay up until 3 am to finish this book, I could not put it down. If you are a hard science buff (you want the physics to be "real") this is not for you. If you are the grammarian that your mother warned you about, this may not be for you (there are some typos). If you enjoy a great read and some really interesting characters that see the world from a different angle, then you are going to have a great ride. I particularly liked the different alien races and how they see the world from different perspectives. I will be marking this author and keeping up on his releases. My only comment is that I would have loved to have this on Kindle and not on dead trees....
And yes, it really is a book about a stage hypnotist who is just trying to get by with his miniature (alien) buffalo out and about in the universe...
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2014
I have to admit that when I first heard the premise of this series - an interstellar performing hypnotist and his alien animal companion, which looks like a miniature buffalo, can eat literally anything, and excretes oxygen instead of poo - I sighed, rolled my eyes, and said "You've got to be frickin' kidding me".

Then I read one of the stories. And I was blown away by how good it was.

This novel continues the Adventures of the Amazing Conroy, which started in the anthology 
Buffalito Buffet  and continued in  Buffalito Destiny . If you haven't read those books already, I highly recommend doing so before you start this one. There is also a freely-available Nebula-nominated novella "The Trial of the Century", which bridges the events of Buffalito Destiny with those in Buffalito Contingency. Go find it and read it. I'll wait.

Having gone from rags-to-riches-back-to-rags, Conroy takes his hypnotism entertainment show back out on the intergalactic road. But his life can never be that simple: aliens from several different races all want to use him for their own mysterious purposes.

Another human who is as intensely interested as he is in alien cultures appears with a proposition: she's been tasked to take him to meet an alien with deity-like powers - except that it turns out this alien was one who nearly killed Conroy many years before, indirectly triggering the start of his career as a hypnotist. Then another quirky, fast-talking alien persuades Conroy to take him on as a manager/agent - but he may just be a ticket into big trouble. And an avaricious ship captain from yet another alien race blackmails him into serving as a reluctant smuggler in a highly-dangerous scheme.

Once again, Conroy must rely on his psychological powers of suggestion and persuasion to get him out of all these messes, with the help of his buffalito companion Reggie - while still managing to sample many delicious selections of the universe's unique alien cuisine.

The author does a spectacular job of blending richly-developed alien cultures with psychological insights, in a funny, adventurous romp through the stars.