The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Read The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Online
Authors: Earl Mac Rauch
“I speak Spanish to God, French to women,
English to men, and Japanese to my horse.”
—Buckaroo Banzai
Buckaroo Banzai. A strange, elusive figure, his name whispered in barrooms and boardrooms, his advice sought by pashas and presidents, his exploits recounted in movies, novels, and comic books that seem somehow more real than life itself.
Buckaroo Banzai. First and foremost an extraordinary brain surgeon. In his spare time designer and driver of the electrifying Jet Car, a speed machine faster than sound! Buckaroo Banzai. A happy man whose life has been marked by great tragedy, who speaks a dozen languages and writes songs in all of them. His musical sidekicks the Hong Kong Cavaliers—Rawhide, Reno, the Swede, Perfect Tommy, Flyboy, Big Norse, Pecos—are one of the toughest, most popular hard-rocking bar bands in east Texas.
Join Team Banzai on their two-fisted, action-packed assault against the evil red Lectroids from Planet 10! Experience the horrors of the Shock Tower and the Pitt deep within the walls of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems as Buckaroo Banzai fights against impossible odds to rescue Penny Priddy from the clutches of Dr. Emilio Lizardo, the diabolically alien dictator. Pray that Buckaroo will succeed, knowing only too well that if he fails the Earth itself will be blown to dust!
For the first time in nearly twenty years, Pocket Books is proud to present The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. This special edition features a new introduction by the author and a color insert featuring photos and illustrations seen here for the very first time!
No matter where you go, there you are.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
| POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. |
Copyright © 1984, 2001 by Sherwood Productions, Inc. Introduction copyright © 2001 by Earl Mac Rauch
Originally published in mass market in 1984 by Pocket Books
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-7434-4248-2
First Pocket Books trade paperback printing December 2001
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POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Cover art by Michael Okuda
Printed in the U.S.A.
THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI
To Rawhide and the others
without whom . . .
How time changes everything! By a decision of fate, I was thinking of this as Buckaroo Banzai and I sat swapping wonderful stories one night, and it was not long before he turned to me and said, “Why don’t you collect a volume of our adventures together, Reno?”
“Could we collect many together?” I asked excitedly.
“As many as the book will hold,” he assured me, and I immediately set about to plan details.
But which stories? To this end, I turned to you, my flying squad of youthful readers and the conscience of honest people everywhere, who have imposed on me the strictest moral principles in my actions and sustained me in conditions that surpass the imagination. When I say that you are the supreme authority to whom I resort, it is in joy at feeling your loyalty and high sentiments of duty. You are my church, my thunder, who never fail to remove every stone from my path; it is for you to show the way.
Thanks to your overwhelming messages of support, there will be a book of new stories—hopefully many of them—in the near future.
But for now, many of you have hard-pressed me to reprint in narrative form the torturous path traveled by the creature Dr. Emilio Lizardo, Supreme Dictator of Planet 10, from his lost corner of hell in the 8th Dimension to his miracle return to the land of the living: in effect the volume you are holding in your hands at this very moment.
The fact that Lizardo’s wild plan nearly succeeded had, as we now know, famous near-tragic consequences. At a hard moment—the most dramatic of my life—the world stood still, all but lost, and would have been . . . but for one man, whose name is on my lips.
“Why don’t you collect another volume of stories, Reno?”
Yes, I will—and soon. As Buckaroo Banzai is fond of stating, each must give as much as he can afford of the three T’s—Time, Treasure and Talent—in order to serve others. With the active assistance of many others, I have been kept busy remounting this little volume and now bring it to you posthaste.
Armed with an open sesame to Banzai Institute archives and Buckaroo Banzai’s private files, I have taken a great deal of trouble to safeguard the truth, even where the requirements of storytelling have superintended augmenting my sources with occasional “scenes” at which neither I nor any of our group was present. (It is to be hoped the reader’s appraising eye will find these occasional sorties of necessity picturesque and even largely believable.) Seeking only to contribute to honor the dead and to prove that a noble exploit still finds recognition, I embrace you in a special manner. For always, for ever
—Reno
June 1981
Editor’s Note
Portions of the following material appeared originally in the
Journal for Empirical Research into the Paranormal,
1982
It will doubtless be charged by cynics that the compilation and publication of this volume have been done with an eye toward mass sales and nothing more; that the sensational elements of the case have been accentuated to serve the public clamor rather than the cause of accuracy. The truth is otherwise, however, as the most cursory examination of the facts will reveal. If anything, I have refrained from using much of the more lurid material on the grounds that it might invite panic among those unfamiliar with the story or in those of weak mental fiber. I do confess that in my zeal for getting an overview of the whole and a sense of perspective, I have found it necessary to recreate certain situations central to the drama where I could not have been a witness or where, indeed, no person now living (I use “person” in the sense of “intelligent being”) could have been present. In all other instances, where possible, I have relied upon eyewitnesses, the corporate records of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, the kindly assistance of the Nova Police (the Planet 10 equivalent of Interpol), the documents of the Banzai Institute, and, of course, the Freedom of Information Act in obtaining U.S. government files. Throughout, I have endeavored to be as faithful as possible to the events as they actually occurred and would like to thank Mrs. E. Johnson, archivist of the Banzai Institute, for her valued help and her many hours of selfless labor on behalf of the project . . . and, of course, Buckaroo Banzai, M.D., Ph.D.
Reno
1
S
itting here safely in the stained-glass enclosed study of the Banzai Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information, I am at last able to look back on the events of the twelfth and thirteenth of June past with a certain remove and, I may say, a sense of profound relief that the worst did not occur when it seemed as though it might. For this, the world has to thank Buckaroo Banzai, that rare combination of cunning and civilized breeding, who was contacted by representatives of the Nova Police, whose very existence until that time was unknown to us; but perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. A bit of history may be helpful here for our youthful readers.