Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars
A 1975 novel about friendship, telepathy, and parallel worlds.
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Leonard Neeble starts at Bat Masterson Junior High and gets picked on by classmates and ignored by teachers. Then Alan Mendelsohn shows up and becomes his friend, which makes things better. Alan starts a big argument at school by saying he’s from Mars, and both boys get suspended for a week. During that time, they meet Samuel Klugarsh, who runs an occult bookstore.
He sells them a kit meant to teach telepathy and psychokinesis. After they learn those skills, they get bored, so Klugarsh trades their kit for a course in “Hyperstellar Archaeology”—the study of lost places like Atlantis and Lemuria—plus a copy of Yojimbo’s Japanese-English Dictionary. The course makes wild claims, but the boys get interested when they find an article in the text that mentions them by name. Following its directions for using the dictionary, they improve their parallel reality travel.
Later, they meet the dictionary’s author, Clarence Yojimbo, who explains the real secret: with the right key, the dictionary lets you travel to parallel realities. Following the book’s instructions, they go to a parallel Earth called Waka-Waka. There, the locals have a ritual culture based on drinking fleegix, a hot-chocolate-like beverage, but they’re controlled by three extraterrestrials from Mars named Manny, Moe, and Jack, who run the ingredient supply and enforce their rule with the deadly, invisible Wozzle.
Alan figures out the Wozzle only attacks in bright daylight or total darkness, and realizes it’s actually the three Martians made invisible by their own psychokinesis. He exposes them to the locals, and then he and Leonard use Klugarsh’s telepathic trick to make the trio surrender. The Martian High Commissioner, Rolzup (invited by Alan), orders them back to their own world, Nafsulia.
Alan and Leonard return to Earth. Soon after, Alan and his family emigrate to Mars. Leonard, after getting over losing his best friend, takes on Alan’s role as school trickster, studies on his own, surprises teachers in class, and joins an alternative gym class based on hatha yoga. At the end, he gets a letter from Alan inviting him to visit Mars.
Availability
The book is out of print as a separate work but appears in Pinkwater’s omnibus 5 Novels (1997) and as an audiobook on Pinkwater’s website.
Narrative Framework & Setting
The novel, published in 1979 by Daniel Pinkwater, centers on Leonard Neeble, a student at Bat Masterson Junior High who endures daily bullying from peers and indifference from faculty. His life transforms when he befriends Alan Mendelsohn, the titular character whose claim to Martian ancestry ignites a school-wide quarrel that lands both boys a week-long suspension.
That suspension becomes the doorway into the book's more fantastical elements: they encounter Samuel Klugarsh, proprietor of an occult bookstore, who introduces them to kits promising telepathy and psychokinesis. After finding those powers underwhelming, the pair trades them for a course in Hyperstellar Archaeology—the study of vanished civilizations like Atlantis and Lemuria—alongside a copy of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary. The narrative thus pivots from grounded school life into speculative territory, with the dictionary's hidden purpose, parallel-reality travel, revealed by its author, Clarence Yojimbo.
The Waka-Waka Expedition
The novel's most elaborate set piece unfolds in a parallel Earth called Waka-Waka, where inhabitants have built a ritualistic society around consuming fleegix, a drink likened to hot chocolate. That society has been subjugated by three extraterrestrial criminals—Manny, Moe, and Jack—who monopolize the fleegix ingredient supply and enforce their rule through a deadly, invisible entity called the Wozzle. Alan's analytical mind proves decisive: he reasons that the Wozzle strikes only in bright daylight or total darkness, meaning it cannot be a separate creature but rather the three criminals themselves rendered invisible by their own psychokinetic abilities.
He exposes this to the Waka-Waka locals, and together with Leonard, he employs Klugarsh's telepathic methods to coerce the trio into surrendering. The Martians are then ordered to retreat to their home world, Nafsulia, by Rolzup, the Martian High Commissioner, who was personally invited by Alan. This sequence showcases Pinkwater's blend of logical deduction with absurdist science fiction.
Critical Reception & Availability
Despite modest prose, the novel earned enthusiastic endorsements from notable voices in speculative fiction. Ann Haskell, writing in The New York Times Book Review, acknowledged that Pinkwater's writing was competent rather than transcendent, yet praised the book's imaginative plotting and decorative detail as scoring off the charts. Orson Scott Card, in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, went further, offering a strong recommendation of the work.
In terms of availability, Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars is no longer issued as a standalone title. Readers can still access the story through Pinkwater's 1997 omnibus collection, 5 Novels, or in audiobook format available on the author's own website. The book's continued presence in these formats, nearly two decades after its original 1979 publication, suggests a durable if niche readership that values its particular brand of whimsical, logic-driven fantasy.
Leonard's Transformation & the Closing
The emotional arc of the novel belongs as much to Leonard as to Alan. Before their friendship, Leonard endured a hostile school environment—bullied by classmates, overlooked by teachers. Alan's companionship makes him happier and more self-assured, and after Alan and his family emigrate to Mars, Leonard absorbs the loss and then steps into a new identity.
He takes over Alan's role as the school's irreverent trickster, pursues independent study, surprises teachers during lessons, and opts for an alternative gym class built around hatha yoga rather than conventional athletics. The book closes on a warm, forward-looking note: Leonard receives a letter from Alan inviting him to visit on Mars. This ending reframes the entire adventure not as a one-time escapade but as the beginning of an ongoing, cross-planetary friendship, leaving the reader with the sense that Leonard's growth is far from finished.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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