[UA] Mick Farren- psychopop trash fiction (and oh so much fun)

[Benjamin Lee]

Gotta say- I love what Mick Farren writes.

http://www.thanatosoft.freeserve.co.uk/

I've been finding his stuff in used bookstores since
high school, and now have the pleasure of reading his
new stuff right off the shelf at Borders.  Wonder how
an old-school counter-culture nabob like Farren feels
about that?

Anyhow, he's writing a series of delightfully trashes
and reference-packed vampire novels which blend
everything from paranoid Edger Cayce prehuman
civilization fantasies with black bag secret
governments with hollow earth theories with Cthulhu
mythos with ancient astronauts with wry black humor. 
Every page has some kind of veiled (or not so veiled)
pseudo-culture reference, and really drips with
cynicism and wit.

I'm reading UNDERLAND right now- a story about a
vampire recruited by NSA-FEMA to enter the Hollow
Earth to fight Nazi super science and snake cultists.

Farren's everything-in-a-bucket weirdness is insanely
fun, as are his divergent juxtaposition
descriptions... here is one great bit from UNDERLAND:

"Below the goggles, his face was narrow and pale.  A
lifetime in the Hollow Earth seemed to have leached
the pigment from the flesh of Colonel Jonny
Beauregard, and his lips were almost without color. 
His hair was either black or dark brown, but plastered
down lank, slick, and close to his skull, with a limp
lock draped over the right eye if his goggles in an
odd confluence of Marilyn Manson, Adolf Hitler, and
Spanky from the OUR GANG shorts."



Further, his descriptions of how shock and horror
deform a personality are like screen-captures from an
especially over the top UA game, with Stress Checks
wily nilly.


Anyhow, if you are looking for UA inspiration for
something verging on OVER THE EDGE levels of
weirdness, then Farren's writing is a good place to
look... it seems well in-tune with the tone of UA at
it's farther fringes.


-Ben


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