Robert Rankin at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 13/07/2007

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Robert Rankin - Page 1

The Da Da De Da Da Code

19 Jul 07

The Toyminator

The Witches of Chiswick

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

The Fandom of the Operator

WebPage: http://www.lostcarpark.com/sproutlore/

About the Author (Photo (c) Sally Hurst)

Bibliography

First British Edition Gollancz (2007)

The Da Da De Da Da Code
A forbidden secret wrapped up in a musical enigma, bound up in a cosmic mystery
Jonny Hooker is a tormented man, but his former problems pale into insignificance when he receives a Very Special Letter telling him he has been selected by a Competition Supercomputer to be a WINNER! But to claim his prize he has to solve the Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code.
Jonny’s a musician, so he knows perfectly well that popular music always has da-da-de-da-da somewhere in the beat . . . and that it definitely has something to do with the Devil’s Chord. And Robert Johnson, and with the last castrato, whose voice was so beautiful it touched the angels in heaven ... and it also has something to do with Elvis, who is still alive and rocking, and with the Secret Parliament of Five, who run the world’s affairs from Gunnersbury Park ...
And in solving the code he might also discover why all the most famous rock musicians die aged 27. And learn the truth behind the raising of an ancient god. And the destruction of the world. It’s all right there in the music, and all Jonny has to do is solve the code . . . before he dies on Monday.
Robert Rankin’s latest masterpiece of Far Fetched Fiction is a forbidden secret wrapped up in a musical enigma, bound up in a cosmic mystery, and served at the table nect to the jukebox, with two pints of King Billy and a packet of pork scratchings.

First British Edition Gollancz (2006)

The Toyminator
Somewhere over the rainbow and just off the Yellow Brick Road stands Toy City, formerly known as Toy Town. And things are not going well for the city’s inhabitants.
There have been outbreaks of STC - Spontaneous Toy Combustion.
There are strange signs and portents in the Heavens.
Preachers of Toy City’s many religions are predicting that the End Times are approaching and that a Toy City Apocalypse will soon come to pass.
But can this possibly be true, or is there a simpler explanation - alien invasion, for instance?
With the body count rising and the forces of law and order baffled, it is time for a hero - well, two heroes, actually - to attempt to save the day.
Step up, Eddie Bear, Toy City Private Eye, and his loyal sidekick, Jack.
And this time their adventures, fraught with danger, thrills and spills, disasters and daredevilry, excitement, sex and altogether too much alcohol, will take them far from Toy City and into another world, a world wild beyond even their most wild imaginings.
This world.
In this, the much-longed-for sequel to the bestselling and award-winning The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, our courageous twosome face their biggest challenge yet: for they must save not only toykind, but the world of mankind too.
Which should keep them out of the pub for a while.
'Stark raving genius' Observer
'Like Douglas Adams on a sugar high' Kirkus
Praise for The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse:
‘Like a mad toymaker’s fever dream, [though] Rankin’s uproarious book [is] wickedly clever and the payoff is a great and satisfying surprise, the real delight comes from watching Rankin work his linguistic magic’ Publishers Weekly [Starred Review]
‘The weirdest detective story I have read’ Tribune
‘The Master of Silliness ... the English Spike Milligan ... they share an irrepressible joy of language and a marvellously inventive facetiousness - not an easy thing to pull off, but Rankin does, again and again’ Morning Star
‘Witty, intelligent and totally bizarre don’t even start to describe this’ Ottakars

Paperback - Gollancz (2004)

The Witches of Chiswick
History is a cauldron of lies brewed up by Victorian witches
We have all been lied to. A great and sinister conspiracy exists to keep us from uncovering the truth about our past.
Have you ever wondered how Jules Verne and H.G. Wells dreamed up all that fantastic futuristic fiction? Did it ever occur to you that it might just have been based upon fact? That The War Of The Worlds was a true account of real events? That Captain Nemo’s Nautilus even now lies rusting at the bottom of the North Sea? That there really was an invisible man?
Now, thanks to the world’s leading exponent of Far Fetched Fiction, you can learn how a cabal of Victorian Witches from the Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild, working with advanced Babbage super-computers, rewrote 19th Century history, and how a 23rd Century boy called William Starling uncovered the truth about everything.
'Stark raving genius' Observer
‘Rankin’s whimsically dense sing-song patter reads like Douglas Adams crossed with Aaron Sorkin by way of Mother Goose’ Entertainment Weekly
‘Rankin’s prose is like a mind-expanding drug ... beware, lest you find yourself addicted’ SFX

First British Edition Gollancz (2002)

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
Toy town babylon . . .
Once upon a time Jack set out to seek his fortune in the big city.
But Jack gets a bit lost on the way and wanders off the map. And when he finally comes to a big city, it is Toy City, formerly known as Toy Town, and it has grown considerably since the good old days and isn’t all that jolly any more.
For there is a serial killer loose upon the streets of Toy City.
One by one, the old rich nursery rhyme characters, who made their millions from the royalties on their best-selling rhymes, are being brutally slaughtered. First to die is Humpty Dumpty, prominent city swell, boiled alive in his swimming pool. Next is Little Boy Blue, Toy City’s leading fashion designer, shish-kebabbed on his own shepherd’s crook.
The Toy City police are getting nowhere; and Bill Winkie, Private Eye, has also mysteriously vanished, leaving only his sidekick, Eddie Bear, a battered teddy with an identity crisis, to take care of business.
Eddie’s ready to take on the challenge and when he teams up with Jack, the two set out on an epic adventure that will ultimately lead them into uncharted realms of the human psyche.
Not to mention a lot of heavy drinking, bad behaviour, fast car chases, gratuitous sex and violence, bizarre toy fetishism and all-round grossness. Of a type not normally associated with Toy Town.
‘One of the rare guys who can always make me laugh’ Terry Pratchett
‘His impressively individual style means that he becomes funnier the more you read him’ Independent
‘Everybody should read at least one Robert Rankin in their life’ Daily Express
‘Buy this book now and you will own a smashing piece of hilarious future science fiction… one of the sproutmeister’s finest works to date’ SFX Magazine (of Snuff Fiction)
'Rankin is uniquely off-the-wall, unparalleled in his eccentricity: there's no other comic fantasy author like him' amazon.co.uk

Paperback - Corgi (2002)

First British Edition Doubleday (2001)

The Fandom of the Operator
Gary Cheese is twenty-two years of age. His hobbies include music, girls, TV and the detective novels of the twentieth century’s bestselling novelist, the now legendary P. P. Penrose. And attempting to reanimate the dead. He hasn’t been having much luck with the last one so far. But now Gary’s got this new job in the telecommunications industry. And, according to this rumour he’s heard, there exists certain technology that can actually let you speak to the dead. Apparently it’s been in operation for years. FLATLINE, it’s called.
As in CHATLINE, but to the dead.
Apparently they ran all these ads on the TV a few years ago to prepare the public for it.
Those ones about having a `one-to-one’ with famous dead people.
But apparently something went very wrong: the dead had certain things to say to the living that the powers that be couldn’t allow to be heard.
Or something.
Apparently.
Gary’s determined to find out the truth. And as Gary’s a bit of a fan boy, and his attempts at necromancy have so far come to nothing, he’d be more than pleased just to speak to his hero, the late great Mr Penrose.
Yes, Gary will have the time of his life when Gary talks to the dead.

About The Author
Robert Rankin, who describes himself as a Teller of Tall Tales, embarked upon his writing career in the late nineteen seventies, his ambition was to create an entirely new literary genre, which he named Far-Fetched Fiction. By doing this he aimed to avoid competing with any other living author in any known genre and would be given his own special section in bookshops. However, they weren’t keen on giving him his own set of shelves and his work is to be found in the Science Fiction section.
Robert Rankin’s unique prose style and extraordinary imagination have brought him considerable success. He is the author of The Brentford Trilogy (Six books), The Armageddon Trilogy (Three books), A Dog called Demolition, The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag, Snuff Fiction, Web Site Story and many other wondrous books.
In his own Words:
I’ve always loved books. Since I was very young there has always been a wonder in words. Mind you, I’ve never gone for the easy stuff, the best sellers, I’ve always loved the weirdos and I suppose I knew quite early on that they were my kind of folks and that I was probably a weirdo too. I was reading William Burroughs and listening to Captain Beefheart and thinking this stuff is for me.
I was a teenager in the nineteen sixties. A great era for that kind of thing and the very heyday of the jumble sale. People threw away a lot of incredible books, Victorian books, tea chest loads. I bought and bought for pennies. The tales of Victorian explorers and heroes of the Empire and works about Magic. I discovered Aleister Crowley, archetypal weirdo. He could have become my role model. All I lacked for was charisma and riches and an absolute belief in the power of Magic. And I wasn’t really up for having sex with all those women. Well, I sort of was, but they weren’t up for having sex with me.
I had inveigled myself into Art School at this time and was in my element. I was on the same course as Freddie Mercury, who wasn’t a weirdo at all, but went on to fame and fortune. I was pretty screwed after art school. I humped my folder of work around the publishing houses trying to get illustration work, but guess what, they all thought my stuff was…too weird.
Then, all of a sudden and without any warning, the sixties were gone and all the hopes and dreams of youth culture somehow taking over the world went with them. But I still had this hunger, you see. I wanted to create. I wanted to do things with words. I wanted to make a living by doing something that was me, rather than working for and getting sacked by some else. So while I was trying to work my way out of the rat race I took dull office jobs and spent much of the day writing short stories and poems, no one seemed to notice. They were stories of real people put in extraordinary situations and how they manage to deal with the obstacles they find themselves up against. Eventually I got a suitcase full and was told by a publisher, that if I wrote a novel in the same style they would buy it and I believed them. Thankfully they were telling the truth. So I got on with it. I was very fortunate to know a true teller of tall tales, he was my father and he was the inspiration for my writing. The full story of that is in THE DANCE OF THE VOODOO HANDBAG.
I’ve never made a fortune from writing, I am very lucky because I continue to be published and I’m allowed to go on doing things my way, which is the only way I can do them. Those who read my work probably do so because they can tell that I do what I do with conviction, I care about it. I don’t sell them short. I don’t make it easy for them, but I give them everything that I’ve got. I suppose THE BRENTFORD TRIANGLE is as near to perfect, in my personal opinion, as anything I’ve written. I love all those words. There’s a magic in writing those words and, OK, I make no bones about it, I’m still a committed weirdo, even after all these years, I will never conform, I will never join. I love what I do and I enjoy being me. I buy more books now than I ever did in the past and there are now so many places to buy them from and so many books being republished that you’d have had to pay a fortune for a few years ago. As long as my eyes and my brain keep functioning, I will keep on keeping on.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

The Da Da De Da Da Code (Gollancz, 2007) Jul 07

The Toyminator (Gollancz, 2006)

Knees Up Mother Earth (Gollancz, 2004) Gollancz Pbk Jul 05

The Witches of Chiswick (Gollancz, 2003) Gollancz Pbk Jul 04

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (Gollancz, 2002)

The Fandom of the Operator (Doubleday, 2001) Corgi Pbk Mar 02

Web Site Story (Doubleday, 2001) Corgi Pbk Nov 01

Waiting for Godalming (Doubleday, 2000) Oct 00 Corgi Pbk Apr 01

Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls (Doubleday, 1999) Dec 99 Corgi Pbk Jan 00

Snuff Fiction (Doubleday, 1999)

The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (Doubleday, 1998)

Apocalypso (Doubleday, 1998)

The Brentford Chainsaw Massacre (Doubleday, 1997)

Sprout Mask Replica (Doubleday, 1997)

A Dog Called Demolition (Doubleday, 1996)

Nostradamus Ate My Hamster (Doubleday, 1996)

The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (Doubleday, 1995)

The Garden of Unearthly Delights (Doubleday, 1995)

Raiders of the Lost Car Park (Doubleday, 1994)

The Greatest Show Off Earth (Doubleday, 1994)

The Book of Ultimate Truths (Doubleday, 1993)

The Suburban Book of the Dead, Armageddon III: The Remake (Bloomsbury, 1992)

They Came and Ate Us, Armageddon II: The B-Movie (Bloomsbury, 1991)

Armageddon the Musical (Bloomsbury, 1988) Corgi Pbk 1991

The Sprouts of Wrath (Abacus, 1984)

East of Ealing (Pan, 1984)

The Brentford Triangle (Pan, 1982)

The Antipope (Pan, 1981) Corgi Pbk 1991