Venus on the Half-Shell and Others - Hardcover

Philip Jose Farmer

3.61

84 ratings by Goodreads

9781596061422: Venus on the Half-Shell and Others

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596061421 ISBN 13: 9781596061422

Publisher: Subterranean, 2008

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Venus on the Half-Shell and Others collects for the first time the best of the best from Philip Jos� Farmer's scintillating "fictional-author period."

In the mid-1970s a fever-pitched furor was created when an actual novel purported to be by Kilgore Trout -- the sadsack science fiction writer who appears as a character in the works of Kurt Vonnegut -- materialized on the bookracks, complete with a mysterious back cover photo of the author looking like a bearded vagabond sage. Debate raged as to who had truly written Venus on the Half-Shell. Was it Vonnegut himself, or perhaps Theodore Sturgeon, rumored to have been the inspiration for Trout? Or did Kilgore Trout really exist? Just as one respected newspaper published an article "proving" that Vonnegut had written the book, the Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer announced he was the true author.

The controversial Kilgore Trout episode was neither the first nor the last time Farmer would impishly slip out of his own skin and assume the persona of another author. In Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, Philip Jose Farmer transforms himself into fictional personalities as compelling as they are diverse: Cordwainer Bird, Paul Chapin, Rod Keen, Harry "Bunny" Manders, Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor, John H. Watson, M.D. and even the real-life author William S. Burroughs (writing his own version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Jungle Lord!). Also included is the original version of Farmer's classic Sherlock Holmes/Lord Greystoke pastiche The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, back in print for the first time in over thirty years.

A unique collection, Venus on the Half-Shell and Others showcases the grand imagination of one of science fiction's most resourceful and creative minds.

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From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Farmer appends his own name at last to his stories written under pen names borrowed from other authors' characters, most famously Venus on the Half-Shell, a novel allegedly by Kurt Vonnegut's fictional science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. As Harry Manders, created by E.W. Horning, Farmer pens the suspenseful The Problem of the Sore Bridge—Among Others. As Rex Stout's psychologically and physically maimed Paul Chapin, he offers the violent The Volcano. A story by Harlan Ellison's Cordwainer Bird, The Last Rise of Nick Adams, discloses that Bird was related to Farmerian heroes the Shadow and the Spider. Finally, after demonstrating how Tarzan might have sounded had he been written by William S. rather than Edgar Rice, Farmer dons the mantle of Conan Doyle's Dr. Watson and introduces Tarzan to Holmes in The Adventure of the Peerless Peer. Only a writer as mature as Farmer could have pulled this stunt off so successfully. (Feb.)
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