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The DNA Cowboys #3
The Neural Atrocity
The conclusion to the saga of the DNA Cowboys. The travellers continue their exploration of the world, this time dealing with a mad tyrant.
- GenresScience Fiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
2 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Mick Farren
67 books81 followersFarren was the singer with the proto-punk English band The Deviants between 1967 and 1969, releasing three albums. In 1970 he released the solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus which also featured Steve Peregrin Took, John Gustafson and Paul Buckmaster, before leaving the music business to concentrate on his writing.
In the mid-1970s, he briefly returned to music releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.
He has sporadically returned to music, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.
Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" in the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.
In the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He went on to write for the main stream New Musical Express, where he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he saw as the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music which described the conditions that subsequently gave rise to punk.
To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His prophetic 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who dismantle the Constitution.
Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and a plethora of poetry.
Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the weekly Los Angeles CityBeat.
Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing onstage while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London.
In the mid-1970s, he briefly returned to music releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.
He has sporadically returned to music, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.
Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" in the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.
In the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He went on to write for the main stream New Musical Express, where he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he saw as the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music which described the conditions that subsequently gave rise to punk.
To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His prophetic 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who dismantle the Constitution.
Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and a plethora of poetry.
Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the weekly Los Angeles CityBeat.
Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing onstage while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 28, 2020
Farren finally provides explanation for the Damaged World while ripping the whole thing down. This is cataclysm writ large, from the world-eating disruptors and their source, to the leader A A Catto as her sanity crumbles in destructive spasms and megalomania, to the not less disturbing gang-rapes among refugees and thugs in the few remaining stable areas. Everything decays, everything crumbles, everything will fail due to inherent flaws.
There's not really a point or statement being made, and it's a blunt weapon of prose.
There's not really a point or statement being made, and it's a blunt weapon of prose.
December 27, 2016
Тот случай когда название соответствует содержанию.
April 18, 2014
This was fast fast fast. I was simply reading through half until I think I fully realized quite how easy and tamed all the words and sounds or the styles structure had really been for such a complicated story. Right after the 1976 Synaptic Manhunt :DNA Cowboys #2 this 1977 publication launched into a renegaded war; monks versus "...psycho, sadistic female, who plans to conquer the known worlds, and who is marked for termination." Wow. This must mark a corner stone in the history of outlandish science-fiction horror fantasy literature or whatever. Apparently Mick Farren ran counter-culture. As this may make sense seeing him as a punk musician writing literature.
September 19, 2013
The conclusion. The cowboys, with a few new friends, deal with a mad tyrant, who causes world wide war. The end of the novel is the effective end of humanity, replaced by a new (and better?) breed. Again, it is the story, the complex characters, the mad societies, the humour and satire, that make Farren's novels so much fun.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews