Any good psychedelic science fiction out there?

[nomadman]

Robert Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus is wall to wall weirdness, as is pretty much everything I've read by RA Lafferty (Past Master, Fourth Mansion, The Devil is Dead), much of Burroughs's output (Naked Lunch, Exterminator, the cut-up trilogy), M John Harrison's SF and fantasy output (A Storm of Wings, Light, among others), Donald Bartelme's short stories, Dambudzo Marechera's short stories and a lot of Michael Cisco's output.

[Alien Dynasty]

Originally Posted by Nerds_feather

another author i HIGHLY recommend is JG Ballard.

I picked up a collection of his works from the library today.

[Nerds_feather]

Originally Posted by Alien Dynasty

I picked up a collection of his works from the library today.

sweet! which one? he's a great short story writer as well as novelist. the vermillion sands stories and the collections war fever and the drowned world are both insanely awesome. novels like high-rise, the drowned world and the atrocity exhibition are among my favorites.

[Alien Dynasty]

Originally Posted by Nerds_feather

sweet! which one? he's a great short story writer as well as novelist. the vermillion sands stories and the collections war fever and the drowned world are both insanely awesome. novels like high-rise, the drowned world and the atrocity exhibition are among my favorites.

The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard

[Nerds_feather]

Originally Posted by Alien Dynasty

The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard

good stuff. not sure how it's ordered, but that will have the vermillion sands and war fever stories in it.

[Zuvuya42]

I wholeheartedly recommend Clifford Pickover's "Neoreality" series and his book "The Heaven Virus". He reminds me a lot of a modern Philip K. Dick, and the majority of his work is quirky science-fact type stuff, so much of his sci-fi has a basis in whats possible. In the least, its extremely entertaining and thought-provoking.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by nomadman

Robert Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus is wall to wall weirdness, as is pretty much everything I've read by RA Lafferty (Past Master, Fourth Mansion, The Devil is Dead), much of Burroughs's output (Naked Lunch, Exterminator, the cut-up trilogy), M John Harrison's SF and fantasy output (A Storm of Wings, Light, among others), Donald Bartelme's short stories, Dambudzo Marechera's short stories and a lot of Michael Cisco's output.

Um... it's David Lindsay... and some of his other work is a bit strange as well. I would also second Lafferty, generally speaking, including the short story collection Nine Hundred Grandmothers. As for Bill Burroughs... that was a serious oversight on my part; Burroughs could be said to be one of the founders of the form... his Interzone should also be something on the list....

[nomadman]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Um... it's David Lindsay... and some of his other work is a bit strange as well. I would also second Lafferty, generally speaking, including the short story collection Nine Hundred Grandmothers. As for Bill Burroughs... that was a serious oversight on my part; Burroughs could be said to be one of the founders of the form... his Interzone should also be something on the list....

Pardon me. Robert Lindsay's the actor right?

[Vertigo]

No one seems to have mentioned the Hitch-hiker's Guide

How about Paolo Bacigalupi - Pump Six and other stories. Some very strange and disturbing stories in there. Also maybe his The Windup Girl. Not quite surreal maybe but still pretty out there.

Maybe Mieville's New Crobuzon books. That whole world is pretty surreal.

[J-Sun]

You might like Rudy Rucker, especially Spacetime Donuts and White Light. Also, I suspect you might like a lot of John Shirley - well known stuff like City Come A-Walkin' and really whacked out stuff like Dracula in Love. Shirley actually wrote lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult yet was more a punk guy, himself, but I posted in your White Zombie thread and I can see listening to Zombie while reading some Shirley.

Fredric Brown's What Mad Universe is nicely trippy - not exactly psychedelic, but weird. A.E. van Vogt might appeal - not sure which to recommend: The Voyage of the Space Beagle has some great monster/alien types but some stuff like the Null-A books might be weirder, but less creatureful. I haven't read enough Asher to say, maybe, but Asher has some trippily intense murderous aliens even if he doesn't seem psychedelic to me - more amphetamine-like. It depends on what you mean - very little, if any, of this was actually written under the influence and very little of it is actually acidic but it's loopy and weird or intense or otherwise unusual. I find some of the most straight-arrow Right Stuff sort of SF to often be the most mind-bending but I'm trying to think of more directly trippy stuff. Oh yeah - I don't know that he's written a fully psychedelic novel but some of Norman Spinrad's stories, especially in The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde are pretty psychedelic and, speaking of Right Stuff SF, his first novel, The Solarians, is like a collision between High Times and Astounding. In probably most ways, it's kinda awful but, in a way, it's kinda great. I haven't been having good luck with Ian Watson lately and haven't read The Book of Being (last of The Books of the Black Current) in a zillion years but I recall it being very trippy.

Oh, and Lisa Goldstein wrote a somewhat surrealistic book about surrealism called The Dream Years and Pat Murphy wrote one about a sort of psychedelic mental revolution in The City, Not Long After. Both live in the Bay area so there ya go.

Straying outside the genre, if you haven't yet, you must read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which likely was written at least very near the influence. Kafka can be very loopy and, with "The Metamorphosis", even has a creature. (Some others with moles or suchlike.) Gogol's "The Overcoat" and "The Nose" are a trip of sorts. Kurt Vonnegut's son, Mark, wrote a book about his schizophrenia which seems to re-invoke it - I think it was called The Eden Express. Definitely not psychedelic, but definitely reality-bending.

Dick's been mentioned, but I'll second that. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, among others. I've read next to no Ballard but, based on what I have I'd add him to Ellison and Cordwainer Smith as all being very weird. Not that I don't think Farmer and Sturgeon and some others can be plenty weird, either. I'll grant Lafferty could be there but I don't really like him - probably Avram Davidson, also, who's sort of stuck in my head with Lafferty - I only like one Davidson, I think. That touches on all kinds of people I've read in anthologies more than in collections/novels. Howard Waldrop has written some pretty bizarre stuff, for instance. Damien Broderick, Jonathan Lethem (actually, I have read his Gun, with Occasional Music in addition to stories - that's a trippy book with tough-talking gun-toting kangaroos and whatnot).

[Alex, The G and T]

Norman Spinrad; but of course. Songs From the Stars Maybe not so much psychedelic as hippie-trippie. In case the reader gets a bit weary of the blissed-ful new-agey tone; the Weird Science implied by the title comes to the rescue.

***

Coincidentaly, since my last post on this thread; I wandered into a Clark Ashton Smith short, "The Abominations of Yondo." "...Yondor reached interminable as the land of a hashish-dream against the black heavens."
A land ravaged by a fallout from a war between mages. The bestiary is bizarre.

Which reminds us of the Dream Cycle stories of Lovecraft. The Morphine induced delusions of "The Dream Quest of unknown Kaddath."

***

Would the Works of Carlos Castaneda be too obvious about now? Or has he been largely forgotten?

Peyote dreams swathed in a thin veil of mock-shamanic philosophy. Fun to read and very weird.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Alex, The G and T

Which reminds us of the Dream Cycle stories of Lovecraft. The Morphine induced delusions of "The Dream Quest of unknown Kaddath."

Er, say what? Where do drugs (of any kind) enter in as "inducing" anything either with Lovecraft in general (other than the collaborative piece "The Crawling Chaos") or with either the so-called "dream cycle" or Kadath in particular...?

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by Vertigo

No one seems to have mentioned the Hitch-hiker's Guide

How about Paolo Bacigalupi - Pump Six and other stories. Some very strange and disturbing stories in there. Also maybe his The Windup Girl. Not quite surreal maybe but still pretty out there.

Maybe Mieville's New Crobuzon books. That whole world is pretty surreal.

Mieville doesnt he write wierd stories ? Stories between SF and Fantasy. Those authors by their subgenres all belong here i think. Paul Di Flippo is another very cool author in that weird,steampunk like stories. His story about Queen Victoria in steampunk world was freaky cool. Authors like that must be weird,freakier to lure in the readers in more imaginative weird worlds.

Speaking about Hitch-Hiker series if you havent read it i think you should be banned from these forums

[Vertigo]

Originally Posted by Connavar

Speaking about Hitch-Hiker series if you havent read it i think you should be banned from these forums

He he what can be said to that except... yes!

[Falafel]

"Three Psychedelic Novellas" by Eckhard Gerdes, published by Enigmatic Ink in London, Ontario. True psychedelic fiction!