Robert Rankin

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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Author of Far Fetched Fiction. Rankin's works are best described as completely insane. Mostly they have a plot of sorts, but beyond that anything can happen. He's particularly fond of No Fourth Wall moments and Shooting The Shaggy Dog. His writing style consists almost entirely of Sophisticated As Hell.

Although his books can be divided fairly firmly into series, most of them have Crossover characters, and Running Gags that follow from one series to another, either because of a tradition, or an old charter or something, or else because of the transperambulation of pseudocosmic antimatter. If it wasn't for all the Negative Continuity it might even count as Canon Welding. One of the books, The Brightonomicon, received a full cast audio dramatisation in 2008, starring some comedic celebrities such as Andy Serkis and Mark Wing-Davey. It starred David Warner as Hugo Rune (the Cosmic Dick) and Rupert Degas as Rizla aka Jim Pooley.

The series include (more to be added):

The Brentford Trilogy

The Brentford Trilogy - Nine volumes (four more than the galaxy's second-largest trilogy), detailing the adventures of two layabouts named Jim Pooley and John O'Mally in an area of West London which comes under attack from supernatural forces more than you'd expect.

The books are:

  • The Antipope (1981)
  • The Brentford Triangle (1982)
  • East of Ealing (1984)
  • The Sprouts of Wrath (1988)
  • The Brentford Chainstore Massacre (1997)
  • Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls (2000)
  • Knees Up Mother Earth (2004)
  • The Brightonomicon (2005)
  • Retromancer (2009)

The Brentford Trilogy contains examples of:

  • Aliens In Cardiff Brentford - Among other things.
  • The Antichrist - In fact, several.
  • City of Adventure - Brentford
  • Clone Jesus - In Brentford Chainstore Massacre. They're twins. One's evil.
  • Crazy Prepared - It takes a lot to catch Professor Slocombe off guard. Among other things, he can see through his eyelids.
  • Crossover -Knees Up Mother Earth is also the second book in the Witches of Chiswick trilogy
  • Finger-Poke of Doom - Dimac, the world's most lethal martial art, which can maim or disfigure an opponent with the mere pressure of a fingertip.
  • Generation Xerox - In Brentford Chainstore Massacre it turns out a long line of Omalleys and Pooleys have been assassinating each other over the Brentford Scrolls. The friendship between the current versions is a Screw Destiny.
  • Heroic Sacrifice - Mahatma Campbell. Fighting off Cthulhu. SINGLE-HANDEDLY.
  • Kill and Replace - Happens to the entire cast except for Jim in East of Ealing. Fortunately, everything is back to normal by the time the next book begins.
  • Local Hangout - The saloon bar of the Flying Swan.
  • Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: When a zulu warrior goes up in smoke on the 7.15 bus, the public response is along the lines of "Meh, that was just Spontaneous Combustion. Could have happened anywhere."
  • Mad Scientist - Arguably Norman. He creates a perpetual motion machine to power a robotic Norman...which gives him more time to work on building a time machine. He has also teleported the Great Pyramid of Giza to the Brentford football ground and calculated the location of the Great Pit. It's in his kitchenette.
  • Updated Rerelease - The Sprouts Of Wrath had a rewritten ending for the Corgi edition, due to the author not being happy with ending the book in a sad way.
  • Self-Insert Fic - The author has said in several interviews that he based Jim Pooley on himself and that Hugo Rune was based on his father (who incidentally knew Aleister Crowley). He also said that when he finished writing 'The Brightonomicon' he realised that he'd written a story about his father and himself having an adventure.
  • Serious Business - Celebrating the Millennium in 1997 and saving Brentford FC football grounds, among others.
  • Sherlock Holmes - Appears in East of Ealing
  • The Constant - Professor Slocombe. It's implied that he has been the Comte De Saint Germain and Merlin, among others. He is present when Norman travels back in time in East Of Ealing as well as Sherlock Holmes recalling working with him more than a century ago in the same book.
  • Took a Level In Badass - Archroy evolves from Chew Toy to globetrotting Dimac master in The Antipope, while Soap Distant, a demented Hollow Earther presumed dead in the same book, returns in later books as a valued ally.

The Armageddon Trilogy

The Armageddon Trilogy - This one is only three volumes, which starts off After the End, and gets steadily weirder as Rex Mundi encounters Elvis and his talking Time Sprout, Barry, leading to numerous misadventures.

The books are:

  • Armageddon: The Musical (1988)
  • They Came and Ate Us (Armageddon II: The B Movie) (1991)
  • The Suburban Book of the Dead (Armageddon III: The Remake) (1992)

They contain examples of:

  • Alternate History - The Suburban Book of the Dead is set partly in a timeline created by Elvis.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology - Two words: plant-based technology.
  • Church of Happyology - One of the three religious leaders/TV execs that run the world is L. Ron Hubbard the 23rd, although he isn't a significant part of the plot.
  • Comic Book Fantasy Casting - Spoofed.
  • Deus Ex Machina - Played for laughs.
  • Encyclopedia Exposita - I and III have two very different books called The Suburban Book of the Dead. II introduces Hugo Rune and The Book of Ultimate Truths.
    • Played with somewhat, as excerpts from The Book of Ultimate Truth are accompanied by quotes from the work of Sir John Rimmer that try to discredit them, which ultimately leads to Hugo Rune complaining about it.
  • Exposition of Immortality: During They Came And Ate Us, Johnathan points out that not only did he recognise Elvis, despite his wig and glasses, his aliases weren't exactly concealing, either. "Theodore Henry Edward King? T H E King? Mr No-ah Never?"
  • Fridge Logic - At the end of the first book, Elvis points out that it doesn't make any sense.
  • Meaningful Name: Rex Mundi, and his sister Gloria. Oh, and President Wormwood.
  • The Messiah - Christine, twin sister of Christ and wife to Rex.
  • Metafictional Title: The Suburban Book of the Dead: Armageddon III: The Remake is named after The Suburban Book of the Dead, a religious tome within the book ... but which turns out not to be the same Suburban Book Of The Dead that appeared in Armageddon: The Musical.
  • Mind Screw - while this applies to some degree to everything Rankin has written, Armageddon 2 takes the cake, paints it pink, and wears it like a hat while running naked down the street to tell its aunt all about it.
  • No Fourth Wall - Most prominently in Book II. When one scene turns awry, Rex notes that they're probably going to rewrite it for the movie version.
    • Also used at the beginning:

Rambo Bloodaxe: It's Rankin, he's in the pub again and he's writing.

The Cornelius Murphy Series

The Cornelius Murphy Series - Three books that give us more details of the Guru's Guru, the Lad Himself, The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived, Mr Hugo Rune, as Cornelius Murphy (the Stuff of Epics) and his friend Tuppe try to find a copy of The Book of Ultimate Truths or Rune himself.

The books are:

  • The Book of Ultimate Truths (1993)
  • Raiders of the Lost Car Park (1994)
  • The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (1995)

They contain examples of:

  • Encyclopedia Exposita - The Book of Ultimate Truths again.
  • It Runs on Nonsensoleum - Raiders of the Lost Car Park. The lands of The Fair Folk are normally inaccessible to humans because they're on the areas of a rectangular map that don't fit when you glue it onto a globe of the same scale. These can be accessed by playing the right combination of notes on an ocarina that has been 'reinvented' through the correct application of a power drill. There's more, but the world is not prepared.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father - Murphy is Rune's son.

The Trilogy That Dare Not Speak Its Name Trilogy

The books are:

  • Sprout Mask Replica
  • The Dance of The Voodoo Handbag
  • Waiting For Godalming

They contain examples of

Other books:

  • The Greatest Show Off Earth (1994)
  • A Dog Called Demolition (1996)
  • Nostradamus Ate my Hamster (1996)
  • Apocalypso (1998)
  • Snuff Fiction (1999)
  • The Fandom of the Operator (2001)
  • Web Site Story (2001)
  • The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (2002)
  • The Witches of Chiswick (2003)
  • The Toyminator (2006)
  • The Da-da-de-da-da Code (2007)
  • Necrophenia (2008)
  • The Japanese Devil Fish Girl And Other Unnatural Attractions (2010)
  • The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age (2011)
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