The Neural Atrocity (The DNA Cowboys #3)

The Neural Atrocity, by Mick Farren

No month stated, 1977  Mayflower Books

The DNA Cowboys “trilogy” wraps up with this third installment that begins soon after Synaptic Manhunt. In fact the two installments come off as one novel, whereas first installment The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys still seems like a book disconnected from the series. Even more so with this last one, as all the characters continue with the retconning that occurred in Synaptic Manhunt; The Minstrel Boy is a “nothings”-navigating “tracker” and prepubescent adult AA Catto is a would-be conqueror, looking to dominate the entire ruined Earth with her minions of black-armored shock troops. 

Catto is even more unhinged this time around. Mick Farren clearly intends her to be some sort of post-apocalypse Hitler, and her scenes, which all take place in the city of Quahal (which she first conquered last volume), are certainly inspired by Hitler in the bunker in the final days of the war. Catto becomes increasingly insane as the novel progresses, her only ally Nancy, the pearl-skinned hooker who joined up with Catto last volume. The two enjoy more lesbian shenanigans, but Nancy finds herself more and more the victim of Catto’s frequent tantrums. 

Speaking of which, Farren continues pushing buttons: The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys featured a random part where Reave, one of the titular “DNA Cowboys” (though the phrase has still not appeared in the books themselves), had sex with some albino dude. Well late in The Neural Atrocity, the Minstrel Boy and Billy Oblivion are approached by monks who claim to be there to serve their every need (male monks, just to confirm), and the Minstrel Boy puts them to the test by having one of them give him a blowjob! 

One new thing Mick Farren introduces here is that Catto has developed a penchant for having Stuff Central (ie the vast computer that serves up whatever a person orders) create clones of previous celebrities, and Catto will have her sadistic way with them until she has them dumped in the compost bin or whatever. So there’s lots of annoying stuff where Catto will have this resplendent meal with all these clones of long-dead notables, and the one that gets the most attention is the clone of Elvis. Catto and Nancy enjoy this one the most, so there’s a bit of clone-sex and sadism at play too. 

But for the most part The Neural Atrocity is focused on war and carnage; when we meet Billy and the Minstrel Boy, they’re in a new city that is being waylaid by Catto’s shock troops. Once again they’ve hooked up with, uh, hookers, and once again Billy’s become the pimp of the one he’s with – a recurring bit from the previous book. Despite the war raging outside, Billy is more upset that the Minstrel Boy has two girls in his room, while Billy is stuck with just one. 

There’s a goofy part where Billy has sex with this hooker…but he’s had so much sex with her over the weeks (as it’s literally all she wants to do) that he’s grown bored with it. So Farren actually writes an entire scene in which Billy goes through the motions, humping dutifully away just to get it over with. Almost as if Farren were spoofing the entire “exploitative” angle of pulp – I mean there’s nothing like a fairly explicit sex scene in which the protagonist is bored – but also it ties back to the previous book, where Billy was bored being stuck with his previous hooker girlfriend. Maybe Farren’s trying to tell us that hookers are only fun if you don’t start a relationship with them… 

As ever though our heroes are kind of lame. Billy and the Minstrel Boy do little except hide and have sex with their hookers; there’s no part where they decide to wipe out their old enemy Catto. This job falls to that other loser from the previous book: Jeb Stuart Ho, the kung-fu monk who was introduced as such a badass but ultimately turned out to be a buffoon…one who didn’t even succeed in his mission to kill AA Catto, but instead went back to his temple to report his failure. This time he’s given a pep talk by his leaders and goes back out into the fray again, determined to stop Catto and her attack on the world for real this time. 

Action is given more focus this volume, but again Ho carries the brunt of it. There’s a bit of kung-fu and swordplay, and again he uses a pistol. But Farren is more focused on the atrocities carried out by Catto’s troops, and the relish Catto takes in hearing about them. But as mentioned she becomes increasingly nuts as the book proceeds, with Farren hammering the “Hitler in the bunker” stuff, complete with Catto being whacked-out on various drugs and paranoid to the point of delusions. Catto carries the brunt of the narrative; her or Jeb Stuart Ho, to the point that the supposed DNA Cowboys – Billy and the Minstrel Boy – barely appear. 

You’ll notice there’s one DNA Cowboy I’m not mentioning. SPOILER ALERT – skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. But anyway, I have not mentioned Reave. This is because he was killed off in the final pages of Synaptic Manhunt. But it happened so casually, with such little exploitation, that it almost seemed as if Farren were implying that Reave was just injured and not really dead – as it happened, he was shot at while escaping with some others, and fell down, but he was off in the distance and it’s possible he could’ve just been hurt; even Billy seemed unsure. Well, Reave isn’t even mentioned in The Neural Atrocity, which would indicate he’s well and truly dead…except for the fact that he seems to appear in The Last Stand Of The DNA Cowboys, the fourth volume of this, uh, “trilogy.” 

Well, that’s it for the spoilers, but I’ll also hint that the finale of this one wasn’t very satisfactory. I kept hoping for some comeuppance for a certain increasingly-annoying character, but it didn’t happen, and Jeb Stuart Ho proved himself as buffoonish as ever. Worse yet, Billy and the Minstrel Boy spend the last quarter of the novel just trying to escape the apocalyptic events (Stuff Central being shut down, the vanishing of certain towns, etc),  So the two of them basically disappear for long stretches. 

So then, the DNA Cowboys Trilogy comes to a vague and surreal finale, with Billy and the Minstrel Boy going through the nothings to some new town, with no idea what to do. This is how Mick Farren left the characters for several years…until he decided for whatever reason to revisit them in 1989’s The Last Stand Of The DNA Cowboys. Curiously, this one was initially a paperback original in the US, even though the original books had never been published here. I have that one as well, and will read it anon – it’s longer than the original three volumes, and a glance at its contents would indicate it’s more of a “real” novel, at least when compared to the surreal escapades of the original books.

Synaptic Manhunt (The DNA Cowboys #2)

Synaptic Manhunt, by Mick Farren

No month stated, 1976  Mayflower Books

The DNA Cowboys “trilogy” continues with this second installment that was supposedly written right after the first. But if I didn’t know any better I would’ve assumed that Synaptic Manhunt was written at some much later date, as it introduces new characters to the series and changes previously-established characters to fit the whims of the new plot. Whereas The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys flitted from one surreal adventure to the next, this one follows more of a standard plot with actual repercussions for the characters. It’s almost like the previous book was a warm up and Synaptic Manhunt is the actual start of The DNA Cowboys. 

The biggest change is that we suddenly have a new protagonist: Jeb Stuart Ho, a kung-fu monk who lives in a monastery and is sent out on his first mission as an “executive,” his goal to assassinate someone who threatens the entire world. And who is this global threat? None other than AA Catto, the self-involved socialite woman in the body of a 12-year-old girl. Whereas The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys merely had it that Catto was a narcissitic and depraved wanton, the sudden revisionism now has it that she’s like a female Hitler or somesuch, one with delusions of grandeur and dominance, and it’s only a matter of time before she puts together an army and tries to take over the world. 

So it’s Jeb Stuart Ho’s job to keep this from happening – and once again, it’s “Jeb Stuart Ho” every single time this guy is mentioned in the narrative, same as it’s “AA Catto” every single time Catto is mentioned. Not sure why Mick Farren has this strange authorial quirk, but it’s annoying. Ho (as I’ll refer to him!) is clearly inspired by David Carradine in the contemporary popular culture hit Kung-Fu, but Farren doesn’t spend as much time on his background or training or whatnot. Instead, Ho gears up in an armored leather suit, grabs his sword, nunchucks, and pistol (I love it that “executives” don’t relegate themselves solely to bladed weaponry) and heads out into the nothings to track down and kill AA Catto – who meanwhile has moved into a new city, where she’s again looking for the latest kick. No mention is made of her brother or the other recurring characters in the Catto sections of the previous book, again giving the impression that Synaptic Manhunt is from a different series entirely. 

On that same note, whereas The Minstrel Boy was an aloof, sometimes inexplicable presence in that previous book, here Farren has turned him into one of the main characters. Not only that, but he’s suddenly gained superpowers; we learn here that he’s a “searcher,” able to divine his way through the “nothings.” Finally Mick Farren bothers explaining the surreal fabric of this world. Apparently it’s some centuries(?) after things fell apart due to some catastrophe, and now locations are separated from one another by the dizzying non-space of the “nothings,” and the Minstrel Boy is one of the very few who can actually find his way through the nothingness. 

This, then, explains how he was able to constantly show up in various places in The Quest Of the DNA Cowboys, at least sort of. Here he’s drafted by Jeb Stuart Ho to find the city AA Catto is now in – the book is so disconnected from the previous one that Catto isn’t even in the same place anymore, but has abruptly moved to a new place called Lutz, where she’s again on the endless hunt for depravity. Another thing that Farren adds to the books, which is quite prescient, is that credit cards are very important; it’s a cashless society, and the Minstrel Boy will only take the job if Jeb Stuart Ho, who is financed by his wealthy temple, agrees to allow the Minstrel Boy to withdraw whatever amount he wishes upon completion of the job. 

A funny thing about the novel is the subtext, early on, that Billy and Reave, the ostensible heroes of the previous book, are both ensnared by women at the start of Synaptic Manhunt. Reave has become the literal plaything of AA Catto, who controls Reave with a collar he wears around his neck and can’t remove; Catto has a ring that allows her to send flashes of pain through the collar, the level of pain depending on how angry she is. Meanwhile Billy, who split off from Reave at the end of the previous book, happens to be in the same city, but has become “Billy the Pimp” because he oversees the business affairs of his girlfriend, a hooker named Darlene. Even though he’s not in a pain-collar like Reave, Billy is still at the beck and call of his woman; one could almost see this as Farren’s subtle message that young men should stay focused on their quest for fun and thrills and not get tied down with one single woman, as nothing but pain and misery will result. 

This setup doesn’t last too long, though; an interesting thing here is that characters who were previously friends are set against each other. AA Catto, learning that a temple assassin has a contract on her, hires a group of local toughs – including Billy – to serve as her security. And meanwhile the Minstrel Boy is working for the man who wants to kill Catto. However Farren doesn’t make much out of his three heroes reuniting; indeed, Billy and Reave reunite off-page, and there’s no camaraderie between the two, let alone with the Minstrel Boy when he shows up. For the most part the Minstrel Boy is here reduced to being Ho’s sidekick, and worse yet there’s a part later on where the Minstrel Boy is drugged so that he has laser-focus and can doggedly track down one particular person in the nothings – a dangerous drug that could potentially kill him, but also turns him into a veritable zombie while it’s in effect. 

Another new character shows up, another hooker: Lame Nancy (later just “Nancy”), an acquaintance of Billy’s hooker girlfriend, but one with more of a fondness for women. She’s “all white,” with crewcut white hair and “pearl” skin, all of it set off by the black brace she wears on her withered leg. I’ve now finished the trilogy and Nancy turns out to be a main character, which is funny because when she’s first introduced you figure she’s just going to be another one-off character in the sprawl of the narrative. Eventually she hooks up with AA Catto and becomes her closest confidant and bedmate; Farren is sure to turn in a few sapphic trysts between the two, but once again the novel is not very explicit, at least not when compared to some of the other stuff I’ve reviewed here. 

Action is sporadic and it too isn’t very exploitative. Another funny thing is that Jeb Stuart Ho is introduced as this total badass, but he too turns out to be the typical Mick Farren loser protagonist, bumbling through his adventures and being reprimanded by the people he encounters, in particular The Wanderer, an old man who is a fellow “searcher” like the Minstrel Boy. The picaresque vibe of The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys is for the most part gone this time, as Farren really focuses on the “manhunt” for AA Catto, including such memorable scenes as Catto commandeering an airship in her escape from Lutz. 

The final quarter of the book takes place in Quahal, a place where all “advanced” technology is forbidden, destroyed by floating robot-things that show up, confiscate anything high-tech, and incinerate it. That said, they seem to leave guns alone, deus ex machina be damned. Here Farren indulges in what appears to be a sudden decision to write a fantasy novel, as Quahal is run by armored knights on horseback, and AA Catto challenges their queen to rule the place. After which she has her own army and is finally free to conquer the world, something which she’s apparently wanted to do for a long time, though you never would’ve gotten that idea from the previous book. 

Another new element this time out is Stuff Central, which reminded me for all the world of the Acme mail order stuff in old Looney Tunes cartoons. Basically it’s a computer that spits out whatever you request from it, and ultimately Catto starts putting together her own made-to-order army from Stuff Central, as well as a few Jeb Stuart Ho replicas to confound the actual Ho. It’s all very busy but still has that reserved, almost disconnected vibe of the previous book, to the extent that nothing packs much impact. Even when a major character is killed off in the final pages of the book, the death doesn’t even register…you just keep thinking he’ll show up again later (though having read the last book in the trilogy I can report that he does not!). 

While I mostly enjoyed The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys, I didn’t much care for Synaptic Manhunt. The storyline with AA Catto suddenly becoming a would-be Alexander the Great just didn’t work for me, and I found new guy Jeb Stuart Ho more of a buffoon than the badass Mick Farren intended him to be. I mean he asks way too many dumb questions to be a badass action hero. Given that at this point Farren has decided he is indeed writing a trilogy (we’ll overlook that he published a fourth installment several years later…but I’ll read that one eventually too), this means that Synaptic Manhunt does not come to a close – the events are continued in The Neural Atrocity, which I’ll be reviewing next.

The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys (The DNA Cowboys #1)

The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys, by Mick Farren

No month stated, 1976  Mayflower Books

Two years after he published the greatest rock novel of all time (or at least of the many I’ve read), Mick Farren turned out The DNA Cowboys Trilogy, which was only published in the UK…and which wasn’t really a trilogy, as in 1989 he published a fourth installment (which to make things even more confusing was initially published in the US!). Apparently Farren wrote the “trilogy” all at once, so I read the three books in sequence – meaning this week and next will be dedicated to DNA Cowboys reviews! 

At just a little over 200 pages, The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys isn’t so much a piece of world-building as it is a fast-moving adventure yarn with a definite surreal vibe. The reader must do the heavy lifting on figuring out what is going on, or more importantly why it is going on, as Mick Farren clearly was under the influence of various drugs while writing the book – and no doubt would proudly proclaim as much. So it’s definitely psychedelic sci-fi, only not “sci-fi” in the sense that there’s space exploration or alien worlds or the like. It’s all grounded on Earth…though a seriously fragmented and strange Earth, possibly centuries after some apocalyptic event. 

Another funny thing is that there’s neither a “quest” nor any “DNA Cowboys” in the book! At no point do the two main characters, Billy Oblvion and Reave, refer to themselves as “DNA Cowboys” (and nor does the narrative refer to them as such), and they don’t go on a “quest” so much as they just wander aimlessly around the wastelands of this strange world. In fact I really started to wonder where Farren even came up with the “DNA Cowboys” tag…I’m assuming he got the title in some narcotic flash and just ran with it, but it turns out to be a little misleading for the reader. About the most we get in this regard is when Billy and Reave arm themselves with replica Old West revolvers at the start of the book…but then nothing more is made out of this in the ensuing narrative. 

Farren throws us right in with little setup: we meet (the mostly undescribed) Billy and Reave just as they’ve decided to leave the small town of Pleasant Gap and to go see the rest of the world…the first residents of Pleasant Gap to do such a thing ever. The two are presumably young, but then Mick Farren’s not an author who is much for describing his characters – indeed, we don’t learn the age of one main character until late in the novel, which renders all the preceding material with this character even more shocking in retrospect. Billy, with his fringe of black hair, is ostensibly Mick Farren’s stand in. Reave, described as being built like a “farmer” is the less cerebral of the two…not that Billy is very cerebral. If there’s any subtext to The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys it’s that young men are pretty clueless and just wander aimlessly through life as they look for the next kick. 

And that’s really all that makes these two leave Pleasant Gap. I identified with this early part of the book, growing up as I did in a similar small town that seemed to be cut off from the rest of the world – to make it even more coincidental, there was a place called Short Gap near where I grew up. But Pleasant Gap is truly cut off from the world. In order to leave the place Billy and Reave must get portable “stasis generators,” little gizmos they apparently strap on (again, details are minimal) and which literally create matter in the pocket of “nothings” that separate all the communities in this future ravaged Earth. And it is certainly Earth, with occasional references to 20th Century pop culture and the like. People drink tea and whiskey, everyone speaks English, etc. 

It's just all so surreal and vague that it’s hard to identify with anything, and ultimately there’s such a disconnected air to it all that The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys lacks much impact. It doesn’t help that our “heroes” are kind of losers, bumbling from one misadventure to the next. They gear up and leave Pleasant Gap, and the reader is prepared for an epic adventure. Instead, the two find themselves in a truckstop, being bullied by truckers who don’t like the looks of them. Here is the first appearance of what I guess would be considered another “DNA Cowboy:” The Minstrel Boy, a sort of wandering musician with a Bob Dylan-esque mop of black hair and a silver guitar strapped around his back. While The Minstrel Boy will becoming more of a figure in the next two volumes (I’ve already read the second one), here he is more of an aloof presence, more of a deus ex machina that Mick Farren employs throughout the damn book to get Billy and Reave out of their various jams. 

Meanwhile the narrative frequently veers off into two subplots, only one of which will ultimately merge with Billy and Reave’s narrative. The subplot that doesn’t ever meet up with the main plot concerns what appears to be a female deity, presumably the triune figure appearing on the cover. These sequences are annoying at best, written all in ugly italics, and seem more stream-of-conscious than anything. Farren refers to this figure as “she/they,” as if he’s attended his “pronouns training” decades early. The other subplot that does impact the overall storyline concerns one AA Catto, a promiscuous babe who lives in a drug-fueled pleasure dome; her sections really reminded me of The World Inside, given that she lives in what appears to be an entire community that’s indoors. 

Oh, and “AA Catto;” Farren has an annoying tendency to refer to his characters by their full names. Constantly. So every time “AA Catto” does or says something, it’s “AA Catto” we get in the narrative. (Curiously though, Billy Oblivion is just “Billy.”) By far I enjoyed the parts with Catto the best; whereas Billy and Reave’s adventures take them through downtrodden slums for the most part, Catto lives in the high-tech pleasuredome drug paradise that I demand in my ‘70s sci-fi. Farren really puts his psychedelic imagination to work here, with such notable drugs as one that makes flesh transparent – and the woman who has done this to herself can only imagine how interesting it will be for the man who gets to sleep with her. Decadence is the order of the day in AA Catto’s sections, and given that she’s a highborn who lives only for indulgence she almost seems to have walked out of a toga trash novel. 

In comparison, Billy and Reave’s adventures seem threadbare. Things get off to a bumpy start when they’re almost immediately drafted into an army for crying out loud, complete with boot camp and the like, and I was afraid for a bit that Farren wasn’t writing the book I wanted. Luckily though this “war” stuff is eventually dispensed with and we’re back to various random travels with the two – with the Minstrel Boy constantly showing up, as if via magic, to save them. But as mentioned he is a very aloof presence; there are times where Farren doesn’t bother to explain how the Minstrel Boy has even found Billy and Reave, and also there’s more unexplained stuff besides. Like for example one part late in the book has the trio on a raft, and a big hole in the lake crashes them, and Billy and Reave make it to shore. A few pages later they’re reunited with the Minstrel Boy, who again looks different (his clothing and hairstyle changes constantly, and at one point I was certain Farren was referencing glam-era Lou Reed). But the Minstrel Boy claims that the raft scenario was “a whole long time ago,” even though to Billy and Reave it was just “a few days ago.” So does the Minstrel Boy travel in time, or did Billy and Reave themselves jump unwittingly through time? Farren is not at all concerned with letting us know. 

Action is sporadic, and when it happens it isn’t much exploited. For that matter, neither is the sex. There’s a lot of talk of sex, but the book itself isn’t overly explicit. It’s certainly kinky, though. Like early on Billy hooks up with a blue-skinned babe (Farren implies she might be an alien – but again he doesn’t give any details), and she has this electric-shock thing she jolts Billy with during the act. But mostly it’s AA Catto who handles the brunt of the book’s sleaze – despite which it’s her brother she’s sleeping with. Oh, and Farren pulls one of the craziest reveals ever. We spend the entire novel cutting frequently over to AA Catto, where we are told of how sexy she is, and how she’s slept with this or that person, or whatever. Then only in the very final pages does Farren drop the bomb that AA Catto…is only twelve years old! As mentioned I’ve already read the second installment, Synaptic Manhunt, which reveals that Catto’s really an adult, but one who has used “age retardation” to keep herself pre-pubescent. Still…this definitely lends the entire preceding events an “ick” factor. 

Farren enjoys pushing buttons throughout; there’s a random part where Billy finds Reave in bed with an albino dude named “The Medicine” who randomly enough sports a pair of breasts. But our heroes are not judgmental at all, and Billy basically laughs off Reave’s attempts at an explanation. Otherwise our heroes don’t do much to make themselves memorable. They’re essentially on a quest to just keep moving, even when they’ve found happiness: one of the best sections has them in a society that seems to be a commentary on the ‘60s movement. Here the eternally young do nothing but take drugs and listen to endless music; for once the Minstrel Boy whips out his guitar and plays with the house band (I couldn’t help but imagine the Grateful Dead, what with how Farren described the scene). But while Billy wants to stay, Reave and Minstrel Boy insist he leave, to “keep moving.” 

This constant hopping around means there’s no unifying thread to the narrative, and the finale comes upon us without much warning. Billy and Reave end up in the community of AA Catto, and the book features the coldest of endings – Catto makes Reave her personal plaything, and Billy takes off for more adventures. But as mentioned Farren wrote all this at once, so it isn’t really an end at all: the story continues with Synaptic Manhunt, which I’ll be reviewing next.