Martha by Walker Zupp

Martha by Walker Zupp

The year is 2089.

In an independent Scotland, Constable Harmon Chikenyyt is thrown into a world of drug-dealers and pimps. Their goal is simple: to use and sell as much of the hallucinogenic cannabinoid D.E.R.P. as possible. Suddenly, civil war breaks out in Belgium. The British Parliament decides to intervene with a band of Northern Irish mercenaries. As the civil war escalates, it becomes clear to Tara Blimmen that everything is connected; that each crime committed, whether in Scotland, the halls of Westminster, or Belgium, is a symptom of something far deadlier.In Antarctica, at a research station funded by the bank I.T.C.B. Holdings plc, pharmacologist Norvin Tubani a has been tasked with understanding Martha-if that's even possible.

Zupp's bleak vision of the future is, unfortunately, all too convincing, and his darkly comic prose offers perhaps the best means of facing it as a possibility. This is a book for those who love the work of Kurt Vonnegut, early Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace.- Charlie Gere, Lancaster University

A freewheelingly scabrous, energetic and darkly funny tale, pinpricked with pathos and sympathy, all concealing a strange sort of seriousness. Probably the strangest and most scatologically unbridled book you'll read this year, and that's a recommendation.- George Green, author of Hound and Hawk

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets Dr. Strangelove; Zupp is to subversive fictional literature as Salvador Dali is to art in this future-real dissection of a world with characters as secular and loveless as our own. Martha is written with intelligence, wit, and a delightful sprinkling of absurdity for good measure.- K.T. Browne, author of The Strangled Hubris