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For the sake of this article, "Far-fetched fiction" refers to the literary works of Robert Rankin. Allegedly, it was a term coined to let Rankin get his own shelf in bookstores; he's since managed it by the more mundane method of selling an imperial truckload of books. (He refuses to acknowledge the Metric truckload)The works started with the Brentford trilogy (eight books), and also contains the Armageddon octology (three books), although characters such as Hugo Rune, Omally and Pooley, Lazlo Woodbine, Barry the time sprout and Rex Mundi pop up all over the shop. Many Running Gags occur among the books, and a rule of the world suggested in one book may crop up in another when you're not looking. On the other hand, there's not a solid continuity to the books, as signaled by the fact that the world has off-handedly ended in multiple different ways at the end of several books.Most of the books happily throw improbable sci-fi or fantasy elements at totally unprepared civilian targets, have chapters that contain completely tangential stories, and can focus on the mundanity of life when the world is near doom.Perhaps the best way to describe Rankin's books is that of a good, but very drunken, storyteller telling intriguing but weird tall tales about old friends in a pub, until the story ends or he collapses, whichever happens first.
Far Fetched Fiction contains examples of:
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