Product Description

Robert wants to be a star in the movies. Using his computer he has invented a system that could put the old stars back on the screen, alongside him. He has the script and the money, but Hollywood isn't keen. Could the perfect partnership lie with Ernest Fudgepacker of Fudgepacker's Emporium?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105651 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Robert Rankin
Robert Rankin is the author of Web Site Story, Waiting for Godalming, Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls, Snuff Fiction, Apocalypso, The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag, Sprout Mask Replica, Nostradamus Ate My Hamster, A Dog Called Demolition, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived, The Greatest Show Off Earth, Raiders of the Lost Car Park, The Book of Ultimate Truths, the Armageddon quartet (three books), and the Brentford trilogy (five books) which are all published by Corgi Books. Robert Rankin's latest novel, The Fandom of the Operator, is now available as a Doubleday hardback.

Customer Reviews

stooopendous and a bit complicated but it doesn't matter.
I tell you what, I miss Douglas Adams. (I'll get to that later.)

The real charm of Robert Rankin is the triumph of style over content. No, content over content. And the style. That.

Well, actually, I like the way he makes a big mess of a story.

This particular book is THE perfect introduction to Mr Rankin. He writes in such a personable way it's easy to forgive (and wallow in) some of the cheesiest gags, and forgive the totally bent physics. The pages are sprinkled with footnotes (some of the best stuff).

Few writers out there have the gall to totally interrupt the story to tell you another. Few writers have the sense of fun to call a chapter, "That Ludicrous 'It was All Just A Terrible Dream' Bit They Always Have".

Few writers apologise at the front of the book for the convoluted plot, with advice about what to do with the book once read. But Mr Rankin is unique, possibly drunk often, and nothing other than funny. So... Mr Adams: Yes he was a bit pompous and a bit Oxford/Cambridge, but he was funny (except for the tv series of H2G2 which was plain bloody awful). But ANYWAY, the charm of Mr Rankin fills that gap, and he does it without pretentions. I'm reminded of a quote about Mr Rankin - "A sort of drinking man's HG Wells".

I keep trying out comedic SF authors but only Mr Rankin has me laughing outloud in bed alone.

(jeez, how sad does that sound?) I used to work in advertising, hence: Buy the book, you idiot.

a Perrier water, please...
Brilliant! This is only my second Rankin (first: "The Antipope") but I plan to read many more.

Having met Pooley & O'Malley before "Nostradamus..." made some of the references funnier. But I loaned the book to a friend who never heard of Rankin and he loved it, so the book stands on its own as well.

Certainly one of Rankin's best...
I wouldn't classify myself as an *avid* Rankin fan, despite the fact that I have read "They Came and Ate Us, Armageddon 2: The B-Movie", "The Sprouts of Wrath", "The Book of Ultimate Truths", "The Garden of Unearthly Delights", "A Dog Called Demolition", "Apocalypso" and this. "Nostradamus Ate My Hamster" is a scintillating, brilliant novel with classic joke continuances and amiable recurring characters. Russel Nice is one of Rankin's better one-off protagonists--he certainly ousts Danny Orion, albeit Porrig still remains a "good'un" in my mind--and the way that Russel is capable of putting everything straight, despite the copious complexities of the novel is very intelligible, indeed. This time Rankin has almost bettered himself; "Nostradamus Ate My Hamster" is not one of the mind-blowingly comedic books of fiction, but it is positively funny, and the Pratchett gag alone was worth what I shelled out for the purchase of the novel. Apart from that--a highlight of the masterwork--the novel is also extremely deceptively clever. Even being a Rankin regular and thus capable of predicting a few of Rankin's surprises, there certainly were a plethora of loose-ends which I would never have been able to have foreseen. As Rankin's perennial protagonists Pooley and Omally spout, Russel did not do it how they would have, yet nevertheless Russel put things good with irrepressible and ineffable style. Five stars, Bobby Boy!