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 Tubaniña 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