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The Feelies
Wanda-Jean's only hope of experiencing a feelie--a scientific marvel that allows people to live out their fantasies while they sleep--is to win one on a game show, but the grand prize may actually be a curse.
197 pages, Paperback
First published May 13, 1990
2 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Mick Farren
67 books81 followersFarren was the singer with the proto-punk English band The Deviants between 1967 and 1969, releasing three albums. In 1970 he released the solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus which also featured Steve Peregrin Took, John Gustafson and Paul Buckmaster, before leaving the music business to concentrate on his writing.
In the mid-1970s, he briefly returned to music releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.
He has sporadically returned to music, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.
Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" in the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.
In the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He went on to write for the main stream New Musical Express, where he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he saw as the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music which described the conditions that subsequently gave rise to punk.
To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His prophetic 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who dismantle the Constitution.
Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and a plethora of poetry.
Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the weekly Los Angeles CityBeat.
Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing onstage while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London.
In the mid-1970s, he briefly returned to music releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.
He has sporadically returned to music, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.
Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" in the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.
In the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He went on to write for the main stream New Musical Express, where he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he saw as the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music which described the conditions that subsequently gave rise to punk.
To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His prophetic 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who dismantle the Constitution.
Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and a plethora of poetry.
Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the weekly Los Angeles CityBeat.
Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing onstage while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 15, 2009
The blurb on the back of the book reads:
This synopsis is a lie. There is a Wanda-Jean and she does get on "Wildest Dreams" but that's only a subplot. The rest of the book is the pointless conversations of Sam and Ralph (two low-level grunts working in the lifer section of the feelie factory), short glimpses of random feelies, and vignettes designed to hammer the fact that This Is A Dystopia into the reader's head. That is quickly becoming one of my literary pet peeves: stories that jump around among points of view and never really interconnect. Note to authors: pick a topic and stick to it. If you absolutely must move between points of view, make sure they all have some sort of relation to each other besides taking place in the same universe. It very rarely improves the story to jump around--this book, for example, would have been vastly improved by focusing on Wanda-Jean's story, fleshing out the immense popularity of the game shows and the corruption behind the scenes. But then Farren wouldn't have been able to beat his readers over the head with his dystopic visions.
And what dystopic novel would be complete without degrading sex? None! Most of the feelies Farren describes are sexual. This does make a certain amount of sense--sex fantasies are cheap & easy. But most of the feelies Farren describes are experienced by people who've bought lifetime contracts. This leads me to the best feelie chapter in the book. A young man who's frittered away most of his family fortune buys a lifetime feelie contract for an S&M prison fantasy. He spends a lot of time with the counselors at CM (the company that owns Integrated Entertainment, the corporate term for feelies) tailoring the program to his exact specifications. After a month living out his fantasy he realizes he's in hell. There is no titillation anymore, just unending torture. It's refreshingly practical in this vision of death and despair. Not cheerful, but practical.
While we're on the topic of torture, let's discuss the horrifically painful conversations between Sam and Ralph, the aforementioned grunts. They spend their working hours either boozing it up or popping pills, relying on their union contract to keep them employed. (There's a whole political discussion this opens up that I'm not going to touch with a pole of any length.) When they're not indulging in their drugs of choice they're having long, pointless conversations that really, really, really needed to be edited out completely. An example from page 94:
It is one of the greatest flaws of this book that neither one of them falls into a vat of sulfuric acid.
These are the biggest issues I had with this story; let's move on to the nitpicky stuff. First of all, if you're writing bad science fiction, do not insert references to good science fiction. I found references to dilithium crystals from Star Trek and Epsilons from Brave New World. My though when running across these fleeting mentions was not "Wow, Mick Farren really is in tune with the classics of science fiction," but "Star Trek and Brave New World were really good. The Feelies really sucks, especially in comparison to them."
Secondly, publishers, for the love of all that is, was, or will be holy, PLEASE run a spell check before sending the final copy to the printer! There is no excuse for this kind of sloppiness: "Priest fended her off with a practiced jesture that looked affectionate but actually stopped her from taking over the two shot." For the record, that is the exact sentence that made me realize how much I disliked the book.
Eventually the feelies are revealed to be fatal within five to seven years and thus will be used as a tool for population control among the lower classes. As one character put it, the feelies are a way of "using technology to reassert a very fundamental Darwinism." Blah blah blah, The Man is keeping us down, rage against the machine, big corporations are evil, humankind is destined to kill itself off, yes we get it you may GO now.
After all this the book just runs out of words. It doesn't really end; there is no resolution. Everyone just goes on with their humdrum dystopic lives or dies. There is one brief instance of good writing in the description of Wanda-Jean's suicide (lucky girl, she found the only way out of this horrible novel). Wanda-Jean is sent home from the game show after she loses a competition in which she is enclosed in a tube filling with water and has to line up colored tiles in a randomly chosen pattern before she runs out of air. Later, as she lines up the pills that she will kill herself with, she arranges them in a pattern according to their color. It's a brief flash of talent, but unfortunately too late to save this screed of a novel.
The feelies were a dream come true--hook up to a life-support system, go to sleep, and live out the fantasy of your choice!
Wanda-Jean desperately craved the chance to experience a feelie. But she had barely enough money to keep a roof over her head. Her only hope was to become a contestant on the popular TV game show "Wildest Dreams"--where first prize was a feelie contract.
But something was amiss in the very private corporate world of the feelies. And Wanda-Jean had no idea that first prize could become last prize, and the winners could become the biggest losers of all...
This synopsis is a lie. There is a Wanda-Jean and she does get on "Wildest Dreams" but that's only a subplot. The rest of the book is the pointless conversations of Sam and Ralph (two low-level grunts working in the lifer section of the feelie factory), short glimpses of random feelies, and vignettes designed to hammer the fact that This Is A Dystopia into the reader's head. That is quickly becoming one of my literary pet peeves: stories that jump around among points of view and never really interconnect. Note to authors: pick a topic and stick to it. If you absolutely must move between points of view, make sure they all have some sort of relation to each other besides taking place in the same universe. It very rarely improves the story to jump around--this book, for example, would have been vastly improved by focusing on Wanda-Jean's story, fleshing out the immense popularity of the game shows and the corruption behind the scenes. But then Farren wouldn't have been able to beat his readers over the head with his dystopic visions.
And what dystopic novel would be complete without degrading sex? None! Most of the feelies Farren describes are sexual. This does make a certain amount of sense--sex fantasies are cheap & easy. But most of the feelies Farren describes are experienced by people who've bought lifetime contracts. This leads me to the best feelie chapter in the book. A young man who's frittered away most of his family fortune buys a lifetime feelie contract for an S&M prison fantasy. He spends a lot of time with the counselors at CM (the company that owns Integrated Entertainment, the corporate term for feelies) tailoring the program to his exact specifications. After a month living out his fantasy he realizes he's in hell. There is no titillation anymore, just unending torture. It's refreshingly practical in this vision of death and despair. Not cheerful, but practical.
While we're on the topic of torture, let's discuss the horrifically painful conversations between Sam and Ralph, the aforementioned grunts. They spend their working hours either boozing it up or popping pills, relying on their union contract to keep them employed. (There's a whole political discussion this opens up that I'm not going to touch with a pole of any length.) When they're not indulging in their drugs of choice they're having long, pointless conversations that really, really, really needed to be edited out completely. An example from page 94:
"Ralph?"
"What?"
"How do you know?"
"How do I know what?"
"How do you know all they want is sex? You've never been in a feelie."
"I've seen the catalog, haven't I?"
"What catalog?"
"The catalog of all the different feelie experiences that they offer."
"I've never seen that."
"You know when you first sign on they give you a guided tour of one of the reception centers."
Sam looked glum. "They never took me on the tour."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. They just kind of left me behind."
"They left you behind?"
"Yeah."
It is one of the greatest flaws of this book that neither one of them falls into a vat of sulfuric acid.
These are the biggest issues I had with this story; let's move on to the nitpicky stuff. First of all, if you're writing bad science fiction, do not insert references to good science fiction. I found references to dilithium crystals from Star Trek and Epsilons from Brave New World. My though when running across these fleeting mentions was not "Wow, Mick Farren really is in tune with the classics of science fiction," but "Star Trek and Brave New World were really good. The Feelies really sucks, especially in comparison to them."
Secondly, publishers, for the love of all that is, was, or will be holy, PLEASE run a spell check before sending the final copy to the printer! There is no excuse for this kind of sloppiness: "Priest fended her off with a practiced jesture that looked affectionate but actually stopped her from taking over the two shot." For the record, that is the exact sentence that made me realize how much I disliked the book.
Eventually the feelies are revealed to be fatal within five to seven years and thus will be used as a tool for population control among the lower classes. As one character put it, the feelies are a way of "using technology to reassert a very fundamental Darwinism." Blah blah blah, The Man is keeping us down, rage against the machine, big corporations are evil, humankind is destined to kill itself off, yes we get it you may GO now.
After all this the book just runs out of words. It doesn't really end; there is no resolution. Everyone just goes on with their humdrum dystopic lives or dies. There is one brief instance of good writing in the description of Wanda-Jean's suicide (lucky girl, she found the only way out of this horrible novel). Wanda-Jean is sent home from the game show after she loses a competition in which she is enclosed in a tube filling with water and has to line up colored tiles in a randomly chosen pattern before she runs out of air. Later, as she lines up the pills that she will kill herself with, she arranges them in a pattern according to their color. It's a brief flash of talent, but unfortunately too late to save this screed of a novel.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2024
Following the course of several different characters in the extreme future (where wall phones are still a thing) and a whole subset of the population exists within virtual reality cylinders and are entertained by violent TV game shows. However, it’s almost as if Farren had no idea how to end the book, or perhaps he even set it aside and came back much later and fired off some quick endings to finish the book. I’ve heard of starting books off in media res, but ending it that way was just weird.
June 27, 2019
The Feelies is the weakest of Farren's cyberpunk novels. It's your basic dystopian near-future with the addition of a corporation that markets a full-emersion virtual reality experience (officially IE -Integrated Entertainment-, but popularly known as "Feelies") which you can book for a few hours, a weekend, or the rest of your life. Obviously something sinister is going on, but I'll leave this spoiler free - although the "big reveal" (BR) at the end isn't much a surprise. The main flaw in the story is that it's neither really character-driven or plot-driven; the book basically takes you little by little to the BR. You know the sort of thing "The planet was EARTH!", "It's a COOKBOOK!" It's just not much of a surprise. Also, while some of his other novels (Armageddon Crazy, Mars: The Red Planet) are told from multiple points of view, the characters in those books gradually connect as the plot proceeds. In the Feelies the various characters never even meet. In Farren's other cyberpunk books, there are numerous casual references to events and figures that make you feel like his world has a real history. Not so much here. I did like that the story presents a technology that, if the government told you everyone would have to use, people would riot, but, though artificial scarcity and inflated prices, everyone wants and their only suspicions is that the corporations are preventing "regular folks" from access to it. This reminded me of the biochips in Simon Hawke's Psychodrome series. 2.5 stars only because it's an easy read.
October 1, 2013
My first reading of this novel, as part of my ongoing homage to the late Mr Farren. This story tells of a near future Earth, with "feelie" technology. This tech allows those with money to live their life plugged into a virtual environment, where they can experience whatever they so desire. This is told through accounts of different people, who are involved with different areas of feelie tech and society.
This is Farren's usual, rather dyspeptic view of the future of capitalist society: greedy psycho execs, endless and foolish game shows, extreme wealth amidst poverty. Those enjoying a feelie experience come of this novel also not so well. The usual desire is sex, followed by violence. As one character jokes, not many chose a life following Socrates.
This was not an overly enjoyable novel for me. While Farren's usual critical themes were present and well displayed, the overall story did not work. It seemed to lack a point, even the novel itself did not have a solid ending. While it was fun to read, I do not contemplate re-reading.
This is Farren's usual, rather dyspeptic view of the future of capitalist society: greedy psycho execs, endless and foolish game shows, extreme wealth amidst poverty. Those enjoying a feelie experience come of this novel also not so well. The usual desire is sex, followed by violence. As one character jokes, not many chose a life following Socrates.
This was not an overly enjoyable novel for me. While Farren's usual critical themes were present and well displayed, the overall story did not work. It seemed to lack a point, even the novel itself did not have a solid ending. While it was fun to read, I do not contemplate re-reading.
May 26, 2024
A time passer..won't change your world, the pages turn quickly, sometimes I wished they would turn quicker. First Mick I've read. At this point I enjoy his music more.
October 21, 2016
Live your life in an unending fantasy of your choosing or take a shorter stint in this virtual reality world. If this seems like a good idea to you I suggest reading The Feelies where you will be taken into the lives of several participants and the life of their caretakers. Enjoy.
August 15, 2012
this story could be the precourser to the matrix series! deffinately a concept I used to consider when I did a lot of experimentation with physcadelics!!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews