Terence McKenna (1946-2000) was the 20th century’s psychedelic renaissance man. More than twenty-five years since his untimely passing, across the virtual popstream and in networked communities dedicated to his “small mouth noises,” McKenna’s magnetism endures. As the first biography of this stand-up philosopher, rogue scholar, and surreal oracle, Strange Attractor detects the signal behind the noise.

Perfecting his rugged philosophy on the role of psychedelics in evolution, consciousness, and time, McKenna was a riotous provocateur who charted the edges of mind and matter with razor wit and poetic charm. As an intellectual biography, the book offers a hallucinatory chronicle of the life, work, and legacy of this bold cartographer of the weird. 
 

Accessing original documents and letters, featuring rare photographs and artworks, sharing previously untold stories from over eighty friends, family, and co-conspirators, Strange Attractor chronicles one of the most celebrated and yet least understood figures of the late twentieth century. Neither exalting nor condemning its subject, it documents the evolution of an altered statesman whose mellifluous voice affected multitudes and continues to haunt the present. 

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Cover design by Timothy Parish of Undergrowth Productions 

Cover photo courtesy of Kathleen Harrison