Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna: Presentation & Launch by Graham St John

Graham St John discusses his new book, already in its second pressing, Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (with a foreword by Erik Davis, MIT Press, Oct 2025). As one of the most celebrated and yet least understood figures of the late twentieth century, Terence McKenna (1946-2000) was the 20th century’s psychedelic renaissance man. 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 the first serious biography of McKenna, described by Dennis McKenna as “the definitive biography of Terence,” Strange Attractor chronicles a stand-up philosopher, rogue scholar, and surreal oracle. Over the course of his career, McKenna evolved many personas and identifications, from freak and outlaw, to exile and shaman, and from prophet and trickster, to gnostic and surrealist. Drawing on extensive research, this presentation explores the many faces of a figure who forged a strange career and an impossible legacy. Books will be sold and signed by the author, so don’t miss your chance ($70.00 - cash only) [RRP = $75] 

  “An account as weird, wild, and nontraditional as its subject” - Publishers Weekly

    “Due to St John’s intellectual reach, the book has, like a dark planet, drawn an entire menagerie of late 20th-century weirdness into its oblique orbit.” - LA Review of Books

     “Strange Attractor will rightfully take its place in the psychedelic canon as an accomplished work of biography, evincing deep research and a sympathetic, though not uncritical, approach to McKenna’s life and work.”- Ben Brooker, The Monthly

"Graham St John is our best contemporary historian of psychedelic culture. This biography is filled with wonders, striking the perfect balance between historical accuracy and sympathetic engagement". - Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam

"This enrapturing book is psychoactive in all the best ways. You don’t know Terence McKenna until you’ve read Strange Attractor". - R. U. Sirius, cofounder of Mondo 2000

Graham St John, PhD, is an anthropologist and historian specialising in the study of transformational events, movements, and figures. The latest among his ten books is Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MIT Press, 2025), a biography of the life, work, and legacy of one of the most celebrated and yet least understood figures in intellectual history. Other titles include: Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT, and FreeNRG: Notes from the Edge of the Dancefloor. Graham is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Media, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Huddersfield, UK. His website is: www.edgecentral.net