Mockymen

by Ian Watson

This wonderfully weird tale uncovers the secrets of the "mockymen," aliens who have inhabited drug-addled humans' bodies. A young British couple are hired for an outlandish job in a park by an elderly Norwegian man. Toward the end of the Second World War, a blood sacrifice was carried out in this park by Nazis trying to create an occult cordon around Norway, and the aging Norwegian hopes to access the power residing in the park to achieve reincarnation. The Hardship Years intervene, when climate change, ecological collapse, and global economic crises derail human civilization, but in 2010 salvation arrives in the shape of an alien expedition. As the aliens begin to inhabit the bodies of humans strung out on the drug Bliss, a young Blisshead named Jamie recalls his prior life as a Norwegian, and the aliens' true motives are revealed.