Venus on the Half-Shell and Others collects the work from Philip Jose Farmer's 'fictional-author period.' In the mid-1970s a furor was created when an actual novel purported to be by Kilgore Trout -- the science fiction writer who appears as a character in the works of Kurt Vonnegut -- materialized on the bookracks, complete with a back cover photo of the author looking like a bearded vagabond sage. Debate raged as to who had truly written Venus on the Half-Shell. Was it Vonnegut himself, or perhaps Theodore Sturgeon, rumored to have been the inspiration for Trout? Or did Kilgore Trout really exist? Just as one newspaper published an article 'proving' that Vonnegut had written the book, Philip Jose Farmer announced he was the true author. The Kilgore Trout episode was neither the first nor the last time Farmer would slip out of his own skin and assume the persona of another author. In Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, Philip Jose Farmer transforms himself into fictional personalities: Cordwainer Bird, Paul Chapin, Rod Keen, Harry 'Bunny' Manders, Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor, John H. Watson, M. D. and even the real-life author William S. Burroughs (writing his own version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Jungle Lord!). Also included is the original version of Farmer's Sherlock Holmes/Lord Greystoke pastiche The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, back in print for the first time in over thirty years.