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Literature’s Greatest Fictitious Cocktails: 6 inventive libations

Kelly Robinson
4 min readJul 14, 2019

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Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Writers have a long and complicated history with alcohol (see John Cheever or F. Scott Fitzgerald for further info), which may be why, when faced with the task of writing about alcoholic beverages, they pull out all the creative stops.

Inventing a cocktail allows authors to be as hyperbolic as they would like to be when describing the taste and the effects. Read on for the best of the bunch. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.


Moloko Plus
from A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Alex and his droogie friends in A Clockwork Orange spend their slack time in the Korova milk bar drinking Moloko, or “milk-plus” — the “plus” being any one of a selection of near-futuristic designer drugs. Moloko may not contain actual alcohol, but the added vellocet, synthemesc, or drencrom makes Alex feel “knifey.” Anything that leads to stomping hobos, putting the smackdown to random academics, and leaving a newsstand covered in blood is apt to be pretty strong (and a long way from just making risque jokes at the office party).

The Glasgow Kiss from The Cruise Connection by Peter Kerr

You wouldn’t want to eat the food on mystery writer Peter Kerr’s fictitious cruise ship The Ostentania (a severed finger…

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Kelly Robinson
Kelly Robinson

Written by Kelly Robinson

Bram Stoker Award-nominated writer. Film commentaries for Kino Lorber and Second Sight Films. Silent film, horror, pop culture, weird history.

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