Things changed for my second novel, Pollen: by then I had really discovered the melancholic joys of house and techno music, and I think the novel reflects that change. Pollen is a much more tangled book, more fertile, a very overgrown, edge-of-wilderness narrative. [1] Songs mentioned [ edit ]

But just as that isn’t quite the cyberspace of William Gibson, neither is Noon precisely a cyberpunk author—the portrait that he paints of England seems to be less of a near future vision and more one of a slightly altered reality, period. It would make for an excellent double bill with Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet—both are books set in a skewed world where all things mythical take on a heightened position, and the delirious manifestations of art resonate on unexpected frequencies. In the case of Vurt, that comes through the dreamlike realm that its characters enter, populated by beings from fiction, mythology, and the collective unconscious.

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The Riders are a gang of illegal Vurt junkies: Beetle (the leader), Mandy, Bridget, Twinkle, and the tale's narrator, twenty-three-year-old Scribble. The novel follows the month-long odyssey of these Vurt users in their city of Manchester. Through all the Stash Riders' moves, curves, swerves and highs, Jeff Noon zooms at turbocharged full-throttle. The English language on speed. Game Cat – the maestro, the near mythical being who knows and shares the inside info in his "Game Cat" periodical There have been a few comic adaptations of the novel, including Vurt – The Comic Remix, with art by Lee O'Connor.

However, despite being nihilistic and ultimately a Faustian tale with some bits of the Orpheus myth and the Hero's Journey welded on to it, Vurt manages an almost cheerful tone. An early scene sees Scribble and Mandy trying to get the Thing into their apartment from the van and being questioned by their neighbor, a repressed old woman, and it makes an excellent bit of uncomfortable comedy. There are also some interesting and kind of lighthearted scenes with Peaches, the star of several "pornovurts" made by reclusive designer Icarus Wing. For a dystopia where sections are literally paved with jagged broken glass, it's surprisingly bright and actually kind of a cool place to live, once you can forget the population is on several different kind of drugs, fighting with each other, screwing over "pure" humans, and liable to be bitten by snakes from a dream dimension. The first half of this book was great reading with intriguing characters, good mystery and well paced and just weird enough to make it even more interesting. The second half of it was absolute and utter waffling nonsense. It lost its momentum so suddenly and completely that I even lost any connection I may have had with the characters up to that point.

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Jeff Noon goes on to say he thrives on mixing literary genres in with surrealism and what's considered avant-garde. As a hater of conventional novels, he wanted to cut out the middle and jam different elements together within his story, invent new ways to tell his tale, recognizing much of the newness blossomed from his mad ideas. That however is not the major flaw in the book. While the setting could have used some explaining here and there, the plot of the story was still clear enough to follow. I got what was going on, even if I didn't understand everything in the world. The book's fatal flaw was in the characters. While they were certainly vivid, outgoing, and memorable, they were also flat and acting without sensible motivation. As the plot progresses and secondary characters are risking their lives, helping, or loving the main character, there is no expiation as to why the go out of the way to help him. Even when character motivation is attempted, it's done poorly. One character claims to be aiding Scribble (the lead) for his brother. While we know his brother, and their story, there is no link between what he does for Scribble, and the brother. A new character is brought into the group at the beginning of the story, Scribble treats her poorly, and she puts her life on the line to help him be reunited with his sister. The character interactions remind me of a table top role playing game. "You all are in a group, it doesn't matter why, but you have to help each other. Even if it goes against what you think you're character is, in the end, you help because that's what keeps the game, and my plot, moving forward." It's never ideal jumping into an established universe part-way down the line, but I don't think I would have like this much more if I'd read the previous books. Main issue; it's bloody creepy. In 2013, 20th anniversary edition of the novel was published, featuring three new stories and a foreword by Lauren Beukes. [19] See also [ edit ]