Subject: Review of Vurt by Jeff Noon (fiction, sf)

From: [email-masked] (Steve Brock)
Date: 18 Jan 1996 04:49:41 GMT

Vurt has just been published in a trade paperback version.  Here is my 
review of the hardcover edition from last year:

VURT by Jeff Noon.  St. Martin's/Griffin, 175 Fifth Ave., N.Y., NY 10010, 
(800) 221-7945, FAX: (212) 420-9314.  352 pp., $13.95 paper.  0-312-14144-0

                     Reviewed by Steve Brock

          "Awake, you know that dreams exist.  Inside a 
          dream you think the dream is reality.  Inside 
          a dream you have no knowledge of the waking world.  
          It is the same with Vurt."  -- Game Cat

     There have been many stories on the "trapped in virtual
reality" theme, but Noon's fast-paced and mythical debut novel
takes the concept a few steps further: one enters virtual space by
placing a feather on the back of their tongue; the void they enter
is determined by the color of the feather.  Blue feathers are for
"safe desires," pink ones are sexy "Pornovurts," silvers are for
techies who can scroll through menu choices, but yellows
("Metavurts") are the ones to watch out for.  They are illegal and
potentially deadly.  Each feather holds enough chemical to let six
people trip at once, so there is more than enough to go around when
Manchester's Stash Riders (Scribble, The Beetle, Bridget, and
Mandy, the new girl) score.  
     But the Riders have a problem.  During a trip on the bootleg
black "English Voodoo" feather, Scribble lost his sister/lover
Desdemona in a mass exchange and she was replaced with "The Thing,"
a tentacled blob.  Scribble and his companions, using their special
capabilities (Bridget is a "shadowgirl" and Scribble finds that he
can enter low-level Vurt without a feather), must now find a yellow
"Curious Yellow" feather and reverse the transaction.
     Their quest is the crux of the novel.  As they seek the
elusive feather, they encounter a futuristic world of humans,
robots, cyborgs, dog people, shadow beings and a profusion of Vurt-
creatures - the most frightening a dreamsnake named Takshaka. 
Chased by cops - both flesh and shadow - and assisted by the Game
Cat who issues newsletters to his "kittlings" that begin many of
the book's chapters, Scribble finally breaks back into the
exchange-world, but "The Thing" has died.  The terrifying climax is
a powerful, garish hallucination.
     "Vurt" won't come easy for many readers.  Noon gives little
history for how the Vurtworld evolved, and the novel lacks, in
several places, the basic details to sustain the plot, such as how
the group gets separated about halfway through the book, all
threatening to break the suspension of belief so important to
stories of the supernatural.  But stay with it.  "Vurt," winner of
the Arthur C. Clarke Award in England, is a stylistic specimen with
a refreshing rhythm.  Grade: B.

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