Subject: Review: Nymphomation by Jeff Noon

From: alex <[email-masked]>
Date: 08 Sep 1999 21:51:00 -0400

"Nymphomation" by Jeff Noon
	Review Copyright 1999 by Alex McLintock.

I wasn't impressed by this book as much as I was by the other Jeff Noon
novels that I have read. If you are coming across Noon for the first time
then I suggest you read "Vurt" before "Nymphomation". (You can read my
review of Vurt at http://www.arcfan.demon.co.uk/sf/books/94jun.htm and my
review of Pollen at http://www.arcfan.demon.co.uk/sf/books/96aug.htm)

"Vurt" and its sequel "Pollen" successfully combined a gritty kind of
fantasy with hard sf cyberpunk based in Manchester.

Although Nymphomation isn't really a sequel it is set in a similar
universe as Vurt. It loses alot of the fantasy elements of Vurt (the Vurt
World doesn't exist yet for instance) but still retains the Manchester
grittiness. If you really care about ordering then "Nymphomation" is a
prequel to "Vurt" since some of its side-stories include the invention of
a couple of important props which were first written about in "Vurt."

"Nymphomation" apparently is a word meaning "sexy maths" and you could say
that the book is about gambling.  Noon uses the medium of dominos to
deliver a lottery being trialed in Manchester before going country wide.
Needless to say not all is as it seems.

The book also looks at genetic algorithms, the life of an Asian in a
fundamentally racist Britain, pretend maths, sex, some more pretend maths,
and does it without any kind of diagrams or equations. Actually I was
lying about the lack of diagrams because Noon uses a graphical device of
pages filled with large X's which themselves are made up of the phrase
"Play to Win".  I can't even attempt to explain this in a review intended
for people who haven't read the book without spoiling it.

I don't know for certain why I don't rate this as high as other Noon
books.  Even Automated Alice was more enjoyable, though it was quite
simple: little more than a retelling of the Alice in Wonderland story for
the nineties. A warning sign is that the Alice of Automated Alice appears
in Nymphomation. Does that mean that Noon is just trying to tie up a few
loose ends? Create a continuous universe across all his books so that
completists are forced to buy them all?

Nymphomation is the most normal of all Jeff Noon's books. It is closest to
our real, current world. You might find it more accessible than "Vurt" but
you'll still find it very very weird.

%A   Jeff Noon
%C   London
%D   1997
%G   0-552-14479-7
%I   Corgi, Transworld Publishers Ltd
%O   pb 6.99UKP
%T   Nymphomation

Alex McLintock             200 SF BOOK REVIEWS
http://www.arcfan.demon.co.uk/sf/books