From rec.arts.sf.written Wed Feb 22 10:48:52 1995 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!boulder!ucsub.Colorado.EDU!brock From: brock@ucsub.Colorado.EDU (Steve Brock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.cyberpunk Subject: Review of Vurt by Jeff Noon (sf) Followup-To: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written Date: 18 Feb 1995 20:48:09 GMT Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Lines: 47 Approved: brock@colorado.edu Message-ID: <3i5me9$so@CUBoulder.Colorado.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsub.colorado.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.books.reviews:331 rec.arts.books:112665 rec.arts.sf.written:90370 alt.cyberpunk:42913 VURT by Jeff Noon. Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 E. 50th St., N.Y., NY 10022, (800) 733-3000, (800) 659-2436 FAX. 352 pp., $22.00 cloth. 0-517-59991-0 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 an Arthur C. Clarke Award in England, is a stylistic specimen with a refreshing rhythm. Grade: B. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jan 30 13:58:12 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed.tip.net!news.josnet.se!dos.canit.se!seunet!mn7.swip.net!mn6.swip.net!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!tube.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!blackbush.xlink.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.mindlink.net!agate!boulder!ucsub.Colorado.EDU!brock From: brock@ucsub.Colorado.EDU (Steve Brock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.reviews Subject: Review of Vurt by Jeff Noon (fiction, sf) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 18 Jan 1996 04:49:41 GMT Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Lines: 60 Approved: brock@colorado.edu Message-ID: <4dkjh5$qbb@lace.colorado.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsub.colorado.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.books.reviews:1230 rec.arts.books:143864 rec.arts.sf.reviews:891 rec.arts.sf.written:130330 alt.books.reviews:21443 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Steve Brock Reviews are Book Reviews on the Internet available for Copyright 1996 syndication 2323 Mapleton Boulder, CO 80304 E-mail for (303) 786-7375 more info. brock@ucsub.colorado.edu Member: National Book Critic's Circle ------------------------------------------------------------------ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sat Feb 24 22:36:34 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!prosys!loglule!news.luth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news.sprintlink.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!agate!boulder!ucsub.Colorado.EDU!brock From: brock@ucsub.Colorado.EDU (Steve Brock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.mystery,bit.listserv.dorothyl Subject: Review of Pollen by Jeff Noon (fiction, sf, mystery) Followup-To: rec.arts.books Date: 22 Feb 1996 03:13:23 GMT Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Lines: 76 Approved: brock@colorado.edu Message-ID: <4ggn0j$18b@peabody.colorado.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsub.colorado.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.books.reviews:1328 rec.arts.books:146166 alt.books.reviews:22635 rec.arts.sf.written:134575 rec.arts.sf.reviews:902 rec.arts.mystery:14565 bit.listserv.dorothyl:1553 POLLEN by Jeff Noon. Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 E. 50th St., N.Y., NY 10022, (800) 733-3000, (800) 659-2436 FAX. 336 pp., $23.00 cloth. 0-517-59990-2 Reviewed by Steve Brock "Because I was tired... This was why the pollen came to visit. Because I wes tired of being only told. I want to live, Sibyl. Like yourself. I want a flesh and blood life. A life of surprises, a life of pain. A life ending in death. I am jealous, yes, I admit it. Death means so much to your species. Without it where would you be? Death is your fuel, the parent of your desires, your art. I want to feel that hunger..." -- John Barleycorn Jeff Noon's second book of a near-future Manchester, England, takes place about fifteen years later than the events narrated by Scribble in "Vurt" (1995). In the rich and multi-layered "Pollen," Manchester is peopled by a much more complicated citizenry. In addition to dog-people, robo-people, shadow-people (dodos), and zombies, readers are introduced to several characters from the Vurt world (accessed by placing a color-coded feather in the throat) who long to experience reality. Most of "Pollen" is narrated by Sybil, a shadow-cop, who, with dog-cop Zulu Clegg (don't call him "Zero"), investigates the murder of a renegade cabdriver who was found with a cluster of flowers crammed down his throat, their roots growing into his heart and lungs. As Sibyl and Zero, oops, Zulu track down the killer, Manchester residents are suffocating from an increasingly concentrated cloud of pollen wafting from flowers that are sprouting up everywhere. Every few pages, Noon has a character sneeze: "aaaaaaachhhooooooooshhhhhhh!!!!" When the Chief of Police quashes their case before the killer is found, Sybil and Zero go it alone and uncover a deeply- entrenched, high-level conspiracy that allows Vurt creatures to dwell in the real world, assisted in doing so by a virus that makes ebola look like grains of pepper. The real fun of the book, however, isn't the story, but the sheer exuberance with which it is told. Using elements of cyberpunk and mythology combined with fantasy, the police- procedural, and 1960s Rock-and-Roll, Noon confidently infects each of his characters with a streak of independence, while at the same time, due to the ability of different species to interbreed, members of the general society seem to be losing the traits that make them distinctive. It's this balancing act that makes "Pollen" hard to put down. At the same time, however, I must warn readers not to begin the book while they (or their friends and loved ones) are experiencing allergic symptoms or the flu. If they do so, the slightest evidence of an approaching sneeze will cause them to cringe, remembering passages such as "all around me crossbreeds were sneezing out gobs of snot from their snouts, the sunshining day rained on by dog-mucus." About halfway through the book, for example, I stopped into Boulder's Stage House Books and asked my friend Jason how he'd been. "Lately I've been pretty sneezy," he replied. "My, look at the time," I had to say. "Gotta run." Grade: B+. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Steve Brock Reviews are Book Reviews on the Internet available for Copyright (c) 1996 syndication 2323 Mapleton Boulder, CO 80304 E-mail for (303) 786-7375 more info. brock@ucsub.colorado.edu Member: National Book Critic's Circle ------------------------------------------------------------------ %A Noon, Jeff %T Pollen %I Crown %C New York %D 1996 %G ISBN 0-517-59990-2 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 20 17:43:46 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!mcevans.tip.net.!newsfeed.tip.net!news.jos.net!dos.canit.se!seunet!mn7.swip.net!mn6.swip.net!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!tube.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!boulder!ucsub.Colorado.EDU!brock From: Rajha@unix.asb.com (Richard ) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review of Pollen by Jeff Noon (fiction, sf) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 18 May 1996 20:29:23 GMT Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder Lines: 76 Approved: brock@colorado.edu Message-ID: <4nlbv3$q7e@peabody.colorado.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsub.colorado.edu NNTP-Posting-User: brock Originator: brock@ucsub.Colorado.EDU Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.books.reviews:1645 rec.arts.sf.reviews:952 Enter at Your Own Risk Pollen By Jeff Noon 335 pp Crown Publishers. $23.00 By Richard Tortora The late eighties debut of William Gibson' s new brand of science fiction helped to revitalize the genre, been copied countless times, and has since left readers thirsting for more. With the release of Neuromancer he became a father of the dark extrapolative genre of Cyberpunk, as well as mainstreaming usage of the term Cyberspace. Where Gibson's first novel is akin to sleek modern architecture, made of razor-straight-edged steel, chrome and smoky glass, in Pollen, Jeff Noon uses a Gibsonesque steel frame, but layers it in conjured myth, Gothic dark-wood carvings, soft lush colorful murals and a strong floral scent of burning incense wafting from its pages. Where Gibson's Cyberspace is toured rationally by hardware resonant of familiar technological extensions of the computer; mouse and keyboard, as told by the author in an Interzone interview, Noon describes his version of Cyberspace, "I wanted to take it to the point that it had become such a part of society that they no longer know what it was. Its origins were hidden in a kind of myth, a kind of magic." The vurt is a vague and murky place reached through the insertion of `feathers' down the throats of the would-be virtual reality travelers, a realm where all dreams of human kind have existed as long as the species has been dreaming, but only recently realized. This is a novel of dog people, napalm cigarettes, a hive of cabbies who must wipe their memory to receive and realize the same map of Manchester that is tattooed on the whole of their bodies... This futuristic city has become plagued by a deadly hay-fever where its citizens are forced to wear protective breathing masks and observe the steadily rising pollen counts of the day. The plot commences with a cab ride odyssey where a fictional character from the vurt, Prepesterone, pays Coyote, a doggie cabby, with a fatal kiss that roots flowers in his lungs. Sibyl Jones is a psychic Shadow-cop, assigned to the case, while Boda, a potential lover of the victim and cabby, begins a parallel investigation or her own. Both figures learn of their past ties, as well as the shared handicap of being unable to dream. This disability leaves the pair immune to the messy plague whose origins are rooted in the vurt or dreamworld Despite the eventual revelation of the character first introduced being some kind of likeable rogue dogman cabby driving through a murky nondescript dangerous realm of `limbo' where he has to fight off violent stowaway `zombies', Noon allows a neon-blue thread of coherence. It serves as a guide through this bizarre, unfamiliar and darkened room, where instincts would suggest a guarded tension lest the reader bangs into a low table, or into that silent someone waiting in the shadows to slit her throat. Just as the reader is well exposed and ready to walk unimpeded throughout this surreal world, Noon pulls a plank from underfoot, leaving her to a plunge helplessly into the murky, bewildering environment, grasping for shards of coherence, and desperately scrabbling for some sort of reality orientation. In the middle of the book the aforementioned thread can now be described as the very thin line between characters. There is often a delay of uncertainty as to from whose point of view the story is told. Save for the sporadic inclusion of a sense of maternal instinct, the principal character Sibyl's, femininity is nonpresent and only occasionally disrupts the more dominant unintended male image, mirroring that of the author's masculine thirty-something book-jacket photo. In the final third of the book the surviving reader is allowed back on her feet, able to understand and appreciate Noon's odd world with its epic weaving of fable and fabricated myth, and being left with a sense that the whole trying acid trip was somehow well worth it. Like the blossoming of religion from the seed of fact in Pollen, Noon splices multiple layers of mysticism upon the enduring Gibsonian model. It tempts the reader into its colorful pages, slaps her around and than unceremoniously spits her out to convalesce. There is a frustrating muddied portion of road in this book, where the average cars should not venture. This kind of disorientating encounter is not meant for everyone, so take pause to be forewarned to brace yourself, shift into that four wheel drive and enter at your own risk... From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jan 3 13:37:44 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!02-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!01-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!Austria.EU.net!EU.net!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!uhog.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Subject: AUTOMATED ALICE by Jeff Noon Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 31 Dec 1996 20:00:10 GMT Organization: Software Agents Group Lines: 36 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1182 rec.arts.books.reviews:2217 AUTOMATED ALICE by Jeff Noon A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1997 Evelyn C. Leeper Like Lewis Carroll, Jeff Noon fills his story with puns and word play. Unlike Lewis Carroll, he tries to work in computers and industrial development. This is not entirely successful, and at times the conceit of computers giving their answers by having termites spell them out gets to be a bit annoying. Noon is writing from a very different perspective than Carroll, and there is no chance of mistaking Noon's prose for Carroll's. In a sense this works against the novel, just as a Sherlock Holmes pastiche not done in Doyle's style seems to be missing something. Noon is not as deft or as free with his logical puzzles and riddles as Carroll -- but then, Carroll was a logician by trade. If you're willing to accept this as a modern homage instead of a copy, and if you enjoy word play, you might find this worth a look. Whether it's worth buying in hardcover is questionable though. %T Automated Alice %A Jeff Noon %C New York %D 1996 %I Crown %O hardback, US$21 %G ISBN 0-517-70490-0 %P 223pp %S 3 %V Alice Evelyn C. Leeper | eleeper@lucent.com +1 908 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824 "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." --Jorge Luis Borges From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 9 16:08:59 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: alex Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Nymphomation by Jeff Noon Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 08 Sep 1999 21:51:00 -0400 Organization: none Lines: 54 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2448 "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