A girl puts a feather in her mouth.
If there is one author who really exemplifies the playfulness of language, in all its bizarre beauty, it is Jeff Noon. My first ever exposure to Jeff Noon was through a short story titled “Metaphorazine”, published in his collection Pixel Juice (1998), which turned poetic devices into mind-altering drugs. I was astonished by the ingenuity of the idea, if language is thought to alter our perception of the world, is language itself not a type of drug? Like an addict, I searched for Jeff Noon novels to devour, and was not disappointed. Pixel Juice (1998) itself boasts a truly fantastic collection of stories, showing off the author’s unique and original approach to Science Fiction. It is probably the best place to start if you aren’t familiar with his work.
Vurt (1993) is the author’s first novel, and will be the subject of this post. This novel is a good example of cyberpunk fiction, which became a widely popular genre in the 1980s. The cyberpunk genre presents the reader with a near-future dystopia, where daily life isn’t so great, and so people turn towards advanced tech to create an alternative, simulated reality. Cyberpunk usually features a cyber-reality, and technology is often used as a method of transcendence, and a way to escape the dreary world. What’s great about cyberpunk though, is that it isn’t used as a method to critique society, or ponder the implications of the cybernetic knowledge or identity issues. Oh no, cyberpunk is just there to have a good time. The beacons of cyberpunk include William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), which was adapted into the the film Bladerunner (1982). As any good cyberpunk novel, in Vurt (1993) we are presented with sleaze, a world of sex and drug addiction, and with tech beyond our current capabilities. This world blurs the boundaries between known reality and virtual spaces, and takes both body invasion and mind invasion to the max.
The action takes place in a run-down Manchester filled with “pures” and hybrids, crosses between five species: human, dog, shadow, robo, and Vurt. Our protagonist Scribble and his gang of Stash Riders take frequent trips to the Vurt using colour-coded feathers. Vurt represents a type of shared dream, a virtual reality that you can venture into to experience all kinds of forbidden sensations. Blue feathers are your legal easy trips, while pink feathers are exclusively for the Pornovurt. Things aren’t always blissful though, as sometimes these dreams turn into nightmares and it is easy to forget that it’s not in fact real (Inception anyone?). Be very careful of the illegal black feathers and ultra-rare yellow feathers warns the Game Cat, for they are very dangerous my kittlings.
But the novel is far from a simple drug fuelled fantasy; Scribble’s sister has been lost to the Vurt, replaced by a grey Vurt being affectionately called the Thing-from-Outer-Space. The mission is to get her back, and the reader is taken along for the ride. This one is not a slow-burner, so you get propelled into the action from the first chapter. What a rush! Expect to be awed, expect to be disgusted, this one will have you on the edge of your seat.
Vurt was followed by a sequel Pollen (1995) and prequel Nymphomation (1997), but while they all share the same aspects of Vurtual world, the stories do not focus on the same characters. Automated Alice (1996) is also considered to be part of the Vurt series, and is Jeff Noon’s homage to the Alice in Wonderland books by Lewis Carroll. The author himself makes an appearance as Zenith O’Clock (another clever play on words, pointing towards Noon). Automated Alice (1996) is a fantastic book as well, in which Alice follows her parrot Whippoorwill through a Victorian grandfather clock and is transported into a futuristic Manchester filled with hybrid creatures of its own. This hybridity is something that can be found in many of Jeff Noon’s works – mixtures of real and virtual, human and other, language, genre, music. It is this unsettling unfamiliar world that we are ever drawn to and fascinated by. Jeff Noon’s most recent books include A Man of Shadows (2017) and The Body Library (2018).
