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Reread. I used to love this book when I was going through my Burroughs phase in my early 20s. I still enjoyed how frantic and fantastical the world is, but the world Jeff Noon has created is gross. Viscerally disgusting.
The concept of vurt feathers is fascinating, it’s stuck in my mind for well over a decade.
The concept of vurt feathers is fascinating, it’s stuck in my mind for well over a decade.
adventurous
dark
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest
Moderate: Drug abuse
This is a very strange book that stands somewhere between cyberpunk and an altered reality novel. It is written from the perspective of Scribble, a member of a gang that spends their time doing Vurt feathers, which are a means of entering a virtual reality experience that is presented as a drug induced shared hallucination.
Vurt is written in a very disjointed way, which gives you the impression that it is actually being written by Scribble. It is the story of his quest to find his sister who got lost inside a Vurt when she was swapped for a strange thing called the Thing, which is a creature created entirely from the Vurt.
This book is really good and the writing is really well done and engrossing. I will definitely be picking up some of Jeff Noon's other books, hopefully they will be as good as this one is.
Vurt is written in a very disjointed way, which gives you the impression that it is actually being written by Scribble. It is the story of his quest to find his sister who got lost inside a Vurt when she was swapped for a strange thing called the Thing, which is a creature created entirely from the Vurt.
This book is really good and the writing is really well done and engrossing. I will definitely be picking up some of Jeff Noon's other books, hopefully they will be as good as this one is.
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
World building aside, this is just another “sad man pines for lost lover” story, albeit with way more incest and beastiality. Very common in the genre of fucked up and trippy alterverse, a protagonist with zero redeeming qualities seeks a missing woman with no qualities at all, aside from “lost” and probably “beautiful”. The twist here is that the woman is actually a child: the sister he’s been statutory raping. But he loves her, so it’s okay I guess? Gross.
Anyway, while we’re on the subject of gross, there’s the bit at the end where it’s heavily implied that the Vurt actress he has virtual sex with many years in the future is the child produced from the incestuousrelationship assault on his sister. At least she is an adult. We’ll take whatever silver lining we can get at this point.
I could have done without the graphics descriptions of dog genitals and dog sex, but maybe I’m not the target audience for this book.
I actually liked the choppy style and the concept, but lord deliver me from these men who write women like set dressing with holes.
Anyway, while we’re on the subject of gross, there’s the bit at the end where it’s heavily implied that the Vurt actress he has virtual sex with many years in the future is the child produced from the incestuous
I could have done without the graphics descriptions of dog genitals and dog sex, but maybe I’m not the target audience for this book.
I actually liked the choppy style and the concept, but lord deliver me from these men who write women like set dressing with holes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Incest, Sexual content, Violence, Excrement
The world Jeff Noon created in this book is mystifying. The book was amazing in every way, the depth of the characters, the imaginative plot, the beautiful writing. I loved it.
A friend from work gave me this one to read on the basis I said I like dystopia. This is not something I'd have picked up otherwise, and I'm not sure how I feel about it hence no rating. Vurt is a combination of rave culture, drugs and cyberspace set in an alternate/future Manchester. It's quite postmodern in style, has lashings of bestiality and incest, and not a huge amount happens. Basically the main character, Scribble, is looking for his sister Desdemona, who has been lost in a kind of alternate reality you can only get to by taking a particular strain of drug (people take various colour coded feathers to get different highs). The world building is thoroughly uncompromising, nothing is really explained, and please look elsewhere if you want any development of your female characters beyond their age and hotness. I found it a bit of a slog, essentially - but there were some good bits and interesting use of language. Also like I say I kind of knew from the outset it might not really be my bag.
Vurt, la experiencia inmersiva definitiva, una droga que te lleva a un mundo de sueños tan real como el nuestro. Y persiguiendo su destino los Stash Riders, una pequeña banda en una carrera que puede llevarles tanto a la salvación como a la autodestrucción, en un mundo donde los "puros", los simplemente humanos, conviven mezclas como las Shadowgirls, con su cuerpo cubierto de humo, Robo o los Perros, híbridos entre razas.
Me ha gustado tanto la historia como el mundo imaginado por Jeff Noon. No crea que sea mi última visita al mundo de Vurt.
Me ha gustado tanto la historia como el mundo imaginado por Jeff Noon. No crea que sea mi última visita al mundo de Vurt.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Jeff Noon's Vurt is yet another take on the virtual reality science fiction genre. It follows the narrator, Scribble, and gang called the Stash Riders, as they try to obtain feathers, a narcotic like substance (that looks like a feather) which transports the user into a virtual reality simulation. There are different types of feathers, some are sexual fantasies while others are adventure stories, and some are so powerful that they permanently transport the user into this virtual reality. Scribble lost his sister in one such event, and is desperately trying to find the feather which could lead him back to his sister.
Noon explores many familiar sci-fi themes in Vurt, such as the addiction to virtual reality and social stratification in a dystopian future. Noon presents the futuristic Manchester as a disgusting over populated mess, with the main antagonists being the police officers set on apprehending the Stash Riders. Vurt has some unsettling elements to it, such as the protagonist's romantic relationship with his sister and the hybrid human/dog people, which I thought resembled today's furries. I appreciate Noon's willingness to unflinchingly explore a gritty and depraved future, and it adds to the overall bleakness and memorability of the story.
Virtual Reality as a drug has certainly been explored in other works of science fiction, such as Dick's excellent The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but Jeff Noon still manages to present an original and entertaining work of cyberpunk science fiction in Vurt. Anyone who's a fan of Dick or Gibson would find plenty to appreciate in this novel, so go ahead and suck on the feather and dive in! I just really hope the furries of today don't take any ideas away from this novel and start looking into genetic splicing... 3.5/5
Noon explores many familiar sci-fi themes in Vurt, such as the addiction to virtual reality and social stratification in a dystopian future. Noon presents the futuristic Manchester as a disgusting over populated mess, with the main antagonists being the police officers set on apprehending the Stash Riders. Vurt has some unsettling elements to it, such as the protagonist's romantic relationship with his sister and the hybrid human/dog people, which I thought resembled today's furries. I appreciate Noon's willingness to unflinchingly explore a gritty and depraved future, and it adds to the overall bleakness and memorability of the story.
Virtual Reality as a drug has certainly been explored in other works of science fiction, such as Dick's excellent The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but Jeff Noon still manages to present an original and entertaining work of cyberpunk science fiction in Vurt. Anyone who's a fan of Dick or Gibson would find plenty to appreciate in this novel, so go ahead and suck on the feather and dive in! I just really hope the furries of today don't take any ideas away from this novel and start looking into genetic splicing... 3.5/5
The stunning book that introduced me to cyberpunk. I will never, ever come back.