Vurt

Vurt (1993) is Noon's first novel and he started out with a bang. It got the Arthur C. Clarke prize in 1994. The book is a high speed race through the drug fueled underworld of Manchester by a street gang named the Stash Riders. Reading the novel feels like being thrown into a group hallucination where the boundaries of what is real and what is imagined are obliterated.

Scribble is the one telling the story, Beetle is their leader and driver, Brid is Beetle's girlfriend, Mandy is the new member, Twinkle is a local kid who talks herself into the gang, the Thing is a weird living blob who came out of an hallucination, and Desdemona is Scribble's lover (also sister) who has disappeared in that same hallucination in some sort of exchange.

The story takes it's lead from the myth of Orpheus in the underworld as he seeks to rescue his lost wife. Along the way there are allusions to Lewis Caroll, Shakespeare, punk culture, Gibson style cyberpunk, Clockwork Orange vibes, and a whole lot of crazy.

The drug use is based on feathers that users suck on where different colours designate different types of hallucinatory effects. Some are street legal, some are not. Some are cosy comfort and some are pornographic. Some are safe, some can be deadly. Scribble's goal of finding Desdemona means he's looking for the most dangerous, the Curious Yellow. Yeah, movie reference there.

I was impressed with the relentless nature of the story. Scribble's mind is like a V8 engine running in a Mini Minor and is at full throttle all the way. Noon keeps up the pace as Scribble moves in and out of hallucinatory states so that we sometimes have trouble telling the difference. Everything is a race for Scribble, and the book ends by crashing into the final scenes and leaving us a bit stunned.

There are a couple of elements that disturbed me on reading, they are the brother/sister incest and the bestiality with dogs and 'robodogs' - (both people and dogs are sometimes enhanced with mechanistic elements). It took me a while to see these as a part of Noon's references to Greek mythology, where the Gods and heroes are often in incestual relationships and taking the form of various animals to seduce desirable humans. We read the myths without moralising too much, and in Vurt, Noon is confronting us with the same dynamic in a futuristic world.

I had trouble giving stars to this novel. Do I give it more for its sheer audacity and fireworks brilliance? Do I give it less because the characters are often shallow and unlikable and with few redeeming qualities? Do I give it less because of the incest/bestiality? Do I give it more for the talent that is obvious in the consistency of the story? I decided to mark it upwards, 4.5 stars.

Really wanted to like this book more. I was intrigued by the premise of the combination of drugs/virtual reality, but the story went in directions I didn't care much for. Styled with lots of in world slang, which I was into but went a bit overboard after a while. Tech side a little dated, fitting for when published in the 90s though. If anyone has suggestions for books that deal with perceptions of reality and/or addiction please let me know, I'm still needing that itch scratched as Vurt didn't do it.