Jeff Noon (born in 1957 in
Droylsden
, Lancashire
, England
) is a
novelist, short
story writer and playwright whose
works make extensive use of wordplay and
fantasy. Noon's
speculative fiction books have ties to
the works of writers such as
Lewis
Carroll and
Jorge Luis Borges.
Prior to
his recent relocation (around the year 2000) to Brighton
, Noon set
most of his stories in some version of his native city of Manchester
.
Novels
Noon's first 4 novels are part of a series sharing ongoing
characters and background, commonly referred to after the first
novel as the 'Vurt' series.In terms of publishing history the Vurt
sequence runs:
Vurt (1993);
Pollen (1995);
Automated
Alice (1996) (itself simultaneously a 'trequel' [sic] to
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the
Looking-Glass, both written by
Lewis
Carroll), and
Nymphomation (1997) -
however, in terms of fictional chronology of characters and
settings the Vurt sequence runs:
Automated Alice;
Nymphomation;
Vurt then finally
Pollen.
Vurt (1993)
Vurt tells the story of Scribble and
his "gang" the Stash Riders as they search for his missing sister
Desdemona.
Vurt refers to a drug/shared alternate reality
that is accessed by sucking on color-coded feathers. Through some
(never explained) mechanism, the dreams, mythology, and imaginings
of humanity achieved objective reality in the
Vurt and
became "real". The book won the 1994
Arthur C. Clarke Award. Evidently there is a
Vurt film in the works, but as of the date of this writing, Jeff
Noon has stated on his public website that "Of the Vurt film, all
has gone silent at the moment. Don’t hold your breath."
Pollen (1995)
Pollen is the sequel to
Vurt and concerns the ongoing struggle between the real
world and the
vurtual world. When concerning the
vurtual world, some references to
Greek mythology are noticeable, including
Persephone and
Demeter, the river
Styx and
Charon, and
Hades
(portrayed by the character John Barleycorn).
Automated Alice (1996)
Noon describes
Automated Alice as a "trequel" - it is a
companion piece of sorts to the famous Lewis Carroll books,
Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland and
Through the Looking-Glass.
The novella follows Alice's journey to a future Manchester
populated by Newmonians, Civil Serpents and a vanishing cat named
Quark.
The people who suffer from
newmonia (pronounced the same
as the real condition
pneumonia), are
hybrids of humans and other entities. They are mainly hybrids of
animals and humans, but also of other random items such as kitchen
sinks and pianos.
The
civil serpents (a play-on-words of the job '
civil servant') are trying to control
everything that happens in the future, and try to stop randomness.
The 'Supreme Serpent' is the controller of the serpents, and hints
at the fact that he is
Satan himself.The
writing style of Noon is very similar to that of
Lewis Carroll, who Noon constantly refers back
to during the novel. The narrative is full of Alice mis-hearing
words, most notably
worm instead of
wurm, and
pneumonia instead of
newmonia.
There are also references to popular musical figures, with two
notable characters. Firstly, James Marshall Hentrails, a sculpture
made of rubbish, and who contains the insides (entrails) of a hen.
This character is obviously a reference to
Jimi Hendrix. The character also sings a song
while playing the guitar. The song is titled 'Little Miss Bonkers',
an obvious reference to 'Little Miss Strange' by Hendrix.Secondly,
the character of Long Distance Davis, who Alice meets in a police
cell, is a reference to jazz musician and trumpet player
Miles Davis.
Nymphomation (1997)
Nymphomation is the prequel to
Vurt.
Nymphomation primarily tells the story of a
lottery in Manchester involving dominos and a group attempting to
crack the secrets of that lottery, but it also sets the background
for much of the mythology found in the previous three books.
Pixel Juice (1998)
Pixel Juice is a collection of 50 short stories.
Needle in the Groove (2000)
Needle in the Groove
follows Elliot Hill, a bass player and ex-junkie trudging the
pub-rock circuit, who is invited to join a new band: fusing DJ
artistry, voice and rhythm section, the group's hypnotic groove
creation is augmented by a startling new recording technology. The
band seems bound for success - until one of them vanishes. Elliot's
subsequent search draws him into a secret history of music that
stretches back 40 years and into his own past.Jeff Noon and
David Toop also released a CD,
Needle
in the Groove: if music were a drug, where would it take you,
on Sulphur Records in the same year.
Cobralingus (2001)
Cobralingus sits apart from Noon's other published works.
It is part anthology of poems and part instructional textbook for
Noon's style of poetry. In it, he details his regimented methods
for the creation of poetic text by a style of word play which lends
its name to the title. Also included are various exemplars of this
style.
The Engine begins with Noon using an existing text and then
applying different 'filter gates' that edit the text into something
new. Examples of these gates include 'enhance' which creates
elements of beauty in the text, and 'ghost edit'; this kills the
text and calls up a ghost to haunt the text.
The
Codex edition of the book was illustrated by
Daniel Allington and has an introduction by
Michael Bracewell, explaining the
Cobralingus Engine.
Falling out of Cars (2002)
Falling out of Cars is a road novel set in a near-future
world where information-based civilization is falling apart. It
follows the journey of Marlene, Henderson, and Peacock as they
drive around England on a mission to gather fragments of a mirror
that may be at the heart of the world's affliction.
Falling out
of Cars is the record Marlene keeps - or tries to keep - of
her quest to flee from her past. Despite her daily dose of
Lucidity, Marlene is gradually succumbing to the malady, and it
gets harder and harder to distinguish dream from reality,
hallucinations from events.
217 Babel Street (2008)
Noons latest work is
217 Babel Street. It is a
collaboration of four authors,
Susanna
Jones,
Alison MacLeod,
William Shaw and Noon. It is only
available online and is a constantly updated collection of short
stories about a fictional British apartment building. It has
stories about each person who lives in the apartment building,
which each author can contribute to.
Bibliography
Novels and novellas
Short fiction collections
Plays
- Woundings (1986), ISBN 1-870259-00-9
- Vurt - The Theatre Remix (May 2000- the show ran for
three weeks)
- Somewhere The Shadow (May 2001- the show ran from
Thursday 3 May - Saturday 26 May)
- The Modernists (June 2003- the show ran from Wednesday
11 June - Saturday 21 June )
Radio work
- Dead Code - Ghosts of the Digital Age (BBC Radio 3,
2005)
Film
- Woundings (based on the play), known as Brand New
World (USA) (1998)
Reported works in progress
Apparently, Noon is working on a script/ screenplay for a film
entitled
Divine Shadows with director
Husein Alicajic. Although Noons' input is
not known at this time, he has been credited on both
imdb and
mooviees.com with writing credits. However, the film
is in currently labeled as being 'in production'. Husein Alicajic's
webpage also lists this film as 'in production', and quotes the
films production company as
Wild Bear
Films[11655].
Noon is reported to be working on a short story entitled "That's
What Jeff Said", though this is currently unconfirmed.
The idea for the film won the
ZTudio What IF? Award
for Best Un-Produced Screenplay in 2001.
According to The
Producers' and Directors' Guild of Victoria website, Husein secured an option deal whilst in
New
York
.
However, as of early 2008, the films information has been removed
from imdb.com. This would suggest that the film did not receive a
green light, and pre-production stopped.
External links
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