Product Description

Take a trip in a stranger's head. Along rainshot streets with the stash riders, a posse of hip malcontents, hooked on the most powerful drug you can imagine . . . Vurt feathers . . . But as the Game Cat says, Be careful, be very careful. This ride is not for the weak . . .

Scribble isn't listening. He has to find his lost love. A journey towards the ultimate, perhaps even mythical, Vurt Feather . . . Curious Yellow.

'Passionate, distinctive, demanding and enthralling' The Times

'Too beautiful for bikers, too harsh for hippies' New Stateman and Society

'Bold and accomplished . . . It screams out to be read' City Life

'Refreshing, disturbing and original' Independent

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88514 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
If you like literary science fiction, then Jeff Noon is the author for you. Vurt, winner of the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke award, is a cyberpunk novel with a difference, a rollicking, dark, yet humorous examination of a future in which the boundaries between reality and virtual reality are as tenuous as the brush of a feather.

Customer Reviews

Future (remixed)
The first of Noon's books. Take a trip into the twisted world of future Manchester, a world where everything we know around us has just warped that little bit more as time has progressed. People taking trips using brightly coloured feathers, the police force sponsored by the worldwide burger chain, DJs projecting music via their mind into nightclubs, the mix of humanity and technology. Some where in the middle of all this you are introduced to the plight of Scribble and his friends, on a quest to find his sister after a trip into a feather known as Curious Yellow goes wrong.

Jeff Noon manages to conjure up a world familar yet warped just beyond our recognition, his writing style is unique, taking life as we know it and projecting just a little into the future. I've never read a book which has such amazing pace to it. As you read further and further it just gets more exciting with every page as you find yourself staying up until the early hours to find out what happens next as Vurtual Manchester draws you in. As vivid as a comic book, you'll never experience anything like this. Those well versed in club culture and technology will find this book a particular joy. The future vision of Gibson mixed with the fantasy of Alice In Wonderland.

Read this, then read everything else he has done, no weak links in his chain.

One of the darkest joy rides you'll ever take!
Noon draws a thin line between hope and despair then grabs you by the hand and runs along it at break neck speed. Vurt is the ultimate trip, a world where you can go to escape but somewhere you may never escape from. Noon has created his own virtual reality in this book, based in Manchester the story revolves around a handful of strong dead-beat anti-heroes. Vurt itself is a world of dreams you enter using vurt feathers, the parallels between virtual reality and drug use are so close they often merge at points to become vurtually indistinguishable.

Scribble the main character is searching for his sister, who has become lost in the vurt world. Helped and hindered by his friends the stash riders, a group of social misfits who jump from one bad trip to the next. To reach his sister he needs to find a meta-feather, curious yellow. Once he has the feather he can exchange his sister for the vurt alien he bought back from the trip where he lost her. Unfortunately in his quest for the feather he loses the alien and that's just the start of his problems!

This is one of the most beautifully crafted stories you are likely to read, to label it as a cyber-punk novel is accurate but this must not deter you if Sci-Fi is not your thing. As a fast paced surreal adventure the story often leaves you breathless, and sometimes so close to tears it hurts. If your looking for a great Sci-Fi book or something fresh and different read this, you won't be disappointed.

Reply to mr_cushtie
The complaints about the childishness of the opening sequence coming from someone who only read the opening are understandable. The book is, at its heart, about Scribble's belated maturing into adulthood. The language used to describe the world reflects the language of his childhood, which we soon discover he's only attempting to relive, since his Vurt addiction has stolen it from him, along with his sister.

That the reviewer is unable to cope with the idea of a flawed narrator speaks more of him than of this book, although his reference to 'The Matrix' as the best work on this theme makes me suspect he's trolling. In which case, IHBT IHL HAND.