Ok, let’s play. Play to win! Play to win! A Nymphomation review

Swooping through manga noir nightmares, Jeff Noon’s ‘Nymphomation’ is his most breathless work yet. Set in the Vurt universe of his earlier ‘Vurt’, ‘Pollen’ and ‘Automated Alice’, Nymphomation is a delirious ride through a kaleidoscopic near future Manchester. Stuck in overdrive, Noon steps up through the ceiling to 24th gear, his narration tumbles and runs at a frenetic slick neon rain pace. With a peculiarly English sensibility, Noon satirizes England’s National Lottery in his vision of a Manchester captivated and obsessed by the Company’s Domino Bones lottery. Every Friday there must be a winner of fantastic riches, the winning bones are illuminated on Lady Luck’s sinuous body, and the shifting domino bones fade into blankness, the losers left to wait for next Friday, with new bones shifting through patterns in their sweaty palms. Nymphomation follows a group of unlikely math students in their increasingly dangerous pursuit of the hidden mystery of Domino Bones, the nymphomation. Nymphomation is the secret knowledge by which information can make love to itself and produce more powerful information. Burgercops, Blurbvurts, Vaz, Random Topology, bone-juice, and Black Math intrude and swarm through, over each other in the House of Chances. Noon is unable to contain himself, he can’t stop exploiting and subverting his own work. Nymphomation is effectively a remix of the best bits of Vurt, Pollen and Automated Alice, with several dj stories filtered into the mix. Noon’s remixology literary styles places him as not only one of the most important SF writers of his generation, but a brilliant writer in general who has invented a new style. These concepts are followed through and enhanced in Noon’s latest release, Pixel Juice, with another due in February. Highly Recommended.

Published in Re:Mix, circa 2000.