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.
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) but, in terms of fictional chronology of characters and settings the Vurt sequence runs: Automated Alice; Nymphomation; Vurt then finally Pollen.
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. 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 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).
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 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.
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.
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