VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM (19)
By:
September 7, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of science fiction novels and comics from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
VURT | JEFF NOON | 1993
I hated the cover of Vurt. Bright and clunky, the colors clashed, the author’s name was too big, and the illustrated feathers seemed a drab focal point… but I was drawn to it. The first chapter reflected back just enough of myself to keep the pages turning — a gang of drug chasing losers with expendable loser girlfriends who fuck on hallucinogens. I was thirteen, a stoner spending most days avoiding school in Washington Square Park. I’ve read it several times since then. It’s always enjoyable, but, like anything else, it never quite hits the same as the first time.
Vurt is set in a future dystopia where so many people take a hallucinogenic drug that the collective unconscious has created an organic alterna-dimension, a virtual reality, nicknamed Vurt. The way to ingest the drug is to suck on feathers, which come in all different colors; some colors are legal and used for happy daydreams or porn, presented to the public in ad-VURT-isments. However, some colors are illegal, offering a myriad of unregulated experiences, some sexual or violent. The Stash Riders, our merry gang of ne’er-do-wells, trade in illegal feathers, chasing an ever increasing need for a more twisted adventure.
Our hero, Scribble, a lackey to the leader of the Stash Riders, searches for his sister, Desdemona, who was lost in the Vurt on a yellow feather trip. He fears she is doomed to relive their nightmarish childhood full of molestation and other abuse, again and again, until she is freed. After years of searching, he finds his beloved sister and trades his life for her own, staying in the nightmare.
The book is dripping with literary reference, from Shakespeare to Conrad to Lewis Caroll. Noon doesn’t strictly adhere to any categorization; however, the then-recently coined “Slipstream Fiction” seemed to fit. A genre at the nexus of literary, sci fi, magical realism, and fantasy. I can see Philip K. Dick’s famous Chew-Z drug from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch reflected in the Vurt feathers. Noon was writing a modernized version of the famous French novel The Torture Garden, in which rich people get sexual gratification from watching torture performed on prison inmates in a beautifully manicured and regal garden. If the Vurt was created by the human mind, then a Torture Garden scenario is inevitable.
I was just a kid when I read it but it shaped the way I saw things. People are horrible, but you can love your abuser; acid can make you a hero; there might be a fun-filled multi-colored brick road to redemption. There were a million kids like me, and no one was coming to trade themselves in for our place in the garden. Our brains searched through any kind of high to find a peaceful corner to hide in while we were pawed and grabbed and led by anyone for anything.
The book came out the year that Bill Clinton was elected; he would go on to deal a death blow to the social safety net. The World Trade Center was bombed (the first time), and DOOM brought the first-person shooter into every living room. The novel Trainspotting came out, about another gang of beautiful losers who made the life and death of junkies seem like something other than a waste. In a few years, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising would be available for the first time on TV. I can remember all this going on in the background as the noise increased. It was a point in time when the world jerked before accelerating into whatever this is now. Jeff Noon and his cyberpunk contemporaries were between what had been written to fear and what was about to come, the onslaught of internet technology.
Vurt is a perfect depiction of everything we knew we should fear from the future, and the future hasn’t disappointed.
VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on SNOW CRASH | Mandy Keifetz on THE GENOCIDAL HEALER | Matthew De Abaitua on SWAMP THING | Carlo Rotella on THE PLAYER OF GAMES | Lynn Peril on GEEK LOVE | Stephanie Burt on THE CARPATHIANS | Josh Glenn on DAL TOKYO | Deb Chachra on THE HYPERION CANTOS | Adam McGovern on KID ETERNITY | Nikhil Singh on THE RIDDLING REAVER | Judith Zissman on RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE | Ramona Lyons on PARABLE OF THE SOWER | Jessamyn West on the MARS TRILOGY | Flourish Klink on DOOMSDAY BOOK | Matthew Battles on THE INTEGRAL TREES | Tom Nealon on CLAY’S ARK | Sara Ryan on SARAH CANARY | Gordon Dahlquist on CONSIDER PHLEBAS | Alex Brook Lynn on VURT | Miranda Mellis on STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND | Nicholas Rombes on RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH | Adelina Vaca on NEUROMANCER | Marc Weidenbaum on AMERICAN FLAGG! | Peggy Nelson on VIRTUAL LIGHT | Michael Grasso on WILD PALMS.
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