Hi Anthony & all
Come on, gals & guys, how come THE LIST still has 29 (I counted them) SF
novels that are NOT RATED for nanotech content ? How about some collective
effort to give Anthony a hand a fill in those little numbers ?
Well, here is my 2 cents about Jeff Noon. I knew nothing of Noon until I
saw his name on the list with 2 mysterious unrated novels. Then I saw the
books at a bookshop and the cover-blurb said "Philip K. Dick is alive and
well and living up north." How could I resist ? Bought'em, read'em. Boy, was
I hooked ! Now I understand Noon is kind of a cult, with fan websites and
the like. And rightfully he is ! He created a wildly inventive psychedelic
wicked universe, his prose is briskly delivered, and he manages to surprise
you at every turn of page.
Can't wait to grab his new one, "Nymphomation"...
But what about nanotech in "Vurt" and "Pollen" ? Not much, I'm afraid.
Noon's world has 6 classes of people : normal humans, dogs (actually
hybrids, more or less humanoid or dogoid), vurts (creature from that strange
land of drugs/dreams), shadows (sorts of telepaths), zombies (monstrous
mutants) and robots (now, there must be some nanotech in their metal
innards, but Noon doesn't dwell on the technical side - actually there's no
tech at all in Noon's writing, it's all, uh, very fleshy...
Now, the word "nano" makes a brief appearance in both novels, and curiously,
with the same context : nano as "Mr Clean" !
In "Vurt", nanogerms act as a smart shampoo, they cleanse "droidlocks" -
entangled natted hair of 2 lovers who intertwined their locks years ago and
may not live separately any more....
In "Pollen", nanofleas are sold in petshops to "keep a doggy clean". Except
the dog cop accidentally breaks a whole jar of them and eventually gets real
itchy.
And that's it for Nano in Noonland.
So how about a 1.9 rating for both novels ?
Jean-Pierre Lentin