If you like challenging 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.
But no review can do Noon's writing justice: it's a phantasmagoric combination of the more imaginative science fiction masters, such as Phillip K. Dick, genres such as cyberpunk and pulp fiction, and drug culture.
If this tickles your fancy, you should definitely consider the sequel to Vurt, Pollen, or Noon's lighter and more accessible Automated Alice, a modern recasting of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0517599910, Hardcover)
"As hip and breathless as William Gibson, but spiced with dark humor and the horrible realisation that Noon knows of what he writes....
Vurt is passionate, distinctive, demanding and enthralling--first-time novelist Noon has started with a bang."--
The London Times.
