Automated Alice

As someone who has loved Lewis Carroll's Alice stories since he was a very young boy I must say that I found Jeff Noon's amusing novel, Automated Alice both clever and funny, very funny. The whimsy begins with computermites and seems to be infinite before the book is over.
Poor Alice is alone, bored, and sleepy in her Great Aunt Ermintrude's house in rainy Manchester, but she is quickly swept away into another world as she follows Whippoorwill, "a green-and-yellow-plumed parrot with a bright orange beak", up and away into the mechanism of an old grandfather clock. The reader, along with Alice, never has a chance to look back.
If I have any complaint with the novel, it is that like a Viennese chocolate torte it was too sweet and before show more the end of the book my head began to feel like it does when I have overdosed on sugar. Curiously the capriciousness speeds along at a pace which is fast and faster, to the point where I began to feel my mind spinning. It reminded me of the Red Queen's admonition to Alice : “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” (Through the Looking Glass).
It is all tremendously amusing when you find yourself laughing out loud on almost every page and you are mystified by the circumlocutions and wordplay that is positively preternatural. This is a book for all who love puns, riddles, titillating moments filled with uncommon literary references that lend the text a postmodern sheen. Some call this novel an instance of cyberpunk fiction, but I merely suggest that all who dare explore the world of speculative fiction will find this a delightful novel. show less

This is an homage to [[Lewis Carroll]] but with [[Noon]]'s added weirdness thrown in for good measure. It ties in with the former's Alice books and the latter's [Vurt] books. Alice is living with her Great Aunt Ermintrude and while awaiting a writing lesson follows a parrot inside a grandfather clock and ends up in a very strange place indeed: Manchester in 1998! (though I don't remember it being quite this strange). It appears Alice has become chief suspect in the jigsaw murders as the bodies involved just happen to have one of the missing pieces of a jigsaw she's been doing back home located on their rearranged bodies when found. With the help of a few friends, can Alice avoid the clutches of the local constabulary and of the wannabe show more head of the Civil Serpents, find her parrot and retrieve the missing jigsaw pieces and make it back home in time for her lesson?

Puns and other word play abound and the author does a good job of keeping this within acceptable parameters for the intended audience. Only one instance should be noted to sway away from the very young and that is the description of the rearrangement of the body parts for one of the victims. Otherwise it stays fairly true to the original [[Carroll]] tone. It's a fast, action-packed story but that's to the detriment of any character and world-building and I found myself not really caring about any of the characters we meet along the way. There was however enough interest there for me to keep reading until the end to find out what transpires. Definitely not my favourite of the author's works but it hasn't put me off from picking up any of those unread ones I haven't got around to yet. show less

Two stars feels unduly harsh, but I can't bring myself to get to three ... three means I enjoyed it well enough, but might not rush out to find more by the same author, or continue the series. Two and a half, say, but of course we aren't allowed such niceties.

I'd just finished another Alice sequel (Alice Through the Needle's Eye) which I felt came too close to Carroll's originals, throwing into stark relief how much livelier and interesting the earlier works were. But this volume strays too far in the other direction, there's far too much plot, no beloved new characters, and it's rather bloody for an Alice book.

I think it's very difficult to even approach the genius that is Lewis Caroll (so it's ridiculous that I've found myself show more inspired to do so--I'm 7,000 words into my attempt), so anyone who tries has my sympathies indeed. I think by far it's better to go the route of Catherynne Valente and her Fairyland series--it's awfully similar, but different enough that you're not expecting Carroll and Alice, and can enjoy it for its own sake.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). show less

I've had this book on my shelf for at least 15 years, glad that I finally got to it. This was silly, but exactly as silly as it needed to be to keep up with the original Alice books. I liked the illustrations and the story had my wife and I laughing often. Not sure why it's labeled as "Vurt #3" it doesn't seem to have any connection to Vurt or Pollen (his first two books). There was a feather in it but that was about it.

After following her aunt's pet parrot into a grandfather clock, Alice and her doll Celia find themselves in 1998, but not 1998 as it really was. With Celia transformed into the Automated Alice, she and Alice they try to find the twelve missing jigsaw pieces and make it back to 1860 in time for Alice's writing lesson.

This book was a bit of a disappointment. Although the author had caught the Lewis Carroll tone, the wimsey was a bit laboured at times, and the puns over-explained.

It was great that there were so many pictures and that Alice had the traditional 'head too big for her body' look, but the animaI pictures were less successful. The pathologist looked more like a weimeraner than a bloodhound, while Captain Ramshackle looked show more absolutely nothing like a badger. show less

I was really enjoying this book at the beginning. It’s funny! It’s a take on Alice in Wonderland! It has math puns! But the closer I got to the end, the happier I was that I was almost done. When the author (Noon--remember that; it’s important) inserted himself into the story as Mr. Zenith O’Clock, I almost walked away. But it’s a quick read, and fun, but there’s not much plot to hold the wordplay together. A good chilly afternoon read when you’re not up to something strenuous.

Make no mistake people either love or hate this book. Before picking this up, I would highly suggest reading some of Noon's other work ('Vurt' if nothing else) to get an idea of what type of writer Noon is.

I acknowledge that this is probably not Noon's strongest work; but then again, one of the really interesting things about Noon that each one of his novels is really unique in it's structure and execution. Even though many of Noon's works take place in his Vurt/Manchester universe, each book is distintinctly different. Here is the quick and dirty of some of his works: 'Vurt' is written in the cyberpunk genre; 'Pollen' the biopunk police thriller; 'Nymphomation' is frenetic story of students vs. coroporation and moves into show more abstraction/surrealism ala Borges; 'Pixel Juice' is a collection of short stories with entries touching all of Noon's earlier works, 'Automated Alice' is emulation of Lewis Carrol work's and is written in a steampunk genre. The idea is that each book in the Vurt/Manchester universe is written distinctly style and genre from one another. Noon will never is not a serial novelist; indeed, every time he writes, he challenges himself in either the genre he chooses, his writing style, type layout, plot, characters, etc.

People who read 'Automated Alice' are quick to criticism the characters and plot for being overly simplistic. Noon said he wished to write a 'Trequel' to Lewis Carrol's works of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass'. This doesn't mean that Noon just uses Lewis Carrol's characters and slaps them into his own stories. It's a genuine attempt at a Trequel: it is written in the style of Carrol and it's written like a children's story. Yes, there were deeper ideas in 'Alice in Wonderland' but that story was delivered as a children's tale. So criticizing Noon for writing 'Automated Alice' for having simple characters or plot doesn't make sense to me. Like Carrol, he wrote this as a children's story; and having a complex plot/characters was never the point of such a writing.

In the spirit of Lewis Carrol, Noon writes in plenty or word play and surreal absurdities into his little story. Yes, some of the little word plays are really explicit; but again, I advise looking at this in the context of a children's tale. It was written that way intentionally. Noon chooses a neo-victorian setting for most of this book that also holds truer to the original styles of Lewis Carrol. What is really impressive is that Noon even illustrates 'Automated Alice' in the same style that Carrol illustrated 'Alice in Wonderland'.

I thought this book was actually a brilliant execution as a genuine trequel to the works of Lewis Carol. Noon does an excellent job of writing this as a genuine children's adventure while still tying into his own Vurt/Manchester universe. Indeed, most of this story takes place in the Vurt and the events in this story tie back into the background history of 'Vurt', 'Pollen', 'Nymphomation', etc. Again, don't read this expecting to read another novel; it is intentionally written as a children's story. Lastly, I would read a few other books in the 'Vurt' universe before reading this one, just so that the relevance of certain events is clear in the overall history of the 'Vurt'. show less