I first read Vurt a long time ago – before I was keeping accurate records on my website even for my reading list. This was 100% in my cyberpunk era when I was looking for anything to fill the hole finishing Neuromancer left in my hungry teenaged brain.
Vurt fits the bill with equal levels of grimy future virtual environments (although with a more mystical tinge in shared dreaming via ingesting feathers 🪶) but honestly on the re-read part of what I appreciated was how much Noon doesn’t explain. In this relatively near future there are robo, dog, vurt and shadow people alongside the (somewhat maligned?) pure humans. And they all cross-breed. Why did this happen? Literally no exposition on history in the novel. You’re just dropped in, told the shape of the world, and we’re off.
Noon’s prose is bold, precise where it needs to be, sloppy where it fits, and never slows down the whole book. It’s unsurprising reading this the experimental background he came from (more theater than fiction) and how much his later books get even weirder if you can believe it.
While not everyone’s cup of tea for sure, it’s cult classic status in the sci-fi realm is well earned and I’m glad I came back to it.