Nymphomation (Paperback)

by Jeff Noon (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Cyberpunk fans will welcome the reprint of Jeff Noon's joyfully received prequel to Vurt, Nymphomation, a conspiracy thriller in which math geniuses Daisy Love and Jazir Malik's fascination with Domino Bones, the seductive new lottery, leads them on a labyrinthine biotech romp fraught with fractal propagation, sinister flying and talking advertisements, futuristic rave culture and murder, artificial intelligence-style.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
The air of Manchester is alive with blurbvurts, automated advertisements chanting their slogans. But the loudest of all is for Domino Bones, the new lottery game. Every Friday night the winning numbers are illuminated on the body of Lady Luck, the voluptuous figurehead of the game. For the winner, it is unimaginable riches, for the losers another week to wait for the bones to fall again. But there is only one real winner, The Company, which plays the city's fragile expectations with callous ease.

A group of mathematics students are looking at the mind-numbing probabilities involved and searching for the hidden mysteries behind the game. They watch the city at work and at dangerous play and slowly uncover the sinister realities behind the mania. The Company is devouring Manchester - it has the nymphomation, an evolutionary process which has the power to take over the city's dreams...

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Product Details

• Paperback: 363 pages
• Publisher: Transworld Pub (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0552144797
• ISBN-13: 978-0552144797
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,344,929 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Double One, February 21, 2000

By	Joyce Ketterer (well, I was in Gramstown South Africa when I read it) - See all my reviews

Jeff Noon is probably one of the most clever and talented word artists in the Sci genere today. I have read several of his books (even a few I had to get off the UK Amazon site) and I am increasingly impressed. That said, Nyphomation is BY FAR my favorite. Not only can this man think and write but he manages to make it all fun. Having read Vurt first it was just a pleasure when I read Nyphomation and learned what exactly Vaz was and who this Hobart person was (Noon is like Hienline that way). If you haven't read it yet then I am jealous of you cause you are really in for a treat.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Science (?) Fiction, November 2, 2005

By	Yoshimura "book lover" (Kobe, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nymphomation (Paperback)

Nymphomation takes place in a dystopic future version of Manchester, England, where the populace is in thrall to strange new lottery based on dominos. It's a bleak place where anything and everything is corporate-sponsored, including the schools and the cops, and the air is filled with bio-mechanical advert bugs called blurbflies. A group of renegade mathematicians and hackers thinks there's something fishy about the whole domino system and especially the so-called jealousy killings of lottery winners, so they decide to try to break the system. Sounds like a good idea, no? But...

I have really mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it has a really great premise, some cool characters, a interesting and well developed backdrop and a writing style which is very modern, flashy, playful and fun to read, but (and this is a very big 'but') it's just not believable. Noon's trying to write science fiction, and he gets the fiction part really down pat, but he totally fumbles on the science, which makes it almost painful to read at times.

There are all kinds of things that are just inexplicable, (or maybe just badly explained), the main one being the blurbflies and their weird reproductive abilities, but all of the computer and hacking stuff seems like it was written by someone who doesn't have clue about computers and sounds almost magical rather than technological.

So I guess I'd have to give it a C. The writing really is quite fun, but the fakey-ness of all the science bits is just too much.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So intense I screamed at the end, July 24, 1999

By	Nora Fussner (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

Nymphomation was an intense reading experience unlike one I've ever had before. Once I realized it was a prequel to Vurt, one of my favorite books, I became even more interested in it. I hate to use cliches, but this book really WAS a non-stop roller coaster ride. It was fast-paced and thrilling, nail-biting and had me "on the edge of my seat."

But seriously - the tension in this book was so high that when I finally finished it - reading the last 200 pages in one long nonstop burst - I screamed to release everything that was pent up inside. If you want a book that will throw you into another world and won't let you out even after the book is closed, read Nymphomation.