- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Nov 1 1995)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1857023986
- ISBN-13: 978-1857023985
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #381,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
If you like challenging science fiction, then Jeff Noon is the author for you.
Pollen is the sequel to Vurt (winner of the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke award), and both are concerned with a world in which dreams, drug-induced hallucination, and reality become completely intermingled. In this volume, the dream world unleashes a pollen that threatens to cause people in the real world to sneeze to death.
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 you would like a more accessible approach to Jeff Noon's richly imagined world, I recommend Automated Alice, a modern recasting of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Again Noon plunges us into the psychedelic, near-future Manchester of his first novel, Vurt. In this city peopled by mutant crossbreeds (robodogs, dogboys, zombies), the barriers between reality and the Vurt?a kind of shared dreamworld accessed by tasting Vurt feathers?have been growing increasingly porous. It's now 15 years after the events of the first novel, and the denizens of the Vurt are engaged in a plot to invade the real world, starting by infecting the Manchester air with virtual pollen. Drifts of these yellow allergens fill the streets, causing a wave of death by sneezing. Only the "Dodos," unable to access the Vurt because they don't dream, remain immune. One of them is the cab driver Boda, who begins by searching for the killer of her dogboy boyfriend, Coyote, and ends up confronting the leader of the invasion in his lair. Another Dodo is Boda's estranged mother, the shadowcop Sybil Jones, who narrates the novel in the present tense. Jones, who suspects that her police bosses are in league with the invaders, defies orders in an attempt to thwart the conspiracy. Noon brings to this sequel the same imaginative flair and gift for wildly mixed imagery that enlivened Vurt. In the book's latter half, however, the narrative threads start slipping through his fingers, just as they did in that novel. The properties of the Vurt and the pollen become ever more vague, while the author's use of hackneyed SF devices and plot elements becomes ever more distracting. Ultimately, Noon's B-novel plotting ends up muffling his colorful, quirky voice; while this book confirms his talent, he has a way to go before he gets it fully under control.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
No Vurt but Nothing to Sneeze At Either!,
By
This review is from: Pollen (Hardcover)
I would have hated to have been Jeff Noon confronted with the task of following-up Vurt. How do you write a book that'll grab the interest of the legions of fans you found with Vurt but not rehash the Vurt story? Pollen is the answer. Set again in Manchester (now on my must-see list when I next travel to Britain, solely due to Noon's novels), Pollen tells a strange, seductive tale of genetic engineering gone very awry, where man, dog and plant all begin to merge and ghost-cops chase and dead things hitch rides in netherzones and it all makes wonderful nonsense. Noon is really the Lewis Carroll of our time--and for that reason alone, he is very worth reading. Vurt first, then Pollen, then Needle in the Groove. A trip very worth taking.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pollen: Jeff Noon's Idea Farm,
By
This review is from: Pollen (Hardcover)
Jeff Noon's Pollen is an idea farm waiting for harvest. It begins with the energy and promise of Vurt, but never commits to the story it started. It progresses by layering every possible scenario up to the last minute, cramming ideas into the final third that are never explored to their potential. Jeff Noon writes his books on a continuum, each referencing the others and the author in a witty entanglement. Unfortunately, at times, Noon's style of weaving references convolutes and denies the story it's climax. Pollen is a fair read and full of interesting ideas each awaiting its own novel. For now, Noon's other books execute his ideas more aptly. Still, a wild, fun read and for Jeff Noon fans a necessary, sometimes tedious one.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Take My Flower,
By Christi (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Pollen (Hardcover)
Although I know this is not the popular opinion, I found "Pollen" to be a better book than "Vurt". In fact, I was so deeply affected by what I was reading that I developed ( quite probably psychosomatically) a massive sinus infection while reading this spectacular sci-fi novel.Jeff Noon's style is so original and smart, that I am tempted to call him a genuis. He was able to take the same futuristic, perverted, cross-breed world that he created for "Vurt" ( a shocking, absorbing novel in it's own right) and apply it to "Pollen" with and entirely different perspective and story line. I very much enjoyed the heavy-handed literary reference to the goddess Persephone. I also liked the more natural, Earthy approach to "Pollen" vs. the obvious Urban Decay theme in "Vurt".
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