Virtual Catastrophe: The Ecologically-Oriented Ethics of Jeff Noon’s Pollen

Jeff Noon's “Vurt” novels—Vurt, Pollen, Automated Alice, and

Nymphomation—occupy an unusual niche within the science fiction subgenre of cyberpunk. Typically, cyberpunk texts are set in near-future dystopian worlds, which are dominated by advanced virtual technologies and powerful corporations, and against this backdrop the skilled computer hacker uncovers conspiracies (often for financial profit). While Noon’s “Vurt” novels certainly include these broad aspects of cyberpunk, their execution of this “formula” differs from the typical cyberpunk mould. In these novels, the action is restricted to Manchester rather than the more cyberpunk-esque urban sprawl settings of North America or Japan, their featured “vurt” technology has an organic rather than mechanistic basis, and, furthermore, they are about “looking reality in the face” rather than fleeing the messiness of the material world to the sterile safety of cyberspace.