re:mote voices

Title: Nymphomation
Author: Jeff Noon
Publisher:Black Swan

it is 1999 and the city of manchester has been chosen for a year long trial of a new lottery game. the game is put forward as a version of dominoes - players buying a domino which goes through random pattern changes all week long. on the friday night there is the big televised "draw", where cookie luck does her luck dance with the chosen domino appearing on her dress. all the dominoes that were bought all week now stop on their final pattern. the person gets the same domino as cookie wins a million punies, those that get a half domino win a 100 punies.

manchester has been going mad for the game, it is incredibly popular. the blurbverts see to that, bio-organic advert that flies round the city shouting the domino companies slogans, primarily "play to win". however the increasing corporate presence, the swarming blurbflies and the jealous killings are starting to make some people uneasy about the nature of the game.

as noon works through game by game we are introduced to the cast of characters. daisy a young student, studying maths at manchester university. she lives above the golden samosa, a curry house, which brings her into contact with jazir, son of the owner and a keen hacker. meanwhile there is the trio of sweet benny, DJ dopejack and their mentor joe - the three involved in black math rituals. then there is celia, a teen run away, living with the homeless, until they realise that she seems to be just a bit too lucky with the dominoes. before she knows it everyone is after her for her winnings.

the characters all seem to have seperate story lines. but as noon turns manchester upside down and delivers it to madness he ties the stories together. reveals the links to a mysterious math teacher and the pupils who became brilliant and are at the core of everything. professor hackle who has written on nymphomation and math theories which are the basis for the dominoes. the man who brought the trio of dark fractals together for their math rituals, the tutor to daisy, who was in that same class with daisy's father.

the pieces of nymphomation fall into place as noon builds up momentum. but those familiar with his other work, like vurt and pollen will also see the clues that connect the three togehter. vurt was the first of noon's vurt-punk, his dream-punk works, sequeled by the equally elusive pollen. with nymphomation we suddenly have the instigation, all the factos that made vurt happen are telegrpahed through the matings of nymphomation.

on the whole i enjoyed both vurt and pollen after an initial disappointment with automated alice. however for me at least, nympomation is the one that really does it, enough hooks into reality to make it something that can be related to, and enough steps into the flipside, the dream engine that it messes with the head.