SOURCE: "Feather Underground," in VLS. No. 132, February, 1995, p. 14.

[In the following highly favorable review, Gehr offers a stylistic and thematic discussion of Vurt.]

Right away I found myself describing Vurt to interested parties as—ahem—"the Neuromancer of psychedelics," knowing full well I was probably doing both of these socalled science fiction novels a virtual disservice. There would be no Vurt without Neuromancer, of course—just as there would be no Neuromancer without The Crying of Lot 49 or Goldfinger. Like William Gibson's genrewarping cyberpunk howdy, Jeff Noon's debut novel comes nearly out of nowhere. A millennial fairy tale as entertaining as Gibson's wild ride through popular science, Vurt offers an equally mutant vision of consciousness-expanding technology. With its mean Manchester streets and twisted ontology, call it A Clockwork Orange meets Alice in Wonderland.

You could also read Vurt as a literary remix of cyberpunk—a dub version as...