Among the three novels that were formed from the material remaining in William Burroughs's "Word Hoard" after the completion of Naked Lunch, Nova Express is the most didactic, emphasizing an explanatory mode instead of a dramatic one. The three books constitute a trilogy of sorts (the French critic Philippe Mikriammos calls them "a false trilogy") which Burroughs said he wanted to be the ground work for "a new mythology for the space age."

Explaining what he meant, Burroughs defined freedom from past conditioning is "to be in space," and the thrust of the book is toward achieving this freedom. Set against this quest are the "powerful instruments of control" which Burroughs has always regarded as the principle enemy of human society. In Nova Express, he has taken the struggle against the forces of control to the edge of the contemporary world and beyond into an extension...