About the Writer of Wrongs
| Jeff Noon claims that his
natural talent was to paint. It was whilst studying A Level Art that he
helped found and to appear with Stand and Deliver, a bunch of mad, fellow
students putting on multimedia shows in local bars. Jeff would perform
one-man shows at these events, surreal tragi-comic extravaganzas, done
on a Salvador Dali shoestring. He was also getting involved with various
bands, including experimental punk group Manicured Noise, That's OK, nobody
else has heard of them either. He went on to study Combined Arts (Painting
and Drama) at Manchester University. In his final year he wrote a play
about the aftermath of the Falklands War. |
| This play, "Woundings",
went on to win a Mobil Prize and was performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre
in Manchester, where Jeff was writer-in-residence for eighteen months.
He decided to give up painting and music, and to concentrate purely on
playwriting, working mainly on the local fringe theatre scene. To support
himself during this period he took a job at Waterstone's bookshop in Manchester. |
| It was while he was working
in the bookshop, that one of his ex-colleagues (who had set up a small,
independent publishing company) asked him to have a go at writing a novel.
He did. |
| The result was Vurt, which
won him the Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction in 1994. It is a
ground-breaking epic which also won him cult status with a new generation
of readers who would normally shun science fiction. Pollen came next,
gleaning Noon a comparison to Ed McBain on Acid (Independent on Sunday)
and the accolade Philip K Dick for the Nineties (Mail on Sunday). Automated
Alice was a crazed update of Lewis Carroll (whom Jeff claims as a major
influence) set in present day Manchester. Nymphomation was a skewed prequel
to Vurt, centred around a grotesque lottery competition, and containing
elements from the other great influence on his work, Jorge Luis Borges.
Then Pixel Juice was released and is a collection of fifty avant pulp
stories. Jeff Noon has also won the John W Campbell Award for Best New
Writer. |
| The film version of his
play, Woundings, was released in 1998, and his own theatre remix of Vurt
was performed at the Contact Theatre in 1999 and then
Somewhere the Shadow, as a workshopped script. |
Cobralingus
came out in 2000 and reinvented the dada-ist concept of writing.
www.mappalujo.com is a joint web narrative written with Steve
Beard. |
| Jeff Noon lives in Brighton...but
then you know that bit, don't you? |
Publishing History
Press to return to 'Vurt'
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