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Angry Robot to publish 30th anniversary edition of Noon’s ‘cult classic’
Angry Robot Books will publish a 30th anniversary edition of the “seminal” science-fiction novel Vurt from Jeff Noon with a foreword from author Adam Roberts.
Editors Eleanor Teasdale and Simon Spanton acquired world English and audio rights from Michelle Kass at Michelle Kass Associates. The new edition will be published on 10th October 2023.
“Jeff broke the mould 30 years ago with his glorious wordsmithery, voice and imagination and is still breaking it now. I’m thrilled about this anniversary edition and excited for next year’s new novel,” commented Kass.
Originally published in October 1993, Vurt is a “cyberpunk novel with a difference, both groundbreaking and hugely entertaining”. Set in a near future psychedelic Manchester following Scribble and his gang, the novel is a “kaleidoscopic story of love, family and surrealist adventure”. Roberts said: “The word ‘extraordinary’ has lost some of its force these days, but Vurt is extraordinary in the fullest sense of the word: resolutely, brilliantly beyond the ordinary, a wonderful, mind-altering and vibrant unpicking of what ‘ordinariness’ means.”
Noon won the Arthur C Clarke Award for Vurt in 1994 and has also written The Body Library (Watkins), which was nominated for the Philip K Dick Award. He commented: “I’m always amazed that the story of Scribble, Beetle, Bridget and the rest of the Stash Riders still resonates with people, after all these years. A writer can’t ask anything more of a début novel. Angry Robot have supported me so well in the later years of my career so it’s amazing to have them now go back in time, to bring Vurt to a new generation of readers.”
Spanton added: “I’d not long been an editor when Vurt first came out. Publishing was very different then and so was SF. But Vurt feels as original now as it did when it arrived in 1993. It won the Arthur C Clarke that year and it has been an unruly and inspiring influence ever since: always entertaining, it refuses to be tied down or corralled into this or that sub-category of SF and the genre always needs books like that.”
Teasdale said: “Vurt is an absolutely iconic book in the history of SF. I am so thrilled that it is now in house with Angry Robot alongside stacks of other brilliant SF writing. We are proud to be Jeff’s publishers and to mark the 30th anniversary of this special book with this edition is the icing on the cake.”
