Pollen
The sweet death of Coyote, master taxi driver, was only the first. Soon people are sneezing and dying all over Manchester. Telekinetic cop Sybil Jones knows that, like Coyote, they died happy - but even a happy death can be a murder. As exotic blooms begin to flower all over the city, the pollen count is racing towards 2000 and Sybil is running out of time.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
5mentions
5people
2007–2025years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I have bookmarked this for later mainly because the story was written by Jeff Noon. He wrote some of my favourite books ever (Vurt, Pollen, Automated Alice amongst others) although he went in a very different direction later in his career with Cobralingus, Falling out of Cars and Needle in the Groove. I am looking forward to watching this.
- I recently tried to make a list of good virtual reality reads (not all of them cyberpunk, though):
Otherland - Tad Williams
Ready Player One
Daemon - David Suarez
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Shadowrun - ?? there are lots of possibly varying quality, I only read the ones by Nigel Findley which I liked
Snowcrash - Stephenson
Reamde - Stephenson
Der falsche Spiegel - Sergej Lukianenko (not sure about the english name)
Masters of Doom - Story of ID developing the games Doom and Quake - not really a VR story, but it sets the mood.
Pollen - Jeff Noon
Bruce Sterling is great, too, but I don't remember which of his stories are about virtual reality.
I suppose Ian Bank's "The Culture" novels might be a candidate, but I haven't read them yet.
- I think Haruki Murakami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_murakami) is one of the most interesting and weird contemporary novelists alive today. On a similar Japanese tip, also check out anything by Kobo Abe, particularly The Woman in the Dunes and The Box Man.
If you're into sci-fi, as inevitably a lot of hackers are, Jeff Noon's Vurt and Pollen are both brilliant.
- Some more SF/Fantasy yarns:
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons - 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear and all the other Zamonien books (only know german version) - Pollen by Jeff Noon - Otherland by Tad Williams - Ubik by PK Dick
- > we'd be going to the tangi at our marae in Herekino. Uncle Ted and my cousin Nate picked me up in his silver Holden Rodeo ute
Been some time since reading Jeff Noon's Pollen, or somewhere words pull to a familiar new.
