nymphomation
If you prefer
Neal Stephenson’s Snow crash to his
bestseller Cryptonomicon
you may have a fun time reading through Jeff Noon’s
Nymphomation. In a
‘parallel’ 1999’s Manchester, blurbflies (blurb stands for
Bio-logical-Ultra-Robotic-Broadcasting-System) fill the air chanting
their slogans, especially for _DominoBones_, the new lottery game
which is on a year trial run in Manchester before going National.
A group of mathematics students are searching for the hidden
mysteries behind the game. Their promotor is Prof. Max(imus) Hackle who
has written a series of psychedelic sixties papers in a `journal’
called _Number Gumbo: A Mathemagical Grimoire_ with titles like
“The No-Win Labyrinth: A solution to any such Hackle maze”,
“Maze Dynamics and DNA Codings, a special theory of
Nymphomation” and “Fourth-Dimensional Orgasms and the
Casanova Effect.” He is also keen on using fun-terminology
defining processes happening in the ‘Hackle maze’ and as
such is a bit like John Conway. In fact, Conway’s Game of Life is a lot
like Hackle’s maze. There is some statistics and game
theory in the book but the plot and ending are that of a good Postcyberpunk
novel, that is rather chaotic depending on possible future technological
advanves rather than the logical and unescapable ending of a good
whodunnit. After reading Nymphomation, a fly or a game of dominoes will
never seem quite the same again. Another nice feature are the
non-sensical beginning sentences of every ‘chapter’. To some they seem like the rantings of a mad
mathematician. To me they sound like a tribute to Finnegan’s Wake…