The ideas for my first novel Vurt were first explored in a theatre play called The Torture Garden.
Nymphomation was a word I invented for that play, to denote the type of artificial information system that can propagate itself. Since the play never found a theatre, and was abandoned, it had become a word in search of a story.
I’d had this idea of doing a third Vurt novel set after the time of Pollen. I’d written about fifty pages of this, abandoned it, and gone on to write Automated Alice. After that was done, I came back to have a look at the story. The only bit that really excited me was this throwaway line about some people in a pub playing this strange National Domino game. I thought, well maybe the novel’s about that subject, about the national game itself. I thought that the game could use the Nymphomation system to propagate itself. This was based on the UK’s National Lottery, of course, and the wave of obsession at the time of its launch.
At the same time, I’d come up with the idea of carrying on Automated Alice’s story, into the future, and the two ideas came together. Nymphomation turned into a novel about the origins of the Vurt feathers, and Alice’s role in that creation. I was doing a reading in Manchester one time, and a woman in the audience asked me what I was working on at the moment, and I told the crowd about this idea of a first Vurt novel. And the woman said, “Oh, you mean it’ll end with the very first line of Vurt?” And I said, “Erm, yeah!” So, it does.
The ideas behind the Nymphomation process were spelled out to me by the SF writer Geoff Ryman. He was interviewing me regarding an earlier book and I mentioned the concept to him. Together we talked about information that could have sex, and what different kinds of offspring would be produced, once information had entered a Darwinian system. The novel rose, itself a subject of the propagation process, out of all these diverse ideas.
Nymphomation was a word I invented for that play, to denote the type of artificial information system that can propagate itself. Since the play never found a theatre, and was abandoned, it had become a word in search of a story.
I’d had this idea of doing a third Vurt novel set after the time of Pollen. I’d written about fifty pages of this, abandoned it, and gone on to write Automated Alice. After that was done, I came back to have a look at the story. The only bit that really excited me was this throwaway line about some people in a pub playing this strange National Domino game. I thought, well maybe the novel’s about that subject, about the national game itself. I thought that the game could use the Nymphomation system to propagate itself. This was based on the UK’s National Lottery, of course, and the wave of obsession at the time of its launch.
At the same time, I’d come up with the idea of carrying on Automated Alice’s story, into the future, and the two ideas came together. Nymphomation turned into a novel about the origins of the Vurt feathers, and Alice’s role in that creation. I was doing a reading in Manchester one time, and a woman in the audience asked me what I was working on at the moment, and I told the crowd about this idea of a first Vurt novel. And the woman said, “Oh, you mean it’ll end with the very first line of Vurt?” And I said, “Erm, yeah!” So, it does.
The ideas behind the Nymphomation process were spelled out to me by the SF writer Geoff Ryman. He was interviewing me regarding an earlier book and I mentioned the concept to him. Together we talked about information that could have sex, and what different kinds of offspring would be produced, once information had entered a Darwinian system. The novel rose, itself a subject of the propagation process, out of all these diverse ideas.
