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Automated Alice (Vurt #3)

3.59 of 5 stars 3.59 · rating details · 1,219 ratings · 70 reviews

This trequel to "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" follows Alice through a clock's workings, travelling through time, tumbling from the Victorian Age to land in 1998, in Manchester, England. What Alice encounters in the automated future is a series of misadventures, even weirder than your dreams.

Paperback, 256 pages

Published December 1st 2000 by Transworld Publishers (first published 1996)

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Oct 07, 2010 Elliptic Blue rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: cyberpunk, surreal, science, fiction

Make no mistake people either love or hate this book. Before picking this up, I would highly suggest reading some of Noon's other work ('Vurt' if nothing else) to get an idea of what type of writer Noon is. [return][return]I acknowledge that this is probably not Noon's strongest work; but then again, one of the really interesting things about Noon that each one of his novels is really unique in it's structure and execution. Even though many of Noon's works take place in his Vurt/Manchester unive...more Make no mistake people either love or hate this book. Before picking this up, I would highly suggest reading some of Noon's other work ('Vurt' if nothing else) to get an idea of what type of writer Noon is. [return][return]I acknowledge that this is probably not Noon's strongest work; but then again, one of the really interesting things about Noon that each one of his novels is really unique in it's structure and execution. Even though many of Noon's works take place in his Vurt/Manchester universe, each book is distintinctly different. Here is the quick and dirty of some of his works: 'Vurt' is written in the cyberpunk genre; 'Pollen' the biopunk police thriller; 'Nymphomation' is frenetic story of students vs. coroporation and moves into abstraction/surrealism ala Borges; 'Pixel Juice' is a collection of short stories with entries touching all of Noon's earlier works, 'Automated Alice' is emulation of Lewis Carrol work's and is written in a steampunk genre. The idea is that each book in the Vurt/Manchester universe is written distinctly style and genre from one another. Noon will never is not a serial novelist; indeed, every time he writes, he challenges himself in either the genre he chooses, his writing style, type layout, plot, characters, etc. [return][return]People who read 'Automated Alice' are quick to criticism the characters and plot for being overly simplistic. Noon said he wished to write a 'Trequel' to Lewis Carrol's works of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass'. This doesn't mean that Noon just uses Lewis Carrol's characters and slaps them into his own stories. It's a genuine attempt at a Trequel: it is written in the style of Carrol and it's written like a children's story. Yes, there were deeper ideas in 'Alice in Wonderland' but that story was delivered as a children's tale. So criticizing Noon for writing 'Automated Alice' for having simple characters or plot doesn't make sense to me. Like Carrol, he wrote this as a children's story; and having a complex plot/characters was never the point of such a writing. [return][return]In the spirit of Lewis Carrol, Noon writes in plenty or word play and surreal absurdities into his little story. Yes, some of the little word plays are really explicit; but again, I advise looking at this in the context of a children's tale. It was written that way intentionally. Noon chooses a neo-victorian setting for most of this book that also holds truer to the original styles of Lewis Carrol. What is really impressive is that Noon even illustrates 'Automated Alice' in the same style that Carrol illustrated 'Alice in Wonderland'. [return][return]I thought this book was actually a brilliant execution as a genuine trequel to the works of Lewis Carol. Noon does an excellent job of writing this as a genuine children's adventure while still tying into his own Vurt/Manchester universe. Indeed, most of this story takes place in the Vurt and the events in this story tie back into the background history of 'Vurt', 'Pollen', 'Nymphomation', etc. Again, don't read this expecting to read another novel; it is intentionally written as a children's story. Lastly, I would read a few other books in the 'Vurt' universe before reading this one, just so that the relevance of certain events is clear in the overall history of the 'Vurt'.(less)

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Jun 04, 2009 Lola rated it 2 of 5 stars

Oh, dear! Alice, (the same little girl we have grown to know through Lewis Carroll’s ‘Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’) while visiting her Great Aunt Ermitrude, has managed to set loose her aunt’s prized parrot, Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill, being the smart little bird that he is, flees his cage and flies directly up into a grandfather clock, ending up in the future! Alice follows suit and finds herself in the hybrid land of 1998, where humans have been morphed with anima...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Nicholas Barone rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Most sources cite Automated Alice as the third novel in Jeff Noon's Vurt series, but this is only true in the most tangential sense. The book is really a sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books. In the story, Alice crawls into her Aunt's grandfather clock and finds herself transported to Manchester, England in the year 1998. This Manchester does share some similarities with the Manchester of Vurt and Pollen, but it is clearly not the same Manchester. If you read this book with the ex...more

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Jul 20, 2012 Eustachio rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: britannici, romanzi

È il primo libro a tema Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie che mi soddisfa.
Nello stile Noon si rifà a Carroll, ma aggiunge anche del suo. Se da una parte ci sono indovinelli, giochi di parole e riferimenti all'opera originaria, dall'altra ci sono anche diversi riferimenti culturali moderni nonché agli altri libri dell'autore e una trama che lega tutto e dà un senso anche al nonsenso.

Se dovessi giudicare lo svolgimento della storia forse non sarei così entusiasta: Alice viaggia nel tempo attraverso...more È il primo libro a tema Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie che mi soddisfa.
Nello stile Noon si rifà a Carroll, ma aggiunge anche del suo. Se da una parte ci sono indovinelli, giochi di parole e riferimenti all'opera originaria, dall'altra ci sono anche diversi riferimenti culturali moderni nonché agli altri libri dell'autore e una trama che lega tutto e dà un senso anche al nonsenso.

Se dovessi giudicare lo svolgimento della storia forse non sarei così entusiasta: Alice viaggia nel tempo attraverso un pendolo e finisce nella Manchester del 1998. Nel futuro le persone sono affette da Newmonia, una malattia che li rende ibridi di animali. Inoltre c'è un misterioso Jigsaw Murderer, un assassino che uccide le sue vittime facendone dei puzzle. Sulle vittime ci sono dei pezzi di puzzle, lo stesso che Alice stava facendo a Manchester nel passato: per tornare indietro nel passato in tempo per la lezione di scrittura delle due Alice deve ritrovare tutti i pezzi mancanti, ma anche fuggire dai Civil Serpent che la accusano di essere implicata negli omicidi insieme a Captain Ramshackle, un uomo-tasso e Randomologist.
Chi si nasconde dietro i Jigsaw Murder? Qual è l'origine della Newmonia? Riuscirà Alice a trovare tutti i pezzi mancanti e a tornare indietro nel tempo?

Il problema è che arrivati a un certo punto il dover ritrovare i pezzi del puzzle sa di missione da videogioco — tra l'altro una missione facile visto che è una fiaba e i pezzi sono in bella vista —, cosa che se non ho un joystick in mano trovo sempre noiosa. Lo schema diventa quasi ripetitivo: Alice è in pericolo, riesce a fuggire all'ultimo secondo e si trova in un nuovo posto dove trova un pezzo di puzzle, rimane lì finché i Civil Serpent o i poliziotti non le sono alle calcagna e deve fuggire di nuovo. L'effetto videogioco misto al conto alla rovescia (entro le due Alice deve tornare nel passato!) acuisce anche la sensazione che tutto debba risolversi a ogni costo, proprio da fiaba.

Se non altro le situazioni in cui Alice si ritrova sono sempre originali e fantasiose. Senza anticipare troppo sulla trama, mi è piaciuto il personaggio di Celia, il modo in cui si ricollega il "trequel" con l'Alice originaria e con l'origine di Alice stessa, il fatto che gli indovinelli del pappagallo Whippoorwill (il novello Bianconiglio) non siano fini a se stessi ma facciano da indizi, i risvolti metanarrativi, alcune trovate che non nomino per non rovinare la sorpresa a nessuno e l'elemento Vurt (il primo romanzo di Noon, con cui Alice pare condividere l'ambientazione — mi ha messo abbastanza curiosità, penso proprio che lo leggerò tra un po').
Ciliegina sulla torta: i giochi di parole, che per un aspirante traduttore sono una fonte continua di "Vorrei proprio cimentarmi con la traduzione, sarebbe una bella sfida" (se non fosse che l'hanno già tradotto).(less)

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Apr 12, 2013 Robert Day rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An allegorical tale about the power of imagination... with ellipses.

Life and daydreams merge; the far past meets one of the futures, and beautiful things ensue.

Alice is one of two and part of a cast of dozens, and the words twist and turn like spaghetti, which creates the disconcerting of living inside someones stream of consciousness, yet such is the author's skill that the meaning is never lost and the flow is always smooth, and we arrive at our destination, which is pretty much exactly where...more

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Aug 26, 2008 Anson rated it 1 of 5 stars

Jeff Noon re-used Lewis Carroll's old teabags, and created a weakened, milder, less flavorful sequel to the Alice books. I saw a college theater production of "Alice in Wonderland" at the Fringe while reading this book, and (while that piece had troubles of its own) it drove home the contrast between the violent and disturbing nonsense of the original and the less interesting nonsense of the imitation.

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Oct 01, 2012 Rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Eek. I saw this at the library when I checked out Vurt for re-reading, and specifically did not get it because it looked like it was going to be some sort of Alice in Wonderland derivative. Later, I read somewhere that it was a sort-of prequel to Vurt, taking place in the Vurt universe. Because I like the writing style in Vurt, I gave it the benefit of the doubt-- which was a mistake. The entire book was a re-imagined Alice in Wonderland, even imitating Lewis Carroll's writing style. It was pain...more

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Mar 10, 2012 James rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, 2012-sci-fi-challenge

As someone who has loved Lewis Carroll's Alice stories since he was a very young boy I must say that I found Jeff Noon's amusing novel, Automated Alice both clever and funny, very funny. The whimsy begins with computermites and seems to be infinite before the book is over.
Poor Alice is alone, bored, and sleepy in her Great Aunt Ermintrude's house in rainy Manchester, but she is quickly swept away into another world as she follows Whippoorwill, "a green-and-yellow-plumed parrot with a bright ora...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Leah rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, endured

I was really excited about this book, because I have always been a fan of the Alice books, and the first couple of pages were very promising, as was the poem at the beginning.
But it reads a little too much like a YA book (where the actual Alice books don't, of course, because there was no such thing when Carroll wrote them), and behaves a little too much like 'nudge-nudge wink-wink aren't we all so clever for understanding the pop-culture references' between author and reader. The cutesy charact...more

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Apr 02, 2010 William Parham rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who is a fan of both Lewis Carrol and Jeff Noon. Fans of either alone may be disappointed.

Shelves: 2010, childrens, cyberpunk, sci-fi

Not a terribly great book, but definitely a fun book. Jeff Noon does a passable (in the first half of the book) to a nearly non existent (by the end) impression of Lewis Carrol. The word play and portmanteau techniques of his previous two books come to the fore in Automated Alice. I think that Jeff Noon's vocabulary works very well in the context of 'Children's Literature'. Not that this book is exactly a kids book. It does have a series of murders as its main plot device. The plot is unfortunat...more

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Mar 04, 2011 Alejandra rated it 5 of 5 stars

I tend to give 5 stars to books I just finished with a smile, then edit them once more with 4 to not seem overenthusiastic, which I may be at times. As I'm typing this, it's a 5.
I really, really enjoyed Automated Alice as a fun literary experiment (this is the first book I read by Jeff Noon).
Though some (actually, most) of the present-time references are extremely cheesy, I suspect Noon did this totally on purpose. It's not as much a sci-fi twist on an [im]possible treacle trequel of the Alice...more

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Aug 30, 2011 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: elementary-age

I've been wanting to read this book for like 10 years or so. I haven't read anything else by Noon and didn't really have any expectations for the book except that it was like Alice in Wonderland. But in the future. With robots.

Overall I was disappointed by the book. The way it was written stayed way too close to the original tale. The plot references to the original story were incredibly overt, like hitting someone in the arm and going LOOK, I MADE A JOKE instead of being clever about it. The pl...more

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Apr 21, 2009 Samantha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Alice fans; Steampunk or cyberpunk readers

Automated Alice by Jeff Noon is a book I found when Googling "Steampunk fiction" last month. The book is meant to be a trequel (not treacle!) in the Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass series, in which Alice has another adventure, into the future.

While staying with her Aunt and Uncle in Manchester, Alice, bored with her jigsaw puzzle and dreading her impending English lesson on ellipses, releases her Aunt's parrot from his cage. The naughty bird flies up into the grandfather clock...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Medbie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Alice, of Wonderland fame, is visiting her Great Aunt Ermintrude and very unwisely lets her parrot, Whippoorwill, out of his cage. Whippoorwill flies into the grandfather clock, and Alice (dragging her doll Celia with her) climbs in after him but ends up in the future--1998 to be exact. The future is populated by people that are mixed breeds of animal and human, and is ruled by the frightening Civil Serpents. To return to her own time, Alice (and her now automated doll, Celia), must find Whippoo...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Chloé added it · review of another edition

Not as good as Vurt, but a bit of fun. The illustrations were good, as were the playing on words and subvUrting of language (get it?!). His references to other books (e.g. Fooligans Wake, Vurt and Pollen) in the text and in the illustrations were rather amusing. The device of the narrator talking to the reader worked at times, but could become a bit tedious. It will probably be handy to have read this when reading Noon's other novels, as I know Lewis Carroll's works had a big influence on him.

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Nov 29, 2012 Kimbilirki rated it 4 of 5 stars

First of all, I think it's unfair to compare this to Lewis'in Carroll's Alice. This may be written like a sequel but it's been written in a completely diffrent era.
This book is very good, if you liked the other Alice books you will like this too (unless you are a nostalgia lover). I read this book's translation to Turkish but even in translation I was amazed by the great language games.
If you are looking for something to read you can read this, it was fine.

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Jul 28, 2009 Fizzgig76 rated it 3 of 5 stars

Alice goes into the clock to catch her Grant Aunt Ermitrude's bird Whippoorwill and ends up in the future hunting a jigsaw killer. The book is presented as if Lewis Carroll wrote it, but then it acts as if it a man in the 1960s writing his perception of 1998, but then it could be that he's an invention of Carroll also. The writing style is close to Carroll's but the story goes on a bit too long and the winding "what is reality" could have been taken even farther.

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Jun 16, 2012 Susan Rose rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, adaptations-parodies-sequels, my-alice-obsession

This is Alice in Wonderland with a bit of scifi thrown in which could be an absolute disaster but its really well written.

Jeff noon has captured the questioning humourous tone and like the original two books its plot is just a random set of occurances strung together by a overall thread. He also loves puns and they are numerous throughout the book I personally think that this silly humour is really inkeeping, but it may not be for everyone.

This is quite a short book with small chapters which m...more

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Dec 16, 2008 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

A humorous story about Alice traveling to the future with a parrot and a doll and trying to get back to her aunt's house before her 2pm lesson. There are some fantastically horrible puns in the beginning of the book that I had a great time reading, but the story gets less amusing from there.

An interesting read, but if you really love Alice in Wonderland you're probably going to be happier rereading the original stories.

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Dec 03, 2011 Isabel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After following her aunt's pet parrot into a grandfather clock, Alice and her doll Celia find themselves in 1998, but not 1998 as it really was. With Celia transformed into the Automated Alice, she and Alice they try to find the twelve missing jigsaw pieces and make it back to 1860 in time for Alice's writing lesson.

This book was a bit of a disappointment. Although the author had caught the Lewis Carroll tone, the wimsey was a bit laboured at times, and the puns over-explained.

It was great that...more

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Oct 31, 2009 Ed Erwin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Alice takes another trip. She meets characters every bit as bizarre as in her first two trips. Jeff Noon gets the character of Alice just right, she sounds just the same as always, and he never forgets she is an 8-year old. The wordplay is almost as much fun, but the whimsy isn't quite as whimsical and the non-sense isn't quite as non-sensical. Wisely, he gives us less than half as many poems as Lewis Carrol, which is good because his poems are less than half as good. But overall a quick, fun re...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Shiv rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a huge fan of Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland and the opportunity to read something that contains the same absurdly random humour with a sci-fi twist was too good to miss. As others have mentioned, Automated Alice reads more like YA (Young Adult) fiction than anything else and to call it cyberpunk is stretching the definition somewhat. However the bizarre humour, fun wordplay, and collection of unusual characters made this a thoroughly entertaining read - one which I am fairly certain I...more

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Sep 16, 2009 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Definitely not as good as Lewis Carrol, not even a little bit. However, it was a good attempt. This book takes you on a rollercoaster of events with tons of riddles and endless questions. I don't think it's absolutely amazing, but it's not as bad as most people make it out to be.

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Jul 09, 2010 Jen3n rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, fantasy

I didn't like it much, I can tell you that for free. I liked the writing style well enough, but as to the rest: plot, characters, theme, pacing, dialog.... not so much. I was torn the whole time between a feeling of "who cares/so what" and "what?"

I am unaccustomed to feeling stupid. But this book made me feel like I was missing the point. The author was described to me as some earth-changing genius, and this book seemed to wander aimlessly and not go anywhere. So I assume I am just stupid and di...more

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Mar 09, 2010 Bampi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ok, I suppose. When a book is described as the author's version of Alice in Wonderland I would expect it to live up to big expectations. To be fair, I think with his previous novels, that this could've been better!

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Oct 07, 2012 Andrzej rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great reading and fantastic word-play that grips one's imagination from the very start. The librarinth part is simply mind-blowing (though I don't really think anything is simple in this one). Metafiction at it's best and a must read for all Alice-lovers.

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Dec 20, 2011 Terri Light rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one I would like to revisit. I enjoyed Vurt and Pollen but after reading the Jasper Fforde Tuesday Next series, I would love to compare and contrast this other alternate hyper-reality.

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Aug 28, 2012 Gavin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

My favourite book by Noon. Captures the essence and the voice of Carroll and does something very strange with it.

... I must find my copy and fall down the rabbit hole again.

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May 27, 2012 Holly Rayl rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: alice, steam-punk, science-fiction

Slightly steampunk and set in the future of 1998, Jeff Noon's voice doesn't quite capture Lewis Carroll's charm in this Alice mock sequel. Wit and puns are still abound, however.

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Nov 21, 2010 Mathew Cable rated it 5 of 5 stars

A fun, very whimsical read. I really enjoyed this book. It has a very Carroll feeling to the language, and an entertaining story with an interesting ending.

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About Jeff Noon

Jeff Noon is a novelist, short story writer and playwright whose works make extensive use of wordplay and fantasy.

He studied fine art and drama at Manchester University and was subsequently appointed writer in residence at the city's Royal Exchange theatre. But Noon did not stay too long in the theatrical world, possibly because the realism associated with the theatre was not conducive to the fant

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Automated Alice (Vurt #3)

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