Series
Nova Trilogy
William S. Burroughs · 3 novels · 1961–1964
William S. Burroughs's Nova Trilogy -- The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express -- extends the fragmented cut-up and fold-in techniques he developed with Brion Gysin into a paranoid, hallucinatory sequence about control itself. Across the three books, the shadowy Nova Mob, personified as viral, parasitic forces of language and image, is opposed by an equally strange Nova Police, in an allegory for how societies are manipulated through media and addiction. It continues directly from the world and method of Naked Lunch rather than telling a conventional linear story.
Summary by Loreful, from public sources
The order the books came out.
Best read in the order they were published.
Map
Nova Trilogy at the centre, its books fanned around what holds them. Pick anything for its details, and zoom out for similar series in orbit — the reading order above lists the same books as text.
Stats
By decade
- 1960s3
Shape
3 novels
1 author · completed series
reads like:literary & generalsurveillanceour worldmid 20th centurychallengingadult
Mood
Grim and intense: 100% of this series' placed works, the catalog's 46%.
this series · the catalog · one dot = one book3 of 3 works carry a tone
Edges of the map
- Nova Expressdarkest
- The Soft Machinebrightest · most intense
- The Ticket That Explodedcalmest


