Series

Nova Trilogy

William S. Burroughs · 3 novels · 1961–1964

More like this

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

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

Similar series

A Clockwork Orange

Similar by: surveillance · our world · challenging

Cities of the Red Night

Similar by: challenging · literary & general · nonlinear narrative

Brave New World

Similar by: science fiction

Twilight Zone Collections

Similar by: our world · mid 20th century · science fiction

Library of America P. K. Dick Collection

Similar by: science fiction

The Fourth Realm

Similar by: our world · surveillance · dark

Dayworld

Similar by: our world · science fiction · identity

A Song Called Youth / Eclipse

Similar by: our world · surveillance · dark

Colossus (D. F. Jones)

Similar by: our world · science fiction

VALIS

Similar by: challenging · science fiction · identity

The Triffids

Similar by: our world · dark · science fiction