The Nova Trilogy, The Nova Epic or The Cut-up Trilogy is a name commonly given by critics to a series of three experimental prose novels by William S. Burroughs. These novels, like the "prequel" Naked Lunch derive from The Word Hoard, a number of manuscripts Burroughs wrote in Tangier, Paris and London between 1953 and 1958. Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe; title page of 1719 newspaper edition A novel (from French nouvelle, new) is an extended fictional narrative in prose. ... William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, essayist, social critic and spoken word performer. ... This 1969 British edition by Corgi Books features a stylized image of William S. Burroughs, and is one of the few later editions to include the word The in the title. ... The Word Hoard also known as the trunk manuscripts was a large body of text (circa 1000 typewriter pages) produced by author William S. Burroughs between roughly 1953 and 1958. ... Tangier, Morocco Tangier (Tanja طنچة in Berber and Arabic, Tánger in Spanish, and Tanger in French), is a city of northern Morocco with a population of 669,685 (2004 census). ... The Eiffel Tower, the international symbol of the city, with the skyscrapers of La Défense business district 3 miles behind. ... This article is about the British city. ... 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1953 calendar). ... 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

All three novels use the cut-up and fold-in technique that Burroughs invented in cooperation with artist Brion Gysin. The cut-up technique is a literary form or method in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text. ... Brion Gysin (January 19, 1916 - July 13, 1986) was a writer and painter. ...

The novels in this trilogy are:

• The Soft Machine (1961)
• Nova Express (1964)
• The Ticket That Exploded (1962)

It is commonly assumed that the trilogy is chronologially placed in this sequence, however it is a matter of definitions or even taste as to which order they should actually be read or if it even matters. The time of writing or publishing is a bad guideline: all three novels derive from the same body of text to lesser or greater extent, and Burroughs continuously revised The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded after their first publication. Only Nova Express is untouched since first publication. Further, Burroughs use two techniques known as flash back and flash forward to fold in elements from later narrative into earlier narrative, and vice versa, making all events of the novels fall in all three books. The Soft Machine is the title of a novel by William S. Burroughs, first published in 1961 and was Burroughs first novel after the grandbreaking publication of Naked Lunch. ... 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ... Nova Express is a 1964 novel by William Burroughs, whose plot cannot easily be described. ... For the Nintendo 64 emulator, see 1964 (Emulator). ... The Ticket That Exploded is a novel by William S. Burroughs published in 1962. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar). ...

Plot

The trilogy is, because of its style, hard to decode or pin down in simple terms. This effect was probably also the intention of the author: one of the most prominent themes of the books is that language is literally a dangerous virus which must be battled with guerilla tactics involving delinearization of text as is exemplified by the cut-up and fold-in techniques. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) A bacteriophage virus A virus is a submicroscopic parasitic particle that infects cells in biological organisms. ...

The main story however quite clearly involves the view of a language virus as the source of several control mechanisms that keep humanity on this planet enslaved. The virus has several distinct personalities or attack paths which correspond to different persona of the Nova Mob. The virus/Mob is extraterrestrial and came to our world from the Crab Nebula which was the result of a supernova that occurred due to the Mob activities. Their first stop was however the planet Venus from where they attack Earth. Messier Object 1, the Crab Nebula. ... Multiwavelength X-ray image of the remnant of Keplers Supernova, SN 1604. ... Adjective Venusian or (rarely) Cytherean (*min temperature refers to cloud tops only) Atmospheric characteristics Atmospheric pressure 9. ...

The goal of the Mob is to create so much conflict on earth that it will eventually explode in a supernova. This goal is close for the Mob when an intergalactical counterforce known as the Nova Police arrives. The Mob has actually been framed by one of its members: Izzy The Push. The Nova Police team up with other freedom fighters on Earth such as Hassan-i-Sabah and start fighting back. Artistic Rendering of Hassan-i-Sabbah Hassan-i Sabbah, modern Persian Hæsæn-e Sæbba (Persian: بن صباح or حسن صباح) (circa 1034 - 1124), also known as The Old Man of the Mountain (Arabic: شيخ الجبل), was an Iranian Ismāīlī Nizarī missionary who converted a community in the late 11th century in the...

The end of The Ticket That Exploded can be interpreted in two ways: either the Mob succeeds in creating a supernova of our planet, or they fail and get busted by the Nova Police, who destroys the language virus and replace it with total silence. Perhaps this is one and the same thing: both sides win.

Recurring themes

The basic idea of language as a virus has been widely used and quoted from several of Burroughs' interviews. His own detailed account of this idea appears in the essay The Electronic Revolution: In the Electronic Revolution I advance the theory that a virus is a very small unit of word and image [...] My basis theory is that the written word was literally a virus [...] The word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis...

I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came after the written word. (...) we may forget that a written word is an image and that written words are images in sequence that is to say moving pictures. (...) My basis theory is that the written word was literally a virus that made the spoken word possible. Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz has put forward an interesting theory as to the origins and history of this word virus. He postulates that the word was a virus of what he calls biologic mutation effecting a biologic change in its host which was then genetically conveyed. One reason that apes cannot talk is because the structure of their inner throats is simply not designed to formulate words. He postulates that alteration in inner throat structure were occasioned by a virus illness ....

— William S. Burroughs, 'The Electronic Revolution'

(The referred German Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz does not exist in reality and is another of Burroughs' inventions, possibly a word-play on the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.) Hans Urs von Balthasar (August 12, 1905 - June 26, 1988) was a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian. ...

The essay then goes on to detail different counter-tactics for ridding the word virus. As pointed out by Burroughs himself, the virus idea shall not be understood as a metaphor but as the actual parasitic organism. It is unclear whether or to what extent he actually believed in this theory, but it has been suggested that it is structured in a style influenced by the controversial writings of Wilhelm Reich and L. Ron Hubbard, both of which are mentioned in the Nova Trilogy. In language, a metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects. ... Dr. Wilhelm Reich Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897–November 3, 1957) was a Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author, who was trained in Vienna by Sigmund Freud. ... An official Church of Scientology portrait of L. Ron Hubbard, circa 1970 Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986), better known as L. Ron Hubbard, was a prolific American author and founder of the controversial Church of Scientology. ...

This theory underpins the three books of the Nova Trilogy and can be quite helpful to know when reading. For example in the last part of The Soft Machine unsuspecting primates are seemingly attacked by viruses falling from the sky, indicating its extraterrestrial origin. Families 15, See classification A primate (L. prima, first) is any member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains all the species commonly related to the lemurs, monkeys, and apes, with the latter category including humans. ...