Channel SK1N

  And soon the ghosts of television

  will walk freely through

  the studios and back lots;

  they will be seen moving

  with their own secret purpose

  through location shots.

  Across our countless screens

  they will wander unseen,

  pale revenants with programmes

  of their own to make,

  still haunted by cameras,

  tongueless now, bodiless,

  but veined with fire and image.

  Acknowledgements

  For Vana, with love.

  With thanks to Michelle, Alex and Andrew for all their help and encouragement. And to William Shaw who read a very early draft of this book and encouraged me to go on with it. To Curtis for his amazing artwork, and to Tim for his formatting skills.

  Lyrics from the song ‘Television’ are reprinted with kind permission of the Savage Club.

  Thanks to McKenzie Wark for the use of the ‘roots and aerials’ quote. It’s taken from Virtual Geography, published in 1994.

  About the author

  Jeff Noon was born in 1957 in Manchester, England. He was trained in the visual arts and drama, and was musically active in the post-punk scene, before starting to write plays for the theatre in the 1980s.

  His first novel, Vurt, published in 1993, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction novel. He has also won the John W. Campbell Award. His stage and radio plays include Woundings, The Modernists and Dead Code. He is currently writing and developing screenplays, as well as planning other novels and stories.

  General news and comments as well as hundreds of fiction spores can be found at his twitter page @jeffnoon

  The microspore site is a community page bringing together words, music and imagery: microspores.tumblr.com/start

  Jeff’s main site, metamorphiction.com, contains new stories, avant-pulp experiments, essays, remix manuals, and lots of information on all his past works.

  Books by Jeff Noon

  Vurt

  Pollen

  Automated Alice

  Nymphomation

  Pixel Juice

  Needle in The Groove

  Cobralingus

  Falling Out of Cars

  Channel SK1N

  Pixel Dust