
What can be made of the plot goes as follows: the main character is Inspector Lee of the intergalactic Nova Police, who is on the track of the Nova Mob, a gang of twelve space criminals: Sammy the Butcher, Green Tony, Iron Claws, The Brown Artist, Jacky Blue Note, Limestone John, Izzy the Push, Hamburger Mary, Paddy The Sting, The Subliminal Kid, Blue Dinosaur, and Mr. and Mrs. D. (also known as Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin and the Ugly Spirit). The Nova mobsters aim to sow discord on Earth and amplify the conflicts, and their end goal is to turn Earth into an exploding supernova. They use language as a virus that programs how humans think, and in order to overcome language-constrained thought, the novels are written with the aforementioned cut-up technique, which makes any storyline notoriously difficult to follow.
The Nova Trilogy was a major influence on pop culture: in particular, the British music band Soft Machine is named after it (as are a number of tracks by John Zorn), and the lyrics of Iggy Pop's song Lust for Life contain many references to The Ticket that Exploded.
See also The Red Night Trilogy, another trilogy by William S. Burroughs.
The series provide examples of:
- Ascended Extra: The private investigator Clem Snide, who was a minor character in Naked Lunch, is a protagonist in one of the chapters of The Soft Machine, titled "Case of the Celluloid Kali".
- Author Appeal: Homoeroticism, Erotic Asphyxiation, drugs, and giant centipedes.
- Author Avatar:
- The protagonist Inspector Lee is a stand-in for Burroughs himself, as Burroughs used the pen name "William Lee" at one point.
- Uranian Willy aka Willy the Rat, a former member of the Nova Mob who switched sides, is also a stand-in for Burroughs.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: As usual with Burroughs, there are multiple mentions of people eaten alive by giant centipedes. Scorpions and crustaceans also make various appearances.
- Body Horror: Like all of Burroughs's surreal fiction, the Nova Trilogy contains many scenes depicting diseased, parasitized bodies and grotesque transformations of humans into forms other than human. A good example is a character in The Soft Machine whose bones dissolve away, so that his gelatinous, still-living body gets carried around in a tub or a stretcher by his friends.
- Coauthored Literature: Some of the chapters in the Nova Trilogy were written by (or at least contained material written by) Burroughs's long-time friend and collaborator Brion Gysin, as well as his friends and sometime lovers Ian Sommerville and Michael Portman.
- Cyberpunk for Flavor: Though the novels are formally sci-fi, they are basically poems in prose form, and are as far from hard science fiction as you can get.
- Fantastic Drug: In addition to opiates and other drugs, all sorts of exotic substances are used as psychotropics throughout the trilogy, e.g. in The Soft Machine, Dr. Benway speculates on the use of scorpion venom as both a tranquilizer and a psychedelic.
- Film Noir: The chapter "Case of the Celluloid Kali" in The Soft Machine, told from the perspective of the private investigator Clem Snide, is a pastiche of the noir genre (and of Raymond Chandler's novels in particular).
- Friend in the Black Market: In the "Case of the Celluloid Kali" chapter in The Soft Machine, it turns out that the private investigator Clem Snide (who is working with the Nova Police) is friends with Green Tony, a member of the Nova Mob. Green Tony gives him the address of the sinister Contessa di Vile.
- Genre Mashup: Like most of Burroughs's later work, these three novels cut across genres, combining aspects of surrealism and dada-like experimental fiction, "space opera" science fiction, political/social satire, and gritty, pulp novel-like depictions of homoerotica, petty crime, and drug use.
- A God Am I: Sekuin in The Soft Machine and the Old Doctor in The Ticket that Exploded appear as having creator deity and as ultimate judge-like powers, respectively.
- The Hashshashin: Hassan-i Sabbah is mentioned several times in The Ticket that Exploded and Nova Express, along with his alleged motto "Nothing is true, everything is permitted".
- Heel–Face Turn: One former member of the Nova Mob, Uranian Willy (also known as Willy the Rat), betrays his mates and starts working as an informator for the Nova Police.
- Human Disguise: The villains are extraterrestrials, but they presumably can appear as humans while they're on Earth (like Contessa di Vile, who hosts parties at her villa in Rome).
- Mayincatec: Even though Burroughs studied archeology (with a focus on Mayan codices) in a post-graduate program that he never completed, his use of "Mayan" scenes and images in "The Mayan Caper" section of The Soft Machine (and elsewhere) is rather whimsical - including rituals and symbols from Aztecs and other tribes, as well as a great deal of completely made-up rituals and deities.
- MegaCorp: Trak Corporation in The Soft Machine is a company that monopolizes almost every aspect of society, from the print press to food and drink to cigarettes.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: You could guess that Contessa di Vile is not a good character by any means.
- No Fourth Wall: Pretty much the entire point of the trilogy. Just as an example, it's mentioned that one of the agents of the Nova Police posed as a writer to write a novel called Naked Lunch as a bait to expose the Nova Mob.
- Snuff Film: In the chapter "Case of the Celluloid Kali" in The Soft Machine, the protagonist Clem Snide attends a party at Contessa di Vile's villa in Rome, where the guests are shown movies of this kind, depicting young boys orgasming while being hanged.
- Wall of Text: Many pages of the trilogy consist of long blocks of text with little regard for sentence continuity, punctuation, or any traditional coherence.
- Word-Salad Horror: The stream-of-consciousness writing, together with the cut-up collage technique throughout the trilogy, generate a lot of bizarre sentences and paragraphs, sometimes nonsensical in a funny way, more often in a disturbing or disorienting way.
