Gene Wolfe

There's a lot of sprawl, but controlled: I think what I mean is there's probably too much in there to get at at one reading. I liked all the clever-clever stuff with language and with subplot a lot more than I cared for the main plot, not particularly having been crying out for a mix of Mad Max and the book of Revelations; the mucking around with expected fantasy ideas was nice (the Claw = what if someone had told Frodo the ring was just, you know, a ring?); the trick with the narrator breaking into the memories of other people seems very Nabokov, but in a good way..

I think I like the others of his books I've read since better - Peace, which seemed sort of Southern Gothic, although I can't actually remember if it was set in the South and think not, which is the life story of a man who spends too much of his time in other people's fictions, and which depends on a fairly chilling realisation about halfway through - and The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which I think was his first and is probably the most show-off-written science fiction I've ever encountered. It kinda bugs me that he seems content to let the '[x] of the [y] Sun' stuff become so protracted: there's what, twelve books now, and they certainly look from the outside like another interminable fantasy series, and he's certainly better than that.

Tying in with Dave Q's comments the book has massive alienated-boy appeal in that the hero is an outcast with no sense of humour but is also a pulling machine with an implied massive dick but Wolfe writes it in such a way as not to, ahem, wave this in your face and also to make it seem as if this great sexual success is the natural consequence of being dark and moody.

Never read Peace; Fifth Head I remember as being good. He did a weird modern day fantasy book called Free Live Free which in retrospect reminds me of Neil Gaiman so I wonder if I'd still like it. I also like his "Soldier" books which he did after BotNS - having made his name he followed it up with a series written from the point of view of an amnesiac in Ancient Greece using a fantastic narrational trick which unfortunately made the books even harder to read. I think the low sales of those made him return to his 'New Sun' universe.

The first two books definitely go together, but the second
two are completely independently readable. "The Book Of The Long
Sun" is slightly related to one or two pages in TBOTNS - there's
no recurring characters (well, not really) and the tone is
completely different. It starts out straightforwardly enough,
almost dissapointingly
so, but halfway through vol. 3 you release not all is as it seems,
and vol. 4 is one mindsmashing revelation after another.

"The Book Of The Short Sun" can probably be enjoyed on it's own
as well, although it is directly linked to the Long Sun.
I haven't finished this book yet, but it looks to be the most
fractured, bizarre narrative since "The Fifth Head Of Cerberus."

Speaking of with, 5th Head is probably the best introduction
to wolfe for anyone unwilling to commit to a series.
It's structure is maddening and beautiful, and it's
secrets are unforgettably haunting.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22gene+wolfe%22+%22fifth+head+of+cerberus%22+group:rec.arts.sf.written.*&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&group=rec.arts.sf.written.*&selm=7ev18r%24949%241%40sparkie.st-andrews.ac.uk&rnum=6

This cool Wolfe site contains two long, erudite essays more
thoroughly dissecting the puzzle:

http://www.ultan.co.uk/

starting book of the new sun now. totally into it so far (40 pages maybe) that is all.
i think bene_geserit has read this; max??

I voted it #1 in the SFF poll. Plan to reread again in a year or two. Miraculous books.

of COURSE you love it, you are the sci-fi guy. :)

Wolfe is probably the best living/working sci-fi writer imho

I think everybody on ilx who reads these threads has gotten into this guy except for me and ledge.

read the first book int he series a looooooong time ago and dug it

i recently finished my 2nd time through the whole series (including UotNS)

i floated the idea of an ILX BotNS reading club but nobody took me up on it, would still be interested

so instead of a third go through i started on "litany of the long sun" and i couldn't get into it

the next series after that has very dire-looking cover art

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312058664l/60214.jpg

do not want!

though i do like that dude's bear-sloth companion

Hey I've been meaning to read it, would be up for that

i'd also be into it.

slocki are you in new york city

i'm also up for the reading group

Ian I am beep me on FB if u are hangable tmrw

Wouldn't mind doing a reading group myself.

is that an ILB group?

feel like thread needs a haters rolecall

Thinks there's one more that I overlooked

i was just talking about reading this on ilb! okay, i'll start it soon. i have all four books in hardcover.

private press handstitched limited editions with signed cardstock insert and illustrations by this guy on etsy?

Say what?

Truth be told haven't read enough by this guy to be a hater. Still trying to find a way in.

Wonder how book club will work because it seems like he is the kind of writer who will ask of his public, old-skool adventure game or Encyclopedia-Brown style: "on page three of volume I gave a veiled hint that THE TORTURER WAS LEFT-HANDED! Now this fact has finally become relevant. Dear Reader, you haven't been paying attention." Note: This may or may not be a real example.

well that's what will make the book club fun - "DIDJA NOTICE HE DID ...."

Yes but, as I forgot to add, the third time readers might SPOIL it for the rest of ud

spoilers can only hurt u if u let them, maaaaan

Say what?

no slam, joking abt the craftsmanship thread, where scott has recently spent time

solemn oath not to spoil

uh, just fyi---

http://www.centipedepress.com/sf/shadow.html

yeah, full circle

http://www.centipedepress.com/sf/sword.html

^^ uh, $225? uh. at some level i appreciate spending money for a nice book but that is just insaniac pricing.

eh, if they can find a hundred suckers, why not

spoilers can only hurt u if u let them, maaaaan

i mean, i agree with that for sure (you see the same thing in records sometimes but rarely at that high a price.), it's fine to sell something nice at a high price, but i guess i just underestimate the demand for boutique editions of cult(ish) sf & horror novels, and even among the people who would want the book how many would be able to toss a few hundred bucks at it? like, for the four books--total price of the paperback omnibuses is somewhere around $30; for the boutique editions probably around $900. it makes me feel poor, kind of? xp about book pricing

people like nice stuff, disposable income, collector mentality i know. i get weirdly obsessive abt things like this for some reason.

that guy has some nice artwork on his site but i sort of wonder if i missed some scenes when i look at some of it

like what scene is this supposed to be - http://www.abalakin.de/artwork/hi_110116-tcota.jpg ... it's titled "citadel of the autarch"

http://www.abalakin.de/artworks.asp

^^ afaict all of the BotNS-related art is in the 2nd and 3rd rows from the top

anyway for me what is massive and inscrutable about Wolfe is not the plot or all the little asides but actually the theology of it

wolfe is a devout catholic, right? can't tell whether he's practicing critique or apologetics and when severian is supposed to be a naive barbarian and when he's preternaturally wise

rufus got all the lion/witch/wardrobe books at the thrift store the other day and i said to him: "you know those are all veiled christian allegories, don't you?" and maria said: "don't ruin them for him!"

it seems to me like your kids will end up being super smart & cultured.

Did you tell him "Aslan" was the Turkish word for lion and get him started as a language hacker?

the worst

it's no chillwave the genre

wolfe or lewis?

I'm no kind of book collector -- I mostly have shelves of old paperbacks -- but for whatever reason I was searching around for Book of the New Sun volumes and got seduced by the Easton Press editions. (Leatherbound, but way cheaper than the Centipede Press ones.) I found the first two on ebay and ordered them before I discovered Easton never got around to Autarch -- so the best I can hope for is to have the first three. Oh well. I read them in middle/high school as they were published, and then again in my 20s. I remember the story making way more sense to me the second time through. Looking forward to revisitng.

yay!

please start this up!

gene wolfe's book of the NEWSUN!!!!! reading club

Finished Claw of the Conciliator last night, torn on continuing - the back half of CotC was a slog, the completely tossed-off rape of Jolenta was WTF.

I'm going to guess Poochie/Jonas did not die on the way back to his home planet and will return.

I read and enjoyed Shadow of… but didn’t feel motivated enough to continue, as I assumed (rightly or wrongly) that they would all be on similar lines. I feel like a bad Wolfe reader but I prefer the plotty, early sections to the episodic rambling afterwards.

I gave up after Claw, my first time through, but I’ve since read the whole thing three times and consider it one of my faves. There is a lot to dig into when you steer considering why Sev elides certain events and emphasizes others. I don’t want to get into spoilery and meta theories but do want to encourage folks to keep reading. Someone on the other BOTNS thread, prob Vahid, suggested reading the narrative voice as an oblivious pompous ass and I think that helps, especially in the earlier volumes.

I read Book of The Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun last year and I think they’re brilliant as well.

gene wolfe's book of the NEWSUN!!!!! reading club

it may help to read my posts in the thread similarly

I didn't like Sword and Citadel as much as Shadow and Claw, maybe, though there are some sections in the former as good as anything in the series. Especially that descent in the mountains. Absolutely worth reading imo.

i've been curious about reading some wolfe but was hesitant to jump right into one of the big fantasy series, as i'm not a big fantasy guy. i ended up reading soldier of the mist, which is still technically part of a fantasy series i suppose, though the fantasy is rooted in greek mythology. weird book though i enjoyed it. should i keep reading this series or start the famous one or read one of the other standalone books (i'm intrigued by Peace in particular)?

i read Peace and enjoyed it but had what was apparently the standard neophyte response to it which was "huh that was a vaguely creepy but surprisingly pastoral novel about an old guy reminiscing on his childhood." by the end i did kind of figure that he was probably a ghost in a warped afterlife reminiscing about his childhood, but going on to reddit afterwords made me realize i was missing a lot of other stuff going on below the surface. i would like to reread it in a year or so with more knowledge of wolfe's whole deal. i did enjoy it anyways, it was really well-written and i could tell there were weird things going on even if it wasn't always clear to me what they were.

i just started Shadow of the Torturer and i'm mildly intimidated by the introduction which seems to suggest more wolfean "things going on below the surface that you don't pick up on until you read the book multiple times" given how long the whole series is

I think that's his whole deal and is a feature not a bug. That intro hooked me from the first paragraph. Enjoy the ride.

On my first read, I missed 99% of the below-the-surface stuff in New Sun. it just seemed incomprehensibly dense, ugly, and arbitrary. The underlying logic wasn’t clear, so it just felt a little oppressive. I wish I’d had an initiation by a Wolfe expert, or at least a brief summary of the surface story so that I could focus my attention on the deeper text. I would never recommend it as a place to start.

i found Shadow of the Torturer pretty readable, but now i'm in Claw of the Conciliator and a bunch of the characters disappeared with no explanation and there are mutant cavemen and it's making me feel a bit underwater

Maybe I'm simple, but mutant cavemen are pretty cool. Also, I think there is a bunch of religious allegory in that part (like there is in every part).

I've got a bunch of Wolfe on my shelves that I haven't ever properly dove into, though I keep telling myself this will be the year

He also helped invent Pringles! They claim the mascot isn't based on him but c'mon

I read the New Sun books pretty young, middle school into high school I guess, and tbh often feeling lost was part of what I loved about it. It felt "grown up," I guess, like this sense of hidden worlds being brought into the light. And I love the writing. It's dense, but in a vivid way. I reread it maybe 10-15 years later, and definitely understood it much better — the symbolism and the story — but it still felt mysterious.

finished book of the new sun. had to lol when at the end of the story, severian's like "wow it's crazy that that all happened in one summer!" (i know that the actual timeline is very slippery but still)
just started urth of the new sun but i've also been reading/watching online analysis of the book of the new sun to try to and fill in the gaps of what passed me by
i'd be open to rereading the series (as everyone says you need to do) but maybe in like a year
i've also been slowly listening to the alzabo soup podcast episodes on BOTNS, which are designed to be listened to as you read the book - they try not to get into spoilers. it's pretty interesting, they do a lot of analysis of the names and language in addition to clarifying plot elements.

I enjoyed Shadow of the Torturer but not enough that I wanted to ever reread it or continue the series. I had a similar issue with David Peace's first Red Riding book, but Vance is a much better writer.

I thought the "oh right it's earth and and he's describing old earth things and getting it wrong" stuff was pretty obvious -- and also that he's old but hasn't necessarily learned his lesson -- so I presume there's rather more to it than that. I feel a bit basic but I liked the first half, which can be read as a straight adventure, much more than the second half with all the flashbacks (or whatever they are) in the "Botanical Gardens"

i'm still processing my opinions about the whole book, i binged the whole thing in a few weeks and i'm not a big sci-fi/fantasy guy in general (though i'd like to read more sci-fi this year i think). as a "road novel" it's so episodic that it's hard not to enjoy some segments more than others. i'm a little skeptical of the overblown praise of wolfe as a writer, his prose is good but i was rarely impressed by the writing itself, and reading the analysis of the deeper things going on in the book it feels like he's trying to do too much BUT i acknowledge that i'm very much a neophyte here and am probably wrong.

it is pretty propulsive and fast-moving though, and you learn that if you're not really into one setting/part that much that it'll probably change again in a chapter or two so it's not that hard to keep moving through it.

I enjoyed Shadow of the Torturer but not enough that I wanted to ever reread it or continue the series. I had a similar issue with David Peace's first Red Riding book, but Vance is a much better writer.

i went into it with the mentality that i wasn't going to fully understand all of it on first read, so i didn't worry so much about keeping track of every detail. with that approach it didn't feel like homework. there was the occasional section where i was like "wait, what's going on?" that i had to reread a couple of times, but overall i found it pretty readable if you don't concern yourself with deciphering every single detail immediately.

It feels a bit like a book for adults that only teenagers could have the patience to finish. I guess the ideal reading experience would've been to read it when was 16, then come back thirty years later and try again.

xps

The confusion, in my limited experience (finished Shadow, got pretty far into Claw and may even have finished it), has little to do with keeping track of a surfeit of details as you progress through the story. It's more granular than that. There are all these moments where the I'm totally flummoxed by what things the narrator chooses to emphasize or to pass over.

He'll be like (a huge hairy wumpus has just appeared in the road without explanation) Had I known then what I was to learn later of the wumpuses, their true origin and purpose, I might not have done as I did in that moment. I acted without thinking, and for that reason alone I did not lose my life that day. It was not boldness that lead me to clasp my hands behind my back and whistle while pretending to examine something interesting on the ground; neither was it cowardice, not in the sense most use that word. For I am one of those rare individuals in whom the natural human instincts towards self-preservation — whether from an accident of my birth, or as a result of the training of my order, I do not know — are so attenuated, that it is said they neither hunger, nor thirst, nor tire, nor feel afraid and I'm like... Sooo what was the important thing about the wumpus? Wait, is this guy for real about never getting hungry??

I read and enjoyed the whole New Sun sequence and some others, but Peace is the only one that still lingers, after all these years: he's extended something that was already there in classick American Lit, not just a rehash---try reading or re-reading it while listening to Vintage Violence.

it's making me feel a bit underwater

much like dorcas

i went into it with the mentality that i wasn't going to fully understand all of it on first read, so i didn't worry so much about keeping track of every detail. with that approach it didn't feel like homework. there was the occasional section where i was like "wait, what's going on?" that i had to reread a couple of times, but overall i found it pretty readable if you don't concern yourself with deciphering every single detail immediately.

― na (NA), Monday, February 2, 2026 1:22 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This is the way. Just assume you'll read it again later, take the pressure off. The first time I read it the vibe alone was enough to make me love it