Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)

https://www.theringer.com/2019/4/25/18515675/gene-wolfe-science-fiction-author

by samclemens • 6 years ago

124 142 6 years ago

laurex• 6 years ago

The Book of the New Sun is amazing simply for the language. I actually thought he was simply making up words until I got out a dictionary and discovered that his vocabulary simply far surpassed mine, and mine isn't terrible.

b0rsuk• 6 years ago

I love the atmosphere and the originality, but you shouldn't go into the cycle expecting action - it's like expecting action from Blade Runner. The first book takes 100 or 200 pages to describe the events of a single day. Some character introductions are breathtaking though, I was particularly impressed by the hothouse. Some episodes and creatures are amazingly creepy.

EdwardDiego• 6 years ago

Fuligin was the word that stuck with me.

saberdancer• 6 years ago

I'm not a native English speaker so I find this extremely interesting. I usually read in English so I often notice how much vocabulary certain writer uses. Most of them use the same vocabulary I am familiar with and I read the whole book without looking up a word, but there are some writers where I get a new word every few pages and it is not a word that was forced in there. It made sense to use it.

I never read Gene Wolfe after I started reading in English, I've read him in my native language. I'll need to bump him up in my reading list to see how it reads in English.

krzyk3• 6 years ago

Same for me, I read it in my native language and find it hard to find his prose top quality and I found his story a mediocre quality (and for me story is the La raison d'être of a book).

aardvark179• 6 years ago

He has always been incredibly clever in his use of language. The names of people in BotNS had me checking in a dictionary of saints (and books on mythological monsters for the non people) to try and gleam more meaning from them, and I remember a moment of wonder when I realised the aliens’ speech was weird because they always have an even number of syllables in each sentence.

His books are incredible and really pay off careful rereading.

jinpa_zangpo• 6 years ago

Gene Wolfe explained in a commentary to his series that the aliens (called hierodules) are speaking in blank verse.

InitialLastName• 6 years ago

To help your vocabulary, the word you're looking for is "glean" [0]

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glean

sdepablos3• 6 years ago

Same happens with Cervantes. A funny thing is that the more languages I learn, the more vocabulary I recognize in a given language. In most cases obscure words from one language are pretty common in another.

hmahncke• 6 years ago

If you haven't seen it, there's a great companion book "Lexicon Urthus" [1] that provides a definition for all of the unusual English words used, as well as character references and in-book lore. I re-read BOTNS with the Lexicon, and really expanded my appreciation of the use of language in the books.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Urthus-Dictionary-Urth-Cycle/...

stdgy• 6 years ago

That is the thing that has always stuck out to me. The books are a master class on language. And, interestingly, the intricate language added a certain texture to the story that I haven't often encountered elsewhere. It made the story almost... slippery? As though I could see the shape and outline of the story, but the real specifics were left for my mind to fill in.

A bit hard to explain, but not something I've experienced to the same degree outside of Wolfe.

felipeerias• 6 years ago

The vocabulary was the most mind blowing feature of the book for me.

He is talking about people and creatures and things that are far removed from our everyday experience in one direction (the remote future), and he is doing so through archaic words that are just as far removed in the opposite direction (the remote past).

monkeyfacebag2• 6 years ago

Shadow of the Torturer is one of my all time favorite books. I confess I was less impressed with the rest of the Book of the New Sun as the world seemed to constrict as it went on, rather than expand. In spite of that, I think they're all worth reading.

branweb3• 6 years ago

I love the series but I think this is an astute observation...though I have trouble articulating why I agree with this. I wonder if the world constricts or if its possibiilties just narrow (as they necessarily must) as the story plays out?

saberience4• 6 years ago

I don't agree with it, but I can perhaps see that as you go through the story, more about the setting and "universe" of the novel is explained and revealed and so it means that your imagination cannot invent as many possibilities for "why things are as they are."

When you start reading the book it could be anywhere and anywhen and you have no idea about the wider universe and setting and inevitably possibilities start to shrink as you read and come to understand the bigger picture.

monkeyfacebag2• 6 years ago

There is are some concrete things that contribute to this feeling for me, such as Baldanders becoming a recurring and central figure in the plot.

saberience4• 6 years ago

For all those who are saying now "Who's Gene Wolfe??" I strongly, strongly, urge you to read his tetralogy "The Book of The New Sun," it's one of the finest sci-fi/fantasy series I've ever read and I have a pretty damn critical taste when it comes to literature. (not trying to sound snobby by the way, I just don't praise books like these lightly or without good reason)

So I love Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion, Martian Chronicles (and other Ray Bradbury books), Ursula K Le Guin(Earthsea), Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle, Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse Five etc), Dune, Game of Thrones series, Neuromancer, Asimov (basically everything but especially Foundation series), Terry Pratchett, and so on...

And I consider Gene Wolfe's work to be on a par with all of the above, and I would say he takes sci-fi to another realm. The Book of The New Sun is the first sci-fi series I read where I thought, "this is literature," as in, comparable with books by Dostoyevsky and Hemingway, and I don't believe this is hyperbole, it's just that good.

The other amazing thing about The Book of The New Sun is that each time you read it you realize you missed about 100 things in the previous read-throughs, there is so much "hidden" in plain sight and the subsequent read-throughs are like reading a completely different book.

So just read it please.

Edited to include Le Guin as another example of "genre fiction" as literature.

jowday• 6 years ago

The final book even concludes with the narrator/protagonist suggesting the reader re-read the books to grasp their true meaning. IMO, two reads minimum are necessary.

philipov• 6 years ago

There's an essay in Castle of Days where Gene Wolfe wrote about his writing process. He would rewrite the manuscript for his books from scratch multiple times so that he could incorporate what he wrote later into the beginning of the book. I think he would end up completely rewriting the book up to 4 times. That's why there's so much to get out of them on a reread.

therealcamino• 6 years ago

And that sounds crazily presumptuous, but when I finished my exact thought was "I have to read that again."

strifey3• 6 years ago

I would concur with this. Wolfe and Le Guin, to me, both write sci-fi/fantasy as literature while also closely using themes that most would consider "genre fiction".

saberience4• 6 years ago

Agreed with Le Guin, I love the Earthsea books, which are more than simple fantasy and have a beautiful spiritual and philosophical quality.

NOGDP5• 6 years ago

Haven't read Gene Wolfe (yet), but I can strongly recommend 'Hyperion Cantos' by Dan Simmons.

abrookewood• 6 years ago

I love that series. It's fantastic.

m4632• 6 years ago

I think the series sort of dragged on after the first one. But I read it a long time ago, maybe I should try again.

hnews_account_1• 6 years ago

Somehow this book elicits both claims of "greatest hall of famer ever written" from people like me, or "meh it was good but I couldn't get through all 4 books" from others.

caskstrength5• 6 years ago

Counter opinion: Hyperion books are recommended every time some of my favorite authors are mentioned (like Gene Wolfe and Peter Watts), but I found them very mediocre. Not as bad as Vernor Vinge books that are also always mentioned in similar contexts, but still quite meh.

IQunder1302• 6 years ago

Sci-fi thread drinking game: take a shot every time someone recommends Hyperion regardless of context.

erikbye7• 6 years ago

Strange that you feel the need to recommend a book by an author totally unrelated to this thread when you have not even read Wolfe. You have no reference as to what someone who likes Wolfe might enjoy.

aidenn0• 6 years ago

That makes sense. I didn't like Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, or Wolfe.

riffraff• 6 years ago

ah! I thought the exact same thing. The story is original, the characters interesting but it was just a pretty hard series of books to get through for me.

Pamar2• 6 years ago

I have only one upvote to give ...

cageface• 6 years ago

I enjoyed Book of the New Sun but I’d say it’s quite a bit darker than most of the rest of the books you’ve named. Torture is a very central theme.

atombender• 6 years ago

I think you missed the real theme, which is death and resurrection, a recurring pattern throughout the book.

While Severian is groomed to be a torturer, for most of the book his job (and Severian repeatedly emphasizes that it's just a job) is that of executioner, and he later holds the position of lictor for around a month. While Severian often recounts the procedures practiced in the guild tower, it's not really torture that he is concerned about.

The themes of death and resurrection, however, are central to the plot, together with the water motif as a symbol of cleansing, from the moment Severian nearly drowns in the river (and is rescued by an undine) to the destruction of Urth.

vagrantJin• 6 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation. The foundation trilogy stands among the best for me but if you say Wolfe isnt beneath Asimov, that is high praise.

erikbye7• 6 years ago

I do not think your taste is critical if you enjoy Game of Thrones prose. Gene Wolfe's is far above. GoT is average fantasy prose and nowhere near literary fiction quality.

WaterForest3• 6 years ago

Story and character is more important for me than prose. I need to care about what is happening to want to read on and I found the book of the new sun wanting in that regard. I found it a struggle to read - similar to the storm light series (which I found even worse with paper thin characters and terrible plotting). Just my personal opinion.

krzyk3• 6 years ago

I read just the first book in the "Book of the New Sun" and found it quite boring.

And my books are quite similar to yours with few exceptions:

- Martian Chronicles - interesting concept but eventually it goes into some ecological + anarchist sci-fi which I'm not a fun of

- Earthsea - good, but it is mostly for teens, young adults (I read it as a teen and loved it, reread it years later and it was so so)

- Dune - the whole series, each book is unique in its own way

- Kurt Vonnegut - never read anything by that author

- Hemingway - I read just The Old Man and the Sea (or actually was forced in school to read it) - and this was a short novel about basically nothing, boring as it can be

And books I really liked that are not on your list:

- Cixin Liu - Three Body Problem and the rest in the series - I loved it, never read anything like it

- Anything by Naomi Novik (so just two books right now)

- Vernon - A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep

- N.K. Jemis - Stone Sky and the other two in the series

- Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice (but only this, the other book was worse)

- (Almost) Anything by Philip K. Dick

That's from my recent reads (so few last years).

ghaff• 6 years ago

Hemingway - I read just The Old Man and the Sea (or actually was forced in school to read it) - and this was a short novel about basically nothing, boring as it can be

I'm not sure why schools tend to fixate on that particular work. Hemingway may not be to your taste anyway but I much prefer A Farewell to Arms, A Moveable Feast, many of his short stories, etc.

WaterForest3• 6 years ago

I also found the book of the new sun dull. I don't agree it's a good book at all. Hyperion written in 1989 is a much better book and arguably more sophisticated. But hey it's just an opinion.

I've heard Gene wolf is a good writer but after trying the book of the new sun I'm not tempted further. It probably comes down to personal taste.

WaterForest3• 6 years ago

A fantasy book with good prose and better story than 'the book of the new sun' is 'the name of the wind'.

ak217• 6 years ago

I find it hard to appreciate art that revels in torture, graphic violence and emotional abuse as an end unto itself.

If you want an example of science fiction as high art, personally I would suggest Vernor Vinge (specifically A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky) and Ursula Le Guin.

saberience4• 6 years ago

I wouldn't agree that BOTNS "revels" in violence or torture at all. I personally wouldn't enjoy a book that revels in torture or violence, but I've read the BOTNS series many times (5 or 6). Sevarian clearly doesn't enjoy his path nor does he "revel" in it and if anything he generally tries to avoid violence. Gene Wolfe as a man clearly doesn't focus on violence and certainly doesn't celebrate it, it's just a small but real part of the world both in reality and BOTNS, and I think it's an important thing we have to explore in art, which is the violence of man to man, why it exists, why we do these things.

smogcutter2• 6 years ago

I can see how you get there, but strongly disagree with that assessment of BotNS.

It’s far from an endorsement of torture and abuse. Master Gurloes is a deeply broken man. Severian’s childhood trauma colors the entire story, especially his relationships with women. Part of Severian’s maturation throughout the books is his slow abandonment of his life and identity as a torturer.

To get anything out of BotNS you need to separate yourself from Severian’s point of view, and Wolfe makes this deliberately difficult. There’s what Severian believes, there’s what he wants us to believe, and there’s what “really” happened. Between those three poles there’s usually a lot of empty space.

Mediterraneo104• 6 years ago

Even if Severian has become a better man by the end of the BotNS, in the coda to the sequence The Urth of the New Sun he is still keen on bedding the women he comes across. From reviews and fora discussions, it is this constant interest of the male protagonist in casual sex that has turned off many female readers. Sure, the encounters are now consensual, but Severian remains a horndog, and it leads those readers to assume that Wolfe was indulging in puerile fantasies.

Compare the similar "eww" reaction to Larry Niven's The Ringworld Throne where the author kept describing the characters' casual sex with the locals of the places they passed through.

TinkersW3• 6 years ago

BoTN doesn't do any of those things, did you just read a summary or the title and make that assumption?

root_axis3• 6 years ago

BOTNS does not revel in graphic violence, in fact most of the violence in the story happens "off-screen" so to speak. It's also completely wrong to say that those themes are written as an end unto themselves, that reads to me like pretty much the exact opposite of the book. I'll presume you read it since you're offering such a strong critique, so I'd be curious to understand why you think this way.

branweb3• 6 years ago

Nice to see something about Gene Wolfe here. I'm a big fan. I just finished re-reading The 5th Head of Cerberus and have been eyeing The Book of the New Sun series on my shelf. Probably time for a re-read of that soon.

If I may put on my pedantic hat for a second: the article writes of the world of the New Sun tetrology: "The sun is so old that it is dying." I thought it was pretty well establish that the sun was dying of unnatural causes--possibly an artificially created black hole.

olvy03• 6 years ago

Yeah, see here for example [0]:

Regarding the "worm" in the Sun being a black hole, I don't think the Prophet's description in Dr Talos's play (Claw, ch. XXIV) leaves much doubt: "Yet even you must know that cancer eats the heart of the old sun. At its center, matter falls in upon itelf, as though there were a pit without bottom, whose top surrounds it." He also says of it: "We know it to be far more, for it is a discontinuity in our universe, a rent in its fabric bound by no law we know. From it nothing comes - all enters in, nought escapes."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AThe_Book_of_the_New_Sun

TeaDrunk2• 6 years ago

I think there are many definitions of High Art here. This Is How You Lose The Time War is something I'd recommend also, to compare and contrast what is considered emotionally vivid, beautiful prose, and challenging literature in science fiction now compared to Gene Wolfe. It's super fascinating to see how some things have changed in its definition of the pinnacle of the art and how others have stayed the same.

root_axis3• 6 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation, your setup has piqued my interest in terms of how I might appreciate the work as compared to Wolfe.

TeaDrunk2• 6 years ago

Hope you have a fun time!

runevault2• 6 years ago

While not on GW's level, one of the two writers of TiHyLtTW (Gladstone) is one of my favorite newer authors. I think I ended up liking Empress of Forever more than Time War (both came out in the same year) but both are fucking fantastic.

When he described a star fighter as a hate fractal I admit I cackled.

yborg• 6 years ago

Also recommend The Book of the Long Sun and its sequel, set loosely in the same universe as Book of the New Sun.

He was an industrial engineer by training, and was a senior editor on the staff of the journal Plant Engineering. This always tickles me given how that has to be the absolute nether pole of his own writing.

bouvin• 6 years ago

Gene Wolfe is one of my favourite authors, and his works more than most reward careful (re-)readings. To that end, I can highly recommend Alzabo Soup [1], a podcast delving into first Book of the New Sun (and currently Book of the Long Sun) in very deep detail (it took them a couple of years, with weekly 2 hour episodes to make it through BoNW). I reread along with the podcasts, and it was well worth it.

[1] https://alzabosoup.libsyn.com

pugio• 6 years ago

Thank you for this. I've recently been enjoying the Kingslingers podcast (in-depth read-through of Stephen King's Dark Tower series), and have been actively looking for other read-along analyses of good books. At least for Kingslingers, it has significantly increased my enjoyment of the series.

Mediterraneo104• 6 years ago

The podcast and the YouTube videos on Wolfe really make me rue Google's modern algorithm that obscures 1990s and early-millennium content. Pretty much all the mysteries of the BotNS were elucidated on the Gene Wolfe mailing list (which was archived) and a handful of fan websites. It would be much more efficient use of a reader's time to go through these instead of podcasts or videos, which aren't information-dense media and are duplicating effort and yet falling short of earlier commentaries.

Pamar2• 6 years ago

Could you be kindly offer pointers to the aforementioned archives+fan websites, please?

pizzicato• 6 years ago

Alzabo Soup is great, as is the urth.net mailing list someone else mentioned.

https://ultan.org.uk/ is another fantastic resource for Wolfe fans.

zabzonk• 6 years ago

I wouldn't really class Wolfe's books as SF or fantasy, but more as extended puzzles. Particularly in the case of the "New Sun" books, but also with the "Long Sun" ones, you spend a lot of time trying to work out what the heck is going on - and most times failing. But they are definitely well worth reading.

pavlov• 6 years ago

I love Wolfe. Which book to read first depends on your attitude towards the fantasy genre. If you're skeptical of it, I would recommend starting with the compact sci-fi short story trilogy of "Fifth Head of Cerberus" rather than the magnum opus of "The Book of the New Sun".

If Cerberus works for you, there is a ton more to chew in New Sun, and you should absolutely read it whether or not you like more mainstream fantasy works.

And if you like New Sun but haven't read Jack Vance's original take on a similar world, "Dying Earth", it's absolutely worth it. Nowhere near as deep as Wolfe, but way more funny — a truly unique voice from the golden era of sci-fi.

glangdale3• 6 years ago

Do note that while Jack Vance is wonderful, there's some really ugly stuff in subsequent Dying Earth books (Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga) that make it a bit hard to take for modern readers. It's not explicitly described, but having the protagonist (who is admittedly a dick, but not really portrayed as an anti-hero per se) commit multiple rapes might not be for everyone.

Despite this, I love Vance's work (AFAIK I have read almost all of his work except the detective fiction and his one book for teens), but there's really some hard stuff to justify from a modern perspective about assault, gender and race in there.

glangdale3• 6 years ago

p.s. Dying Earth proper (the book of short stories) and Rhialto the Marvelous are easier to take.

rotexo• 6 years ago

I really tried with Dying Earth (I particularly was interested in seeing the roots of D&D's magic system), but man the misogyny got to me real quick. I suppose it was just a product of its time, and different people's tolerance for that sort of thing will vary.

legerdemain2• 6 years ago

Eeeeh... the Dying Earth novels can only be tolerated by a narrow set of readers. They're probably recommended because that narrow set used to make up a bigger fraction of the sci-fi readership. Dying Earth is incredibly puerile and laddish. Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga obviously have very little plot. They're just these repetitive picaresques where it's one hallucinatory thing happening after another, and none of it matters for more than a scene. It's kind of like Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, but without any lovable characters whatsoever.

And then, of course, there is "The Murthe," in which the hero must defeat a sorceress who is turning wizards into women.

baggy_trough• 6 years ago

Blinkered perspective. Cugel is one of the greatest.

caskstrength5• 6 years ago

I can agree with your criticism of plot of Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga, but Vance's worlbuilding is beautiful. It is a shame that most later fantasy and d&d worlds turned into banal Tolkien-knockoffs.

autarch• 6 years ago

My email address for many years has been autarch@urth.org. So that will tell many people just how much I love Gene Wolfe's work.

TinkersW3• 6 years ago

That was a good article, Wolfe has been my favorite author for years, so it was interesting to read a little about his life.

Book of the New Sun is obviously his top work, but he had some other stuff that as really damn good such as his two books series "The Knight"/"The Wizard"

Given the popularity of scifi/fantasy TV shows lately would be interesting to see someone attempt to adapt BoTN, but maybe that would be just too difficult..

root_axis3• 6 years ago

Given the popularity of scifi/fantasy TV shows lately would be interesting to see someone attempt to adapt BoTN, but maybe that would be just too difficult

Yeah... I mean I think it could be done, the actual events of the story are straightforward enough, but it'd be impossible to produce something that wouldn't make fans of the novel pull their hair out. What I'd love to see is Severian's play adapted to a screenplay, like a one-off HBO special.

Mediterraneo104• 6 years ago

Consensus about Severian's play is that Wolfe intentionally wrote it as the doggerel that a motley troupe of untrained traveling actors would perform. It is a bad play just like so many morality plays dating from the early modern era were clunky. Here, the point (besides the play giving clues to the plot) is that Wolfe could not only write well, he could intentionally write badly when it could lend color to the tetralogy.

So, a screenplay adaptation of Eschatology and Genesis would be missing the point.

legerdemain2• 6 years ago

It's hard to avoid getting repeated recommendations to read Gene Wolfe if you hang out with the more old-fashioned fans of science fiction. One year I read both the New Sun novels and a "best of" collection of several dozen of Wolfe's short stories.

Wolfe had a long career and a big reputation, and he certainly was distinctive among his peers. But I found that many of his stories lean heavily into two tricks. They are occasionally effective, but encountering them in story after story in rapid succession wore me out.

The first is opening a scene with a "hook" sentence. "I was standing in line to buy a newspaper -- of course, this was before I divorced my own mother." If you've read the well-known "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," you know exactly what I mean. It can be an effective trick, but Wolfe's career is basically an exploration of how far it can take you by itself.

The second is nenuphars. It's a technique for alienation that Wolfe uses with gusto. I happened to know the trivial fact that a nenuphar is a kind of water lily, but Wolfe relies on the reader not knowing what the word means to produce the effect of alienation. So sometimes a word like "nenuphar" will be a term for a unique concept within the world of the story, and other times it will just mean "water lily, but, like alien water lily, you know?" Do not call a rabbit a smeerp.[1]

Wolfe was, of course, a Catholic and admired the writing of religious moralists like Chesterton. One short story that, to me, illustrates a lot of what Wolfe as a writer is all about is titled "The Detective of Dreams." Allow me to summarize it for you.

A wealthy client begs an old detective to stop a man from ruining his dreams. The client dreams of arriving at a vast, illustrious palace, but soon upon entering, he meets the thief, who puts an abrupt end to the pleasant vision. One by one, several more wealthy clients approach the detective, asking him to apprehend the thief. The detective goes about town in a vain attempt to find out the thief's identity. Tired, he takes a seat on a bench near a church. His weary gaze rests on a robed figure in the beautiful stained glass window. He has found the man who troubles the sleep of the wicked.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallARabbitASmee...

TinkersW3• 6 years ago

I think you are correct in so far as if you read many of his stories it does seem that he uses the same narrative style over and over-- I thought his short stories were okay but I wouldn't recommend them to people, mostly for similar reasons.

I don't think it distracts from the quality of BoTN, which stands on its own, and does a much better job of using this style.

That Catholic sentence is awful, thankfully there aren't in Catholics in BoTN.

DennisP• 6 years ago

A few years ago I had the privilege of seeing Gene Wolfe speak, in a modest-size room at DragonCon.

He said that as part of his Pringles work he and a lab partner were doing some kind of experimentation that involved a lot of steam and humidity. I forget why. Their lab was a fairly small temporary enclosure, in the middle of a big space. Gene dealt with the vapor by wearing a lab coat. His partner, muscular and six feet seven inches tall, just wore shorts.

The company liked to take tour groups through the area. One day, Gene opened the door and a tour group stopped and stared. He realized how they looked: him in a white lab coat, an apparently-naked giant behind him, steam clouds billowing out. So he said "Not now Igor, there are people here," and closed the door.

glangdale3• 6 years ago

I'm very fond of Gene Wolfe, but for people who want an intro to his oeuvre I would strongly recommend "There Are Doors" over Book of the New Sun. Not because I dislike BotNS, but it's a real door-stopper slab of a tetralogy (a pentalogy if you count "Urth").

To me There Are Doors really punches way above its weight.

emptysongglass• 6 years ago

I deeply love the characters Wolfe has given us. The moral systems by which his characters conduct themselves have been a scaffold for my own when my parents fell short. It's writing that exceeds itself past the only sensual, becoming symbolic glories to remember continually as I live. I can't praise him enough. It's so odd to have as a tension an author of fiction staining me on one half and the Buddha's early teachings on the other. It's a tension I treasure.

I have one criticism of him and it's a strong one -- I hate it because it has locked out just about every woman I've introduced to his corpus: his treatment of women. So very many of them: Chenille, the fire nymphs, just about every one Severian sleeps with save for dear Thecla, Chenille-as-Scylla, the prostitutes of Fifth Head, Jahi, Jolenta, Hyacinth, Jesus there must be a legion more I can't recall just now... So many of them are vampish, buxom women who are either put on a pedestal or written to be beauteous victims. That's not to say strong women don't exist in his books: there are a few but it's by and large the men who are written as whole people. One woman runs around for a few hundred pages stark naked with a flimsy premise as to why.

If readers can repeatedly forgive him for these excesses, his writing can transform the way you see the world and the purpose of living in it. A small excerpt: "We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges."

wolfefan• 6 years ago

It is disappointing to see women locked out of Wolfe's books, but I wouldn't want to see him write in a critic's idea of a Strong Female either. Not everything has to be for everyone.

In defense of the BotNS, I think that it's mostly lazy readers that think Severian is having his way with all these women - astute or second time readers will note that these women are manipulating Severian who is actually somewhat dim. (Consider Agia). But this is more likely to turn off female readers.

In the context of Wolfe's treatment of women The Sorcerer's House becomes a favorite novel. It seems designed to bait that most common criticism. Here's an excerpt from a 3/5 review:

"I'm not overwhelmed with the treatment of women in this book -- every woman wants to sleep with Our Hero, for example, and quickly opens up to him, and I don't see why. He's not charming, he's unsettling. But maybe that's because we see him through his own report of himself to his brother... I don't know. I'm not a fan, anyway. Even if it works for the character, I could have done with a female character who really stood out."

This response is I think what Wolfe was going for. Baxter getting all the girls is a glaring clue hiding in plain sight. But even if it's in service of the novel it's normal to want to have a character for yourself and is a reasonable expectation of a fantasy novel. Fair enough.

"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges."

"The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all."

Mediterraneo104• 6 years ago

I have read every single thing Wolfe wrote (even the limited-edition chapbooks), and I feel I should warn potential readers: he only had about a decade-long run as a writer of high art in the 1970s. I strongly recommend the early Wolfe, but the later Wolfe is a lesser author.

In that decade, Wolfe produced three large works (The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace and The Book of the New Sun) and a number of short stories where the prose was incredibly rich and beautiful, fully the equal of Proust or Nabokov. His reputation should rest on these.

But from the early 1980s, his prose became drab, lackluster. He still could impress readers with his plots that invariably featured unreliable narrators and ellipsis, but even this was gradually taken to the point of absurdity. By the turn of the millennium, he felt like a one-trick pony. His editors at Tor apparently accepted every manuscript he submitted, but the late flood of weak novels IMHO diluted his stature.

ilamont• 6 years ago

I agree. It was much harder to get into his later work, including "Long Sun."

Finnucane• 6 years ago

The thing that changed for Gene was that he no longer had a day job. When he was working, he'd get up at 5 am to writer for two hours before leaving for work. The whole of the Book of the New Sun was written that way. Which meant there was a certain commercial pressure to sell books, and I think his consistency flagged. I worked at Tor in the mid-to-late 1990s. I don't think that Hartwell just accepted anything he sent, the process was a little more complicated than that, because David knew what he was working on. Gene had a tendency to resist editing; once he was done with a thing it was done.

I think he had some good books in that period, but there wasn't going to be another Peace or Fifth Head of Cerebus.

m4632• 6 years ago

that's interesting. I wonder if the stimulus of a day at work with people and interactions and pressure and more could make something more meaningful come out.

Sort of like a little external entropy added to the random number generator.

jonnycomputer2• 6 years ago

I do not think that the prose in On Blue's Waters was drab; I loved it. The sequels though were quite forgettable.

filoeleven2• 6 years ago

I read in some interview with him or some piece about him that one of people’s biggest criticisms of New Sun was the elaborate prose. So he consciously chose to write more simply after that.

In my own view, Long Sun is as good as New Sun: I don’t think the simpler prose detracts from it, it fits the tale and Silk’s personality (to say more threatens spoilers). We see a huge yet mostly stable set of characters evolve throughout the tale. Compare with New Sun which is mostly just Severian wandering around, having adventures and occasional encounters with characters from earlier. They are very different stories. After reading both series many times, Long Sun grew to be my favorite. This could change again.

I agree that Fifth Head is fantastic, but when I tried to reread Peace I couldn’t get through it (it was apparently his own favorite). And I agree with your assessment of his post-2000 novels. I did enjoy The Sorcerer’s House and The Land Across, but neither is calling out to be read again, and their details are vague in my mind.

shmageggy2• 6 years ago

Where would you say the Long Sun books fit into this? I've always been looking for the great book about generation ships, and I thought they might be it, but I just couldn't get into it. Are they worth revisiting now that I have a better idea what to expect?

filoeleven2• 6 years ago

I’m not the parent poster, and I favor Long Sun currently (see my sibling post). With that in mind, I think this is a great book that is not about generation ships exactly, but the Whorl (the ship) is deeply involved in the plot...eventually.

It starts out very small and slow: the entire first book takes place over the course of a single day and night. What you get, though, is a living city complete with petty squabbles, political intrigue, complex relationships, all from the perspective of people who have no idea that they are living inside of a man-made ship. They venerate the ancient technology they live with in a syncretistic religion that seems to have been created for that very purpose.

As the story progresses, themes of identity come into larger play, and you start to see more of just how far awry the ship’s journey has gone compared to the intentions of the builders. Like most Wolfe books, things are progressively revealed that reshape your understanding of what came before—though you have to pay close attention to catch many of them. You are never handed the exposition of “this is how the ship works, here’s all the cool tech behind it.” Instead, you have to extrapolate it from what the characters know and are willing to reveal.

It’s not fast-paced or action-packed; it’s very character-driven. I read that there are as many named characters as in War and Peace, over 500. I didn’t like the beginning the first time I read it; things get more interesting once Silk decides to rob Blood on the first night, and I think that’s when I started to warm up to it. So if you recall how far you got, and it was beyond that point, it may just not be to your liking. I’d go so far as to say that if you don’t want to read about Silk frying up tomatoes and feeling bad about not offering them to a workmate, you could try skipping ahead a hundred pages to see if it catches your interest then.

nathias2• 6 years ago

the soldier trilogy is also great ...

caskstrength5• 6 years ago

Wasn't The Book of the New Sun written in early 80s, not 70s? Anyway, Latro series is also considered very good by a lot of people (didn't like it that much personally, guess it requires reader to be into Greek history/mythology) and The Book of the Long Sun is great (I did like it a lot).

orthoxerox• 6 years ago

I found the Long Sun novels the weakest of all the Suns. Some plot points felt forced, some subplots were just quietly abandoned. The Short Sun is much better in comparison, although of course 5.HoC is a better BoSS than BoSS itself.

lordfoom• 6 years ago

Hard disagree. I thought 'The Sorceror's House', as well as "an evil guest" and am currently thoroughly enjoying "a borrowed man". BOTS is his magnum opus, but I wouldn't call his latter work "lesser".

markc• 6 years ago

I've read lots of SciFi over the years, some of it challenging. I can read hard books.

Back in the 80's I started seeing so many raves for TBotNS that I went out and bought them all at once.

About 80 pages into the first one, I was turned off, bored really. They sat on my shelf for a decade at least, before I just gave them away.

My question is this: how long did it take you to "get into" this series. Should I have plowed on further? Or tried a restart? (I read the first 100 pages of Dune about 3 times before it clicked, and I loved it all after that)

Or is it a taste/style thing, and if someone doesn't like it within 80 pages, they're not likely to enjoy the rest?

savanaly• 6 years ago

I would say it really started to click for me after the part where the main character fights a duel (events subsequent to it pull the trick for the first time that will be repeated many times over the tetralogy of recasting previous events in a new light). If memory serves that's considerably more than halfway through the first book. I am generally bored by "young person who's clearly destined for greatness goes through various adventures around their school/apprenticeship/home town" and so once that part of the book was over I liked it a lot more. By the end I was loving it.

simonsarris• 6 years ago

For what its worth I also love difficult books and didn't think The Book of the New Sun was very good. (I did finish it, and re-read a few parts.)

It aims at a great curiosity but like you say, is far too drab. I think it misses.

nemo1618• 6 years ago

My experience: I read the entirety of the first two books, shrugged, and stopped there. Felt like I was investing a lot of effort into something that wasn't paying off, and didn't seem likely to pay off in the future. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

runevault2• 6 years ago

My first read I bounced off of Shadow hard. Second reading I finished and loved it but then life got in the way early into Claw. 2020 was the year I blasted through all 5 books and am glad I did. The book is incredibly dense and does not hide that fact, so you have to be ready for such or you simply won't enjoy it.

soufron4• 6 years ago

Welcome to the club.

caskstrength5• 6 years ago

TBotNS doesn't become faster paced or more action packed later. If anything, it becomes more challenging since book requires reader to remember the details and actively seek solutions to puzzles the texts presents. However, you and your tastes in literature might have changed since 80s so you could give those first 100 or so pages a try to see if your perception of them changed.

jonnycomputer2• 6 years ago

I read his "On Blue's Waters", without having read anything else of his before. A lot of the references in the book were completely mysterious to me (but would not have been had I read Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun.

But I loved it.

And I didn't mind that the references were mysterious to me. It added to the feeling of the book, actually, which is very melancholic, and sort of follows the Odysseus template.

Couldn't recommend the book more.

LgWoodenBadger• 6 years ago

Gene Wolfe's short-form stories are magnificent, and in some cases exceed his long-form novels/novellas.

There are numerous collections available, some focus on horror, others literary sf, and others just an all-around mix. I can't recommend them enough.

Often they include background regarding what he wrote, or why, or who he wrote it for, where it was first published, and what not.

For novels that don't get as much acclaim as the BotNS, or FHoC, I highly recommend the Soldier series. More wonderful mystery hidden in plain sight.

Ice_cream_suit• 6 years ago

I have read and still read a lot of science fiction, literature (both ancient and modern).

I have tried to read Gene Wolfe several times. I must confess that all I obtained from his works was a sense of profound ennui.

I am prepared to admit that the fault is likely to be entirely mine, considering how many people admire Mr Wolfe's writing.

crossedOaks• 6 years ago

One of my all time favorite authors in literature. The secret to enjoying Gene Wolfe is being ok with fuzziness - he’s notorious for using unreliable narrators. And don’t try too hard to figure it all out at first, just keep going. Eventually the most mysterious, awe inducing visions will enter your mind and often they’ll occur a day or two after you even read it. It’s like your mind needs a bit extra time to compile the sublime code he’s given you. He’s a straight up magician.

karaterobot• 6 years ago

The Solar Cycle is great, but even fewer people have read Peace. I think is a genuine mid-century American literary masterpiece that should be discussed (favorably) alongside with Cheever, Updike, Sherwood Anderson, and Don Delillo. It's his ultimate puzzle box of a book, but incredibly rewarding.

nathias2• 6 years ago

Wolfe is great, some of his works are the best of the genre, but elevating sci-fi to high art was Lem's project not his.

soufron4• 6 years ago

Well that's certainly dismissive for all the other authors who wrote science fiction before him. It's also cultish, and probably wrong given that I find his books sluggish and boring, with the psychological acumen of an american high school teenager.

soufron4• 6 years ago

Also I must add that the assertion in itself is plainly wrong. Look at "Gene Wolfe" entries in the New York Review of Books and you will find none. Gene Wolfe might be considered as "High Art" by his fans, but that only means they don't read the New York Review of Books - and don't know much about literature for most of them.

watwut3• 6 years ago

You have to be in New York Review to be considered high art? When did they became arbiter of it all?

Gene Wolfe might be considered as "High Art" by his fans, but that only means they don't read the New York Review of Books - and don't know much about literature for most of them

This is super odd implication.

soufron4• 6 years ago

Indeed, the idea of "High Art" seems stupid in itself.

jiggawatts• 6 years ago

For people that enjoy the intersection of hard science fiction and elaborate prose, I think it may be hard to best Greg Bear's City at the End of Time.

I read it while on holiday and listening to particularly appropriate music, which may have enhanced the experience and influenced my positive opinion. I admit that it's tough going in parts and there are a lot of obscure references, but the imagery is unparalleled.

I recommend Howl by Subheim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB49oSvLkqs

Atvar4life• 6 years ago

Have to recommend 'World at War' series by Harry Turtledove. It's like watching paint dry, it repeats itself, somehow, but, what's better in a HODL, don't actively trade -environment? I love it. Enjoy the kukuriknich and all the other skits dudes. Harry for life. Guns of the South is pretty good too! I'll try this gene wolf bs, it seems great.

erikbye7• 6 years ago

Gene Wolfe’s work is great, and I feel he is appreciated by many HNers. But one author I think is too seldom mentioned and read is Ballard. His take on science fiction is very interesting, often working on a more psychological level.

Mauricebranagh• 6 years ago

There are plenty of other earlier SF authors that fit the bill , Swift and CS Lewis for example.

And there are plenty of New Wave authors that also fit into this Ballard and SRD (Chip Delany) especially

ableal• 6 years ago

My favorite Wolfe, after all these years, is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_of_the_Mist - a Roman (pre-Republic, 5th C BC) soldier wandering around classical Greece, suffering daily amnesia, against which he writes notes. Also, he gets to see and interact with deities.

A novella with a pretty hard punch was Seven American Nights.

olvy03• 6 years ago

Yes!! Seven American Nights is one of my favorite works of literature, it had a huge impact of me when I read it back in high school. I still re-read it occasionally. In my opinion it's more approachable than Fifth Head Of Cerberus and even Book of the New Sun, it condenses all of Wolfe's style and usual tricks into a single tight package.

sqldba• 6 years ago

No mention of his amazing Soldier in the Mist series.

olvy03• 6 years ago

Not related and slightly off topic, but here's a recent reddit thread, from a subreddit called ShittyGeneWolfe. Worth reading for the giggles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ShittyGeneWolfe/comments/k58ar4/lis...

Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)

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