hierogrammate literally defined as "A sacred scribe; specifically, a writer of hieroglyphics", and akasha as space/sky (I remember that much from hindu mythology) + the "deus ex machina" refs... all seems to be Wolfe getting a little cutesy with the po-mo literary devices
― Οὖτις, Friday, 31 August 2018 22:55 (six years ago) link
i lent out my copy of the first two, but maybe when i get a break from this mystery bender i'll do a re-read of the second half. I love this shit.
― ian, Friday, 31 August 2018 23:37 (six years ago) link
yr definitely on to something shakey, esp considering that the first time we see a hierogrammate it appears when the autarxh opens a book whose pages are made of magic mirror
― the late great, Saturday, 1 September 2018 00:29 (six years ago) link
Ok just finished. So...
Father Inire is the green man, and Dorcas is Severian’s grandmother...?
And Severian’s life is some kind of time loop
― Οὖτις, Saturday, 1 September 2018 05:36 (six years ago) link
no, yes, yes
― the late great, Saturday, 1 September 2018 15:15 (six years ago) link
you still have one more to go
inire is a hierodule, not a human, i think
― the late great, Saturday, 1 September 2018 15:17 (six years ago) link
Which hierodule? Severian says he was with him in the jungle, but the only ppl he was in the jungle with were vodalus and his retinue, agia and the green man
― Οὖτις, Saturday, 1 September 2018 15:20 (six years ago) link
inire is the "savage guide"
from the end of the first section of chapter 28 of citadel of the autarch ("on the march")
"for guides our column had three savages: a pair of young men who might have been brothers or even twins, and a much older one, twisted i thought, by deformities as well as age, who perpetually wore a grotesque mask ... a covered palanquin ... bore the autarch ... and one night when my guards were chattering among themselves ... i saw the old guide (his bent figure and the impression of an immense head conferred by his mask were unmistakable) approach this palanquin and slip beneath it. some time passed before he scuttled awauy. this old man was said to be an uturuncu, a shaman capable of assuming the form of a tiger"
― the late great, Saturday, 1 September 2018 15:36 (six years ago) link
i highly recommend reading "urth of the new sun" btw, it's an excellent coda to the series
― the late great, Saturday, 1 September 2018 15:41 (six years ago) link
Ah thx forgot that paragraph lol
― Οὖτις, Saturday, 1 September 2018 16:09 (six years ago) link
haha yeah these books are so dense!
― the late great, Saturday, 1 September 2018 16:12 (six years ago) link
I truly can’t remember if I read Urth of the New Sun after finishing my first traversal of the four. I definitely didn’t read it after my more recent traversal. I might never have read it.
― cheese is the teacher, ham is the preacher (Jon not Jon), Sunday, 2 September 2018 19:03 (six years ago) link
it’s very good
― the late great, Sunday, 2 September 2018 19:04 (six years ago) link
plot-wise it tells the story of the conciliator, resolves the time loop thing, takes us into the mothership, finishes the baldanders / talos / abaia story by showing what happens when the new sun arrives (spoiler alert - wolfe veers toward hard sci fi here and it’s not pretty)
solid payoff imo
― the late great, Sunday, 2 September 2018 19:09 (six years ago) link
it’s a bit like when you finish an epic d&d campaign and become a living god and then the gm lets you play a few adventures in super high fantasy god mode just for the hell of it
well that and it spelled out a lot of plot points from the first four for me (i am a dummy)
but i don’t mean to imply the tone shifts radically - he’s still exploring the same themes and questions as before, with the same voice and pacing. if anything it’s even more elegaic than the first four, even though it packs in a lot more earth shaking action
― the late great, Sunday, 2 September 2018 19:15 (six years ago) link
hey I just found super cheap old hardbacks of the last two books and Urth in a thrift store! time to get reading.
― sleeve, Sunday, 2 September 2018 20:24 (six years ago) link
Has urth o’ th’ NS gotten kind of swept under the carpet since it came out? Is it included in the reprint schemes that have happened since then? I feel like it doesn’t get mentioned much
― cheese is the teacher, ham is the preacher (Jon not Jon), Sunday, 2 September 2018 20:53 (six years ago) link
for whatever reason it has its own volume, but it’s still in print and i think there’s an ebook bundle w allfive
― the late great, Sunday, 2 September 2018 20:59 (six years ago) link
i mean i get as an atheist one might find this stuff to be corny bullshit or whatever but lighten up, it's sci fi literature not a manual for living
― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 8:12 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Haha fair enough. Looks like the essay has disappeared from the internet so I can't reread it and get angry all over again.
Didn't realise that there are many various fallen civilizations on urth beside the ascians and the autarchy. I thought the two were portrayed as a binary that perhaps unconsciously (?) reflected the cold war division of the world at the time the books were written.
Currently reading Viriconium and enjoying it a lot. Probably not as good as BotNS but working in the same (future fantasy) genre and has some of the same stylistic flair.
― Mercer Finn, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 21:23 (five years ago) link
from a friend, I just got to this part of the 3rd book:
In Wolfe's Solar Cycle, Typhon the two-headed Imperial person is a direct reference to, possibly an intentional gank, of the two-headed president in Douglas Adams' Hithchiker's Guide.
In fact, there are many plot and character aspects of the Solar Cycle that have direct precursors in Adams' work. One wonders if Wolfe expected to be called on it!
― sleeve, Monday, 3 December 2018 02:35 (five years ago) link
there's a podcast called Alzabo Soup who are doing a close reading of the book of the new sun and i've been listening to it while doing my third read-through and i'm enjoying it, even if a lot of what the dudes suggest is fairly obvious or commonly understood.
― ian, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 18:33 (five years ago) link
I'm almost done with the fourth one! I can tell I'm gonna need to read them again in a few years.
― sleeve, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 18:39 (five years ago) link
i'm midway thru the third i think. there's so much that opens up on re-reads. it's unlike anything else in that way, ime.
― ian, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 18:50 (five years ago) link
https://alzabosoup.libsyn.com/
fyi. they're just getting into citadel of the autarch.
― ian, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 18:55 (five years ago) link
i'll finish my re-read before they finish their spoiler-lite close reading.
did u guys know patton oswalt is a fan?https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/29/what-science-fiction-movie-or-novel-is-most-prescient-today/book-of-the-new-sun-by-gene-wolf
― ian, Tuesday, 22 January 2019 19:02 (five years ago) link
there's so much that opens up on re-reads. it's unlike anything else in that way, ime.
― ian
agree! one of a small # of books that are fairly made for re-reading.
― the late great, Thursday, 24 January 2019 06:51 (five years ago) link
Having recently finished my third reading of the book of the new sun, I started listening to the Alzabo Soup podcast mentioned upthread and am enjoying it a lot. There are definitely many things that are easy to miss even after multiple reads that these guys are pointing out. I liked the part about how Severian is probably hiding the coin he got from Vodalus not so much because he treasures it so much but because it links him to his murder of the person who was trying to stop Vodalus in the first chapter and he doesn't want to get found out.
On the other hand it kind of annoyed me that they keep saying that Severian is obviously lying about his perfect memory because he mentions forgetting about the coin in his pocket or other similar examples, when it seems pretty obvious that when Severian talks about perfect memory he's talking about having perfect recall, not about actually never forgetting anything.
― silverfish, Friday, 15 February 2019 18:09 (five years ago) link
I've been listening to Alzabo Soup as I work one of my day jobs (washing LPs & 45s or taking photos of LPs & 45s for 8 hour stretches) -- i just caught up with them last week. sometimes i think they overreach in looking for significance in things, but it's really nice when they explain where certain names come from, and where certain stories come from.
The thing with Severian's memory is tricky because it depends on how the reader chooses to interpret the book. It seems too simple to think that "Severian's a liar so we can't believe his interpretation of things exactly" -- his issue tends to be more sins of omission (Jolenta's rape, probably other things that make him look bad) he mentions a few times saying he sometimes wonders if he's going/gone insane, and he refers to "all you inside me" or something like that, before what he receives as autarch is revealed. I have no concrete answers because I keep thinking about it too hard and confusing myself. Bu the the idea of the Writer Severian relating not only episodes from his life, but also possibly making reference to things that happened not to him, but did happen to other Autarch's, or to Thecla. We know he has Thecla's memories in there -- are there other scenes in which he's disconnected from the rest of his companions that could potentially be recollections by a different person, recast by Severian as "I" for the writing?
sorry i can't think much better than this right now.
― ian, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:10 (five years ago) link
Also how many times did he die.And what is the relationship of Inire and the Hierodules. if any ?
― ian, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:11 (five years ago) link
man I need a glossary for all the different social classes
still not done with the 4th one, been real busy
― sleeve, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:16 (five years ago) link
inire is a hierodule
― the late great, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:20 (five years ago) link
i figured he is a non-human of some kind, but is he the same being as the hierodules that Sev meets in the castle or one of a different type? He doesn't seem to have the same relationship to time that the hierodules say they have.
― ian, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:39 (five years ago) link
same was my assumption. i thought he didn’t experience time backward because he was stuck on earth and not traveling on tzadkiel’s ship? i don’t know, wolfe half explains and half abandons that idea in book 5.
― the late great, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:44 (five years ago) link
i need to re-read Urth next i guess.
― ian, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:45 (five years ago) link
i never understood the relationship of abaia and erebus to the hierodules, also the cumaean, what’s up w her
― the late great, Saturday, 16 February 2019 04:55 (five years ago) link
i think the hierodues are working in opposition to erebus and abaia, who are trying to enslave humanity/control urth for their own nefarious ends. no idea what's up with the cumaean. is she litereally snakelike or is that a metaphor
― ian, Saturday, 16 February 2019 15:04 (five years ago) link
rip
― mookieproof, Monday, 15 April 2019 16:23 (five years ago) link
dang, just finished the first book of the new sun ... was unfamiliar with this guy, but loving it so far.
― tylerw, Monday, 15 April 2019 16:28 (five years ago) link
just saw this, RIP
I literally just found a replacement copy of the 4th New Sun book yesterday, I lost my copy when I was almost done. Looking forward to diving back in.
― Emperor Tonetta Ketchup (sleeve), Monday, 15 April 2019 16:33 (five years ago) link
RIP big man
― the late great, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:08 (five years ago) link
Aw fuck off :(
― Roberto Spiralli, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:11 (five years ago) link
is this where i admit i don't care for anything he wrote except "fifth head" and tBotNS?
― the late great, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:11 (five years ago) link
Aw man, I just finished a third reading of New Sun. I was really spending a lot of time thinking about this book the last couple of months.
― silverfish, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:17 (five years ago) link
xp
book of the long sun is totally worth reading. First book is basically just a heist in a weird setting (I enjoyed it, but I guess not everyone would) but then it really opens up starting with book 2.
― silverfish, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:28 (five years ago) link
i started litany of the long sun but couldn't get very far into it
:(
it just felt very "normal sci fi" to me
― the late great, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:31 (five years ago) link
i've only read the four orig sun books but i picked up a used urth of the new sun the other day, should get to it soon. rip. good stuff.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:33 (five years ago) link
^^ that one's next up for me
― Emperor Tonetta Ketchup (sleeve), Monday, 15 April 2019 17:35 (five years ago) link
might kill a can of pringles today in his honor
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 15 April 2019 17:37 (five years ago) link