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

frederick pohl if you are reading this thread i <3 u for gateway

by the way ian, it is absolutely true, in fact the covers of various boredoms albums are actually references to certain characters and places in the books

vision creation newsun depicts book 3, little [ ] touching the [ ] on the [ ] of typhon.

the inside illustrations depict the feast of vodalus when viewed in this manner ... note severian and vodalus seated at left and the food heaped on the right, the lines moving upward depict both the trees in the forest and the elevation of consciousness into visions including the new sun at the top, illustrated in black and white

there are several references in this boxset as well. from the top: 1) the tower of [ ] viewed looking upside down from the very top of the ship of the hierodules. the second image depicts the antechamber of the house absolute. the third cover shows the citadel of nessus or perhaps just one tower.

there are other references as well particularly in the super roots series of releases. onanie bomb depicts a masked severian, while super roots 3 depicts an executed criminal carved into five deaths (representing also severian's five deaths in the series = five caskets in the tomb). super roots five shows a hierogrammate as glimpsed in the house absolute, while super roots 7 shows an avern or perhaps the salamander elemental and super roots 8 depicts apheta's planet from book five. finally there is super are with the story represented schematically (severian and the new sun inside of himself)

iirc there's also an iron-cross shaped one in light greenish-blue that is carved into many radial segments, i believe that is a map of nessus or the house absolute, i forget which release that is though.

i think that's it though, obviously not everything they did was a reference to gene wolfe, especially the side projects

Finished the first book. Liked it a lot. Curious about how he'll bring a 'satisfying' conclusion abt. w/ only 3/4 to go, and very little plot movement thus far. (Or am I a savage for wanting more plot?)

how are you liking book two, remy?

i want severian's dog to come back :(

he does ;-)

i bought the first three books over the weekend, and started the shadow of the torturer yesterday. this is my second attempt, as i tried many years ago to read the omnibus collection of the first two volumes, but for whatever reason, i find that i now remember only the part about triskele (lol), severian's three-legged dog. at first, wolfe's prose seemed distressingly dense and even somewhat comically pretentious, but the elevated, archaic language becomes familiar quite rapidly, and the initial torrent of obscure terms slows to a trickle after the first few chapters. i'm only a hundred pages deep, but have the hang of it, and don't find it at all oppressive.

i'm moving slowly not because the writing is difficult to decipher, but because i got sidetracked taking notes and compiling a glossary of unfamiliar terms. fifty pages in, i had twelve pages of transcribed passages and a list of nearly 100 terms with definitions. this turned 90 minutes reading time into about six hours of computer work. that was clearly a ridiculous way to go about things, so now i'm limiting myself to the use of a highlighter.

anyway, i'm struck by how comprehensively gothic the novel is. so elevated, enervated, aestheticized and death-obsessed. everything seems turned in on itself, the outward dream of classic science fiction grounded in ruin, wealth straying to poverty, ambition to servitude, sex to cruel fetish, ordered systems to suffocating ritual. severian even seems to make the gothic agenda explicit in suggesting that "our necropolis" was intentionally designed to resemble a mountain forest.

i'm also strongly reminded of michael moorcock's elric novels, which feature a similarly pitiless protagonist, a torturer's guild, a dying kingdom tyrannically ruled by bloodthirsty and long-limbed aristocrats, decadence curling into perversion, and a generally gothic tone.

looking forward to see where this all goes...

i think parts of it are meant to be comically pretentious, or at least comically high-flown. there is a lot of humor in these books that is not immediately obvious.

it is comprehensively gothic, and yes, similar to elric, but unlike elric characters develop

halfway through the second one. w/out spoilering, what I assume to be a PKDish turn (whale?) has got me interested.

there is a lot of humor in these books that is not immediately obvious.

yeah, it's getting funnier as it goes. i especially enjoyed severian's assessment of master gurloes' failings, "he mispronounced quite common words: urticate, salpinx, bordereau."

and there's something suggestively almost-meta about passages like this: "we have books whose pages are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams."

some of the commentary on gender is weird (men are to women as clients are to torturers, women are too cruel to make good torturers, etc.), but i'm assuming/hoping that's more a product of severian and his society than of wolfe himself.

there is a fair amount of meta stuff about writing which i think to some extent springs from broader issues of autobiography and memory, but yeah, if you thought that was something, there are books-within-books to come

i would like to say that it's a product of severian as far as gender goes, but even then things are not particularly great on that front. virgins, whores, mamas, crones and not much in between.

SPOILERS UP THROUGH END OF #2.

Finished the second one. I'm reading slowly, and I took a break. I'm loving the twisty-turny narrative, and the meandering exposition w/r/t Sev.'s journeys, but I'm finding a lot of the writing pretty vague and poetic.

As one example, I grew confused about the physical structure of the cell, during the chapters about Sevarian's imprisonment under the autarch's palace. I had been lead to believe in a deep cavelike structure that trailed into Lovecrafty darkness and unlit grottoes. As the chapter progressed, though, he begain detailing neat corridors and metal walls – it seemed more like a military prison, or a submerged battleship. This isn't the first time this has happened – I wonder about the extent to which GW's changing tack is deliberate, and the extent to which it is (/might be) sloppy.

I'm confused about some other things as well:

– The second palace (i.e. are their two palaces coexisiting in the same physical location, linked by tricksy doors,
trompe-l'œil passages, and false walls? Or are there two palaces that /seem/ to exist in the same location, but are remote, a la the greenhouse/gardens with portal to other sides of the planet?).

– The witches. I am very, very confused by their resurrection of the stone city at the end of Claw of the Conciliator. My understanding is: Hildegrin, Jolenta, Dorcas, Sevarian, and some witches help the lead 'sleekly reptilian' witch-lady to commune with somebody on a distant star, who lets them roll back (?) time to resurrect an ancient city. The ancient city's ruler, Apu somebodyorother, spies the witches and attacks Hildegrin. Sevarian comes to Hildegrin's aid and gets conked on the head. When he awakes, he's with Jolenta (revealed as the waitress from book 1), and Dorcas, surrounded by 'wind-lashed grass and tumbled stones.' I assume this means the city was /not/ resurrected?

- The significance of Dr. Talos's play. I assume it is later revealed to be prophetic?

it's not vague, the detail is just buried. the place where severian is imprisoned is actually a luxurious converted ballroom or large drawing room of some sort in a versailles style. it might sound ostentatious but the series is really written as much for re-reading as it is for reading and a lot of details jump out at you the second or third time.

the "second house" is a series of hidden rooms and passageways in the house absolute. i think practically every room in the house is connected to the "second house" in some way, so that every room can be spied on or secretly accessed. there are magic mirrors in the second house but no colocated rooms ... that we know of, anyway.

the witches (and the cumean, who is a cacogen) have power over time the same way father inire has power over space. they don't so much travel in time as bring the two times into simultaneous existence. it is a confusing episode and severian spends chunks of three and four and five trying to figure it out. there are clues but the big reveal is at the end of the fourth book. if you want a hint, there is a connection between apu-punchau and the face in the tomb. btw, the cumean actually is a snake-like creature, not a humanoid.

dr talos' play is one of the most complicated parts of the book. it foreshadows the explication of past events, i.e. the history of old urth. it also explains the prophecies and teachings of the conciliator (which otherwise are not really explained) ... in one part of the book it mentions that talos' play is based on a book called "eschatology & genesis" which is the authoritative text on the conciliator.

it also foreshadows events in book 5 (the coming of the new sun) and reflects on the personalities of the main characters, particularly talos, dorcas and jolenta. i don't really think it directly signposts any particular events in books three and four but like i said it is a really deep section of the book and i haven't sussed out all of the threads yet.

when i say it "foreshadows past events" i mean that it is a metaphorical / allegorical explanation of the history of old urth (for example, what happened before the autarchal system was established. what happened to the sun?) which is then explained in a much more concrete way in the third book (and slightly in the fourth)

started book three yesterday, will post thoughts as they come to me

just about to finish book one. afraid to read this thread b/c everyone's ahead of me, but i'm really, really enjoying it. i thought it was a little hard to get into until the interaction between thecla and severian started, but ever since then i've been into it.

I've started three, too. It's my favorite so far. Might have spoilered myself on some stuff. Thx for clearing ^ up, late great

i always forget that severian is running around barechested.. then they mention it. and i lol.

just finished book three last night. started book four.

things got pretty weird!
but i still have a problem with some of the filler chapters/adventures. the pace can be very plodding when some of the events recounted by severian seem relatively... inconsequential? idk. i'm sure it will all come together.

any events in particular?

these books would be a lot better with more dragons

that's like saying dune would be better with ornithopter dogfights

anyway the undines are the dragons, and this is low fantasy, so no, you can't battle dragons no matter how big your tool is

gene wolfey knows to reserve his big sword for the ladeez

the pace can be very plodding when some of the events recounted by severian seem relatively... inconsequential?

it's been a while but iirc some of the seemingly inconsequential events turn out to not be?

every event relates to the plot though not every event advances the plot, if that makes sense

I've finished book three as well. I was digging the Big Bad of the Mountain Autarch, and his Window-Eyes of Doom and Jodorowskyan Psycho-Fuckwithery, but he was dispensed quickly and nothing really came of it? Same as * spoiler * little Sevarian? I liked the direction in which the plot was moving but then *zap* and kapow and the Giant fell and ... uhh... here I am, in a sick ward in the first third of the fourth book.

I guess I had trouble w/ li'l Sev's death and the ensuing one page of 'ooh, that's sad' before 'back to my quest I go.' I've got to admit, I dislike this book as much as I like it, but I have no desire to stop reading it. It is good? And bad?

what did you expect to happen when he fought baldanders?

It just seems that Baldanders was a weird callback? He wasn't anticipated (to me) as a villain; he didn't figure in my comprehension of the narrative structure of the book. He was a colorful Guildenstern to Talos's Rosencrantz, a B-lister who got called up unexpectedly. I didn't have any investment in him – nor in the continuation of his character. I don't know how much i buy the progression from 'big Queequeg guy who sleeps in S.'s bed and has weird dreams --> guy that acts crazy onstage --> guy who actually goes crazy and attacks an audience at the autarch's palace --> enormous superstrength monster who keeps a foggy castle full of genetic experiments that turn on him, with the aid of extraterrestrial creeps --> guy that appears to die but probably doesn't.

I'll admit how much I'm glad to have read this far, and that the story is a decidedly new type for me. I'm still flummoxed, tho.

kinda gotta agree w Remy in that the baldanders thing at the end of book three was a surprise & seemed to come out of the blue. also the revelation that dr. talos was a homonculus.

the drawn out fight with the alzabo that kills little severian's family seemed a bit unnecessary to me. likewise the incident with the salamander.

i'm sure something is going to happen with dorcas but going through most of Sword of the Lictor without any advancement of her plot (except the explicit statement that she used to be dead) was a bit of a drag. i understand there is only one character given the privilege of narrating the story and so we see things only through his eyes, and of course that is just the consequence of the way Wolfe chose to write the book, but its challenge because if you get bored there is no knowledge that something else is gonna happen? idk. it actually reads a bit like a D&D campaign to me where monsters randomly attack and magical experiences are had in a seemingly endless stream without much rhyme or reason?

i do like that in this book you saw much more of severian as a scheming, cold and self-serving guy instead of just a man beset by trials and tribulations with which he must contend.

tbh i thought the idea of the moving islands of roots was one of the best images i've had in my head in a while. A+

both baldanders and typhon represent the folly of scientific materialism. they are both mountains of men yet both are dependent on leaser beings: baldanders on a physical midget and typhon on a mental midget (contrast to the relationship between severian and little sev). actually they mirror each other: a silent giant with a smaller, more talkative companion. both see things others do not (typhon's eyes, the cloud chambers), both live unnaturally extended lives, both are betrayed by a tool, both seek to bargain with the hierodules and both are betrayed

are they both worth the same # of xps tho?

feel like you guys maybe read books for different reasons than i do

maybe that's why i can't watch tv, it's like this never ending stream of *things happening* w/o much reflection

also when you say you "expected something to happen w dorcas" does realizing she's been resurrected and then not only is she not grateful to severian but she literally dumps him and goes back to the city of the dead?

i'd say "something happened"!

the late great why do you read books?

to suspend the flow of time, to meditate, to be places i haven't been, to commune with other minds, to engage w ideas

i like digressive and atmospheric stuff, things like stanislaw lem and borges

~hero~

honestly i mostly read nonfiction history and cultural books though so maybe that's why wolfe appeals to me?

I dont read nonfiction history but read things like stanislaw lem and borges

late great have you read the rings of saturn

read that even lamp wont talk shit about that

is that sebald? no but i like stuff like that a lot.

i am going to reread these i think, i want to talk about books but i read these like three maybe four summers ago and found them kinda obscurantist and gross, like there were a lot of words but not very many ideas. and the ideas he does have are the same ugly ones lots of these books have about the solitary male but i dont really remember much except the part where they fight the monsters army that lives in the ocean, ever growing, and how its troops can only communicate in stock phrases, i liked that a lot

yeah read rings of saturn as soon as you can xp

there are lots of ideas, a lot of them are about christianity though

the army doesn't live in the ocean, but they are allies w/ the creatures in the ocean

i've only read austerlitz and vertigo