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

i never understood the relationship of abaia and erebus to the hierodules, also the cumaean, what’s up w her

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

rip

dang, just finished the first book of the new sun ... was unfamiliar with this guy, but loving it so far.

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.

RIP big man

Aw fuck off :(

is this where i admit i don't care for anything he wrote except "fifth head" and tBotNS?

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.

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.

i started litany of the long sun but couldn't get very far into it

:(

it just felt very "normal sci fi" to me

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.

^^ that one's next up for me

might kill a can of pringles today in his honor

two immense Catholic pinnacles felled in one day

it was a bummer. ok, he was 87, but i still wanted to talk about it, and apparently nobody i work with has ever heard of the book of the new sun

i should sometime reread the book of the new sun, i liked it but whenever i read this thread it becomes apparent to me that i have no idea about anything that happens in that book. i thought it was, just, people dueling with leaves and maoists telling stories.

at least i finished it though!

well those things do happen

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

Urth of the New Sun is kinda blowing my mind right now, I have no idea what's gonna happen next (1/3 of the way through)

did you finish it yet, sleeve?

yes! I'm still a bit confused about what exactly happened at the end, I'll probably re-read it in 6 months or so.

some of the parts in "Urth" where all the puzzle pieces of the time travel fit together were really cool, like the Witch's Tower getting damaged and the origin of the Claw (which seems to be entirely self-referential?)

yeah the claw is an ouroboros

by the end you mean the *very* last scene? yeah i was always unsure about the significance of that too, except that perhaps it closes the loop (the first novel begins in a graveyard)

well that scene yeah, with the "gods" that were the 4 survivors on the raft, but also the whole stone town thing (last few chapters? with Apu-Punchau), I think some of it will become clearer when I re-read but iirc the stone town stuff was all in book one and my memory is already hazy on that.

The last time I did a re-read a couple of months ago I tried re-reading the stone town chapters in Urth of the New Sun and Book of the New Sun back to back just to get a better idea of what exactly is happening but I'm still not sure I completely get it.

As far as I can tell the real Severian died on the ship and the hierodules come to the stone town to help save a copy of Severian (an aquastor I think?) and another dead copy of Severian is left behind for the ritual with Hildegrin who will be destroyed by coming into contact with the real Severian from the end of Claw of the Conciliator. I'm going by memory here though, it was somewhat clearer when I read it. I'm still unclear on what purpose that ritual served.

stumbled upon this, i wish i were rich

https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/the-book-of-the-new-sun.html

Just finished reading all of these and enjoyed the short sun a lot more than I expected; new sun probably still best but no regrets about reading the whole thing.

i don't listen to podcasts, but this one might be intersting

Such an honor being asked to discuss Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun for the Great Books Podcast! https://t.co/J7rjGaHPGl

— Ada Palmer 💉🎉 (@Ada_Palmer) August 5, 2021

that podcast was good. I know mostly nothing about Ada Palmer but it was nice to get a historian's perspective on New Sun. Liked the line "There is nothing more similar to the future than the past".

Also I'm listening to the Alzabo Soup podcast mentioning above and following along reading Book of the Long Sun which they are currently doing and am slowing coming to think (as the hosts of the podcast do) that Long Sun is actually even better than New Sun.

Wow that’s saying a mouthful!

I just finished The Book of the New Sun and read this thread.

I really liked it overall with a few reservations. The worldbuilding is incredible. My favorite parts were most of Shadow (especially the beginning), the scenes at the House Absolute in Claw, after Severian leaves Thrax in Sword (especially the scenes with little Severian), and the last 100 pages of Citadel. I really felt the first half of Citadel dragged. I could also do without some of the pancreator stuff, but at least it sort of answers the question, "What if HP Lovecraft were CS Lewis?"

I love the feeling like Greek or Sumerian myths of a disorientingly weird cause and effect (or lack thereof) where characters act like natural phenomenon instead of people. On the other hand, Severian is the only character with much depth.

One of the freakiest parts is in the Antechamber in the House Absolute and the reference that it has a drop ceiling. Just another way in which time is layered like geologic stratum that have been revealed and now coexist.

So basically the last thing that happens chronologically is the brief reference to Severian riding in a spacehip to be judged on behalf of humanity?

iirc yes, which is fleshed out a lot in the 5th book

I need to re-read these

I think I'm going to order that 5th book.

it rules

i never got around to the long sun books tho i have them on my shelf

i'm gonna try long sun again.

I'm about halfway through Urth of the New Sun - it's fine, but I'm not nearly as into it as I was the other books. That could be due to tiring of them as I've progressed, but I also think some of it is more clumsy (repeated callbacks) and less mysterious than the first four.

i'm gonna try long sun again.

― ian, Wednesday, February 23, 2022 1:58 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Long Sun was FANTASTIC. Stylistically super different from New Sun but it really really worked for me. Amazing characters. General Mint is the best. Blood. Horn. Auk. Of course our boy Silk. Loved it.

I read the first two books of Short Sun and liked them but felt like I was missing a LOT of stuff that was happening between the lines. I got distracted from the third book, Return To The Whorl, for some reason or another but I'd really like to give those first two another read & then try Whorl again.

just to follow up on the “novel of everything” idea that i had brought up on the ulysses thread … i love novels in that style because there are so many details to figure out about the pov the narrator inhabits

i think i finally figured out the second reason thecla’s group (chatelaines? i forget what the equivalent rank was) has long necks … i always figured it was to look down on people, but maybe it’s also to make it easier to fit on the chopping block!

LONG SUN.

Is it good? I read the original run and then Urth all in a row and was kind of burned out on his quasi-religious stuff by the end.

Long Sun is really good, possibly better than new sun? (I don't know, I just finished a re-read a couple of months ago and it seemed that way, probably next time I read new sun I'll go back to thinking that one is better)

There's religious stuff in this one too, but it's in a different style than in new sun, more like Greek mythology.

Anyway, as I was doing this re-read of Long Sun I was listening along to the Alzabo Soup podcast and the thing kind of blew my mind that I got from that podcast that I hadn't put together was (spoilers for Long Sun, but also a bit for New Sun):

Typhon sent out hundreds (thousands?) of these generational ships, each carrying an embryo for a clone of Typhon (Silk). Obviously in this particular case, it seems like things didn't go as planned (probably in part because of interference from the Inhumi), but in most cases, this would have set up a colony somewhere with a Typhon clone as leader. This is probably the original sin for which the hierodules felt the need to intervene and which ultimately caused the downfall of humanity

oh wild, i had never considered that.

Long Sun is in many ways much easier to read than New Sun. The language is straightforward, it's got jokes and a talking bird. And General Mint!!!!!

Short Sun, for me, has proven to be harder to wrap my head around than New Sun was, even at first.

Hi

https://fifthhead.substack.com/p/fifth-head

nice

it was a bummer. ok, he was 87, but i still wanted to talk about it, and apparently nobody i work with has ever heard of the book of the new sun

i should sometime reread the book of the new sun, i liked it but whenever i read this thread it becomes apparent to me that i have no idea about anything that happens in that book. i thought it was, just, people dueling with leaves and maoists telling stories.

at least i finished it though!

― Jaki Liebowitz (rushomancy), Monday, April 15, 2019 4:34 PM (four years ago)

lolll, aaaaand then the next month my egg cracked

so i did reread the first book for a book club with a friend a couple of years back and it immediately became obvious how deeply and profoundly misogynist wolfe's writing is. god damn, wolfe holds every one of his female characters in contempt in specifically gendered ways.

so that was a bit of a bummer

I'd urge you to remember that New Sun is being written/narrated by an insane torturer, who often obscures his own shitty actions (i.e. rape of Jolenta) and has no real understanding of women, raised solely among men and boys. THAT SAID, I do think there is criticism warranted PRIMARILY because part of Newsun hinges on the Thecla/Severian duality, and in that respect, Narrator Severian, being both man & woman, should probably possess more insight into women than he does.

I'd be curious to know what in the text makes you think Wolfe hates women, rather than Severian. He has very conservative views (Catholic innit) for sure, so I'm not trying to be dismissive at all. I'm just curious. In Book Of The Long Sun, several of the strongest and most powerful characters, and are not written in the one-dimensional way that they are sometimes written in New Sun.

should read "several of the strongest .... characters are women"

I'd urge you to remember that New Sun is being written/narrated by an insane torturer, who often obscures his own shitty actions (i.e. rape of Jolenta) and has no real understanding of women, raised solely among men and boys. THAT SAID, I do think there is criticism warranted PRIMARILY because part of Newsun hinges on the Thecla/Severian duality, and in that respect, Narrator Severian, being both man & woman, should probably possess more insight into women than he does.

kinda funny thinking of it that way. there's not really any way in which i'm a "man" but i guess i've had experiences with gender that a lot of people (wolfe certainly included) haven't.

I'd be curious to know what in the text makes you think Wolfe hates women, rather than Severian. He has very conservative views (Catholic innit) for sure, so I'm not trying to be dismissive at all. I'm just curious. In Book Of The Long Sun, several of the strongest and most powerful characters, and are not written in the one-dimensional way that they are sometimes written in New Sun.

- ian, Saturday, January 6, 2024 3:41 PM (two hours ago)

it's been a while so i can't say precisely, and i don't want to make it sound like a rhetorical argument... like you say, wolfe was a catholic. not just a catholic, but the particular strand of catholic with which one should _not_ get into a rhetorical argument, lol.

mainly it's character voice. it's one of the most challenging things about writing... i've noticed a tendency when writing to fill in the lacunae in character experience and voice with my own experiences. this quality was, if anything, even more pronounced in my writing pre-transition, when i had a false universalist conception of human nature.

that is the interesting thing to me... not the question of wolfe's misogyny, but my complete failure to notice it pre-transition. i don't think of myself as ever having been a man, and i don't think it's hormonal. if anything i'd say it's lived experience. looking at things from multiple perspectives. wolfe was extremely intellectually gifted but it is fundamentally an intellectual framing. that i look at things differently now isn't a matter of intellectual growth, just lived experience.

what i remember is the way severian, as narrator, describes women's bodies... from the way severian describes his own life, his own experience, the way he describes and treats women seems like something of a non sequitur. they're ways in which women are treated in _our_ world, under conditions that don't seem to apply in severian's... in particular, i had the impression that severian finds women's bodies to be in some way indicative of their _character_, particularly in a moral sense. i don't remember reading anything in his descriptions of his world that would justify that approach. it's a very catholic way of looking at things. very catholic in a specifically highly patriarchal way. there's very much a sort of "male gaze" to how severian looks at things - again, in my memory. he observes and judges the bodies of the women in a way he doesn't with the bodies of the men.

i think this is something of a failure of thomist and post-thomist intellectual catholicism in general... there's a sort of misrecognition of the ways we're shaped by somatic experience.

if i can get really personal here... one of the most profound experiences i had relating to catholicism was subsequent to my genital reconstruction surgery. without wishing to get too into detail, it is a complex surgery and one does wind up bleeding for quite a long time. to someone from the outside, to me before i had the experience, i didn't understand what the true impact of it would be. one can't until one experiences it. there's something sort of very mystical and spiritual about that, in a way that's aligned with scholasticism, i feel. the thing is that the anatomical and physiological changes are, comparatively speaking, nothing. anatomy textbooks will tell you that there's just not that much difference between male genitals and female genitals, and my lived experience bears this out.

the difference is in having this new perspective, a new way of understanding oneself. after a few days i was able to step into the shower and wash myself. it's out of necessity a gentle, tender experience. i'm not a parent, but i had a very strong sense of treating this new creation as i would a newborn child, with the love i would show to my own newborn child. it seemed profoundly maternal.

i washed myself, and i saw and felt the blood... being raised catholic, i was taught there was something beautiful in blood, and i felt that strongly at that time. i recall seeing and feeling myself and saying "this is my body, this is my blood". and it felt as if it was true for the first time in my life. that for the first time in my life i truly understood myself that my body was _my_ body.

and from a catholic perspective, well, others might dispute it but the catholicism i was raised in, i know full well that it was blasphemous of me to say that. not because i am comparing myself to christ or saying that my body is christ's body. it's not. it's more that under catholicism, under patriarchy, people - all people, but especially _women_ - don't have the right to their own bodies. our bodies are not our own. we are part of the body of christ. we eat of christ's body and drink of christ's blood, and that is the mystery and the sanctity of communion. the abomination. the cruelty. the dominion, of what they call "communion". my body is my body. not christ's. not any man's body. mine.

which i think puts me fundamentally at odds with wolfe's worldview and perspective, and the way he sees women in particular.

anyway. i hope that makes some sort of sense! kind of hard to put into words.