The Book of the New Sun
an introduction
The people have spoken and we’ll be spending quite a long time with Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun! Consider this a brief introduction to the book as well as a general direction of how this slowread of the series will work.
the clockmaker’s itch
Gene Wolfe is possibly the most studied SF author. Academic papers have been written about his Book of the New Sun. People do their dissertations on this work. An entire massive volume explicating the work has been published and much referenced.
Much of this comes down to Wolfe’s reputation for how perfectly he constructed this novel that is, at first, seemingly so opaque. The papers and the studies attempt to show that Wolfe, from the very start, was as meticulous as Joyce in the construction of his book and Tolkien in the construction of his world.
But this is so gobsmackingly incorrect that I can’t stop laughing about it.
So let’s talk turkey with the Herman Melville of science fiction before we spend the next year or so talking about his magnum opus.
there’s reading and there’s reading
Many approach Wolfe and especially The Book of the New Sun like it’s a text with a solution. Or rather, as if there’s a correct way to interpret and understand this text.
And this comes down to what I would define as three kinds of readers:
the smartypants
the ignoramus
the dummy
The smartypants treats a story like a math equation. The ignoramus gets lost the second you let go of their hand and step into the woods. The dummy will follow you into the woods and instead of ever ask where you’re going, they just happily follow along like a duckling after its mother.
I consider myself the dummy. I get lost in books all the time, but rather than ask for help or look for directions (the smartypants) or just give up entirely (the ignoramus), I blithely wander along, happy to just be included in the journey.
And, honestly, I think this is the right way to read most books. That’s not to say that the other types are wrong (a little bit they are), but to say that The Book of the New Sun was written for us dummies and, I believe, was written by one such dummy.
the vibe engine
The Book of the New Sun has the reputation it has largely because smartypants are the type to write scholarly analyses of books. They go to college and learn some big words and they talk real loud, goddamn right they’ll be heard. And so they sometimes define the playground a novel happens in, which does much to ruin, I think, a lot of good novels.
I’ve written elsewhere about Cormac McCarthy and James Joyce, but those two are good examples of eggheads getting in the way of an audience’s enjoyment of a text.
Because books are meant to be read, not studied.
That’s my view anyway.
And The Book of the New Sun, while seemingly crafted meticulously and wholly from the first sentence, thrives and thrums more on the vibes. We have Severian, our weird little freak of a narrator inventing a story for us, leading us through this mysterious world.
wrote a good piece about weird little narrators that may be instructive as we get going.
Through Severian’s eyes, we come to know a weird and wild world that seems constantly in flux even as its described meticulously and fits together seamlessly. But, to me, when I read this, I can see Wolfe sitting down at his typewriter and just winging it, cackling along the whole way.
That he was a tremendous talent and tremendous intellect allows The Book of the New Sun to become what it became and remain a monument in SFF literature.
some bits of background
Gene Wolfe was a deeply religious Catholic and that influence bleeds beneath this series. Though it may be easy to miss, for anyone who grew up in churches, you’ll find resonance in scenes where you may not expect.
He was also an engineer, which I think wrongly gives people the impression that he wrote this like he might write the schematic for a machine. I thnk anyone who has actually worked with engineers will laugh at such a notion, but there it is.
Finally, he was a huge SFF nerd and this series, in certain ways, is a celebration of seventy years of weird fiction and science fiction and fantasy.
our process moving forward
There are 33 chapters in the first novel, Shadow of the Torturer. There are 139 chapters in the whole series. With this in mind, we won’t be going through one chapter at a time because, well, that would take us nearly three years to get through the series.
And so some weeks we may read as many as four chapters. Other weeks, maybe only one. It’ll depend on a number of things, but you will always know how many chapters to read before we get there.
We also won’t be starting until the first week of March. And we’ll start a bit slow, so here’s what the schedule will look like:
March 6 - Chapter I
March 13 - Chapters II and III
March 20 - Chapters IV and V
March 27 - Chapters VI and VII
By waiting until March, you’ll have time to pick up the first novel, though you likely won’t be able to find it as a standalone and will instead be buying a copy of Shadow & Claw, which combines the first two novels into a single volume. From there, you’ll eventually pick up Sword & Citadel, which combines the final two volumes. We will not be discussing Urth of the New Sun for a few reasons that will be explained when we finish the series.
The short and most important answer is that I don’t want to.
I myself will be reading from a big beastly collected edition and so I won’t be going by page numbers, since that will lead to confusion between editions.
Once we get through these first seven chapters, you will hopefully be much more grounded in the world and the pace may pick up a bit.
And so each week we’ll be discussing a chapter or a few. I won’t be writing summary because why bother, but I will offer some analysis, and maybe ask some leading questions for you to think about.
What we will not be doing is digging into Gene Wolfe’s life or the sociopolitical climate of the time period the novel was published in. We won’t be drawing upon other sources or treating this book like some textbook to be explained and perfectly understood.
The truth is that even after reading the series twice, I know that I don’t understand everything in here. I also don’t think that matters. And so I will be discovering things along with you, and, hopefully, guiding you to things you may have missed or may not realize as being important.
I’m very excited to be reading this with all of you and can’t wait until March.
But, until then—
If you’re in Kansas City right now, you can come see me at AWP on Thursday through Saturday. Hangout, buy books, talk books, etc etc etc.
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers
Broken Katana - Sequel to Iron Wolf.
Libertatia; or, The Onion King - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse, The Blood Dancers, and Sleeping Giants
Noir: A Love Story - An oral history of a doomed romance.
Some free books for your trouble:
I'm with David, really looking forward to this. I don't know Wolfe, so keen to find a new author. 😀
I for one can't wait to take off my ignoramus hat and put on my dummy hat!