{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/10",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 10,
    "subject": "THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH and THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": null,
    "last": null
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v7-17-4@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "harpo!npoiv!hou5f!ariel!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn",
        "address": "harpo!npoiv!hou5f!ariel!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn@berkeley"
      },
      "date": null,
      "subject": "THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH and THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
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          "kind": "text",
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          "text": "Gene Wolfe's tetralogy \"THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN\" is now complete\nwith the publication of \"THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH\".  CITADEL follows\nthe ex-torturer Severian, shocked by his loss at the end of the\nprevious volume (\"THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR\"), as he wanders northward\nand becomes embroiled in the war with the Ascians.  It rapidly becomes\napparent that the war is more than just a struggle for territory, but\nits full complexity does not become apparent until a series of\nnot-quite-coincidences leads to Severian's accession to the position\nof Autarch of the realm.  The book concludes with Severian's regal\nreturn to the Citadel in which he was born and raised as a torturer,\nwhere he resolves to attempt to bring forth the New Sun, just as the\nformer Autarch tried to do, but failed.  The book also explains more\nof the background to the peculiar Christian/Hindu mythology, and even\nprovides a science-fictional rationale for some of it.  All in all an\nexcellent book and worth buying in hardcover (as I did).  Most of the\nimportant threads of plot from the previous volumes are wrapped up,\nbut alas we do not find out whether Severian succeeds in his final\ntask; if this matters to you, then you will want to read the\n(projected) sequel \"THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN\" when it comes out.\n\n     If like me you would like to know even more about the world of\n\"THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN\", there is yet another book, \"THE CASTLE OF\nTHE OTTER\" (Ziesing Bros.: Willimantic, Connecticut, 1982, 117pp.).\nThe title of this book derives from a mistaken announcement of CITADEL\nin Locus magazine; Wolfe couldn't resist using the name because he\nknew the perfect epigram for it (from \"THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS\").\nWolfe explains why he wrote the book: \"When a writer has the gall to\ndo an entire book, even a very small one, about the writing of a\nprevious book, it's more or less customary for him to announce that\nhe's acting in response to innumerable and insistent demands.\nUnfortunately, I'm not...  Why do it, then? Out of a sort of blind\noptimism.  Every writer worth his two-cents-a-word hopes, in some\nlittle corner of his mind at least, that somewhere out there, there\nare a few people who will do more than read his book, pitch it away,\nand reach for the next one -- people who will read and reread, study\nthe cover, perhaps, in search of some clue, shelve the book and later\ntake it out again, just to hold.  There was a time when I could put\nthe palm of my hand flat on the front of a tattered paperback called\n\"THE DYING EARTH\" and feel the magic seeping through the cardboard:\nTurjan of Miir, Liane the Wayfarer, T'sais, Chun the Unavoidable.\nNobody I knew had so much as heard of that book, but I knew it was the\nfinest book in the world.\"  Needless to say, THE DYING EARTH by Jack\nVance and its sequel \"THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD\" are among my absolute\nfavorite books and there are more than a few similarities between \"NEW\nSUN\" and \"DYING EARTH\"...  an interesting bit of trivia.\n\n     More trivia in \"THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER\":\n\n     * \"NEW SUN\" originated as an unpublished novella called\" THE\n        FEAST OF SAINT CATHERINE\".\n\n     * The story grew from a novella to a novel to a trilogy to\n       finally a tetralogy...\n\n     * \"NEW SUN\" as a whole went through two drafts before the\n        first volume came out, in a situation not unlike \"THE\n        LORD OF THE RINGS\" -- Wolfe wanted to be able to\n        change the first book on the basis of plot events in\n        the last book...\n\n     * There is a chapter \"Words Weird and Wonderful\" that\n       glosses all the strange words in \"THE SHADOW OF THE\n       TORTURER\" on a chapter by chapter basis.\n\n     * There are also chapters on writing, on publishing, on\n       warfare in Severian's time and also a chapter\n       containing a set of jokes as told by various\n       characters from \"NEW SUN\".\n\n                           Yours trivially,"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}