{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/119",
    "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": 119,
    "subject": "Gene Wolfe review: Nightside the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1994-03-30T01:18:53+00:00",
    "last": "1994-03-30T01:18:53+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v19-259-4@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David Langford",
        "address": "ansible at cix.compulink.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1994-03-30T01:18:53+00:00",
      "subject": "Gene Wolfe review: Nightside the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
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          "text": "Author:     Gene Wolfe\nTitle:      Nightside the Long Sun\nPublisher:  New English Library\nCity:       London\nDate:       1993\nOrder Info: 0-450-59405-X\nPages:      333pp\nSeries:     The Book of the Long Sun (alias Starcrosser's Planetfall)\nVolume:     Book 1\nComments:   hardback UKP 15.99\n\nAuthor:     Gene Wolfe\nTitle:      Lake of the Long Sun\nPublisher:  Tor\nCity:       New York\nDate:       Jan 1994\nOrder Info: 0-312-85494-3\nPages:      352pp\nSeries:     The Book of the Long Sun (alias Starcrosser's Planetfall)\nVolume:     Book 2\nComments:   hardback $22.95\n\nreviewed by Dave Langford\n\n[A version of this review appeared in the British SF Association's magazine\nVECTOR.]\n\nOne problem with reviewing Gene Wolfe is that often there's so little to\nsay that isn't trespassing - peeling away at least some of his veils of\nsneakiness and indirection. Another is that with only the first two books\nof a new series to hand, critics can confidently expect a gleefully\ngrinning Wolfe to pull the rug from under any too-rash understanding of\nwhat's going on....\n\nAs far as I can see, it is not actually stated anywhere in _Nightside_'s\ntext that the setting, the `whorl', is a vast generation starship modeled\nlike a cylindrical space colony (or like Clarke's Rama), with its\nartificial `long sun' running down the central axis. Part of this emerges\nin the blurb which after all has to tell us _something_ and the picture\nwill soon be evident to any sf reader used to picking up on clues like the\nskylands visible overhead when the sun is shaded, or the scavenged building\nmaterial called shiprock. And does `whorl' hint at cloud patterns shaped by\nCoriolis force down the long axial vista? Pay attention! (I made that tiny\nspeculation before reading _Lake_, which explicitly gives another though\nnot incompatible origin for the name.)\n\nThis new sequence _The Book of the Long Sun_ is set `in the world of _The\nBook of the New Sun_' ... but remotely and not near the period we know.\nThe whorl's launch is ancient history in the _Book_, its presumably\nslower-than-light technology long superseded by the mirrors and ships of\nthe Hierodules. As though in passing, _Lake_ drops the name of the autarch\nwho once ruled many worlds and ordered the launch of this `starcrosser': we\nhave met him in _The Sword of the Lictor_ and _The Urth of the New Sun_,\nafter which his mere name adds a whiff of gigantic vanity and hubris to the\nstar-voyage. That allusion apart, it is not necessary to have read the four\nor five books of the _Book_.\n\nNow, three centuries on, the whorl's launch is forgotten history in this\nnew series too ... a venerable sf tradition since Heinlein's _Universe_\n(though here longer and variously reliable memories are owned by certain\nAIs and robots called `chemical' beings or `chems', for all that they\nappear to be metallic and nuclear-powered). Equipment is dying with age.\nDwindling stocks of old-technology slug-guns, `floater' hovercars and\nvideophones coexist with swords, pack animals, labour-intensive farming.\nThe gods, whose nature is best indicated by the fact of their heaven being\ncalled Mainframe, appear only very rarely at the windows of the electronic\naltars. The whorl is already old.\n\nPerhaps necessarily, the setting doesn't at first seem as deep and wondrous\nas Urth in the _Book_. But this is Wolfe, and things are subtler than the\neasy sf summation above. When the new books' hero Patera Silk, teacher and\npriest, is touched by a god, it is not one of the nine chief gods of\nMainframe who gives him enlightenment and purpose, but the shadowy (though\nknown and accepted) Outsider. There is mystery here, and probably Mystery\n... we are given to understand that the Outsider is the only god whose\ndominion and creation extend outside the whorl; and that once, incarnated,\nhe may have driven merchants from a temple. Is it significant that for a\nlittle while before violence intervenes in the final chapter of _Lake_,\nSilk finds himself heading for acclaim in his home city and about to enter\nit on a donkey?\n\nSilk is a new and likeable variant of the Wolfe hero, seen from outside in\nthird-person rather than first-person narrative (cf. Severian, Latro) for a\nchange. He's truly devout and even celibate despite some severe temptations\nso far ... yet ready to turn his hand to burglary _ad majorem deorum\ngloriam_ when his church and school are sold off to pay taxes.  Silk's\nbravura attempt to steal them back forms the centrepiece of _Nightside_.\nThe whorl's nightside refers to its criminal underworld as well as the\ndarkness under the long sun's revolving shade, and there's some nice\nthieves' cant to go with this: as expected from this author, the more\nesoteric terms like `dimber' (meaning approximately `nifty') can be traced\nto authentic English historical slang. In the cant, to burgle a residence\nis, precisely but euphemistically, to `solve' it.\n\nSo we shortly find the young, bright, resourceful and entirely\ninexperienced Silk solving a crime-lord's mansion which is surrounded by\nhigh, spiked walls and guarded by a monstrous, tracked killer robot\n(`talus'), oversized lynxes and birds, novel weapons, etc. People have\nbanged on so much about Wolfe's elusiveness, his games of indirection, that\nit's worth noting how frequent, well-crafted and straightforward are the\npassages of high adventure or suspense.\n\nOur hero is also capable of solving problems in the detective sense, like\nFather Brown. (Little ratiocinative treats keep recurring in this author's\nwork: remember the lochage in _The Shadow of the Torturer_ who deduces\nSeverian to be no impostor but a genuine torturer, without hearing him\nspeak or looking up from his desk?) Later in _Nightside_ Silk unravels a\nmurder in a brothel, uses knowledge painfully gleaned from his earlier\nadventures to tackle a case of almost literal demonic possession, conducts\na ritual cleansing and exorcism, and is rewarded by a numinous encounter\nwith one of the lesser Mainframe goddesses.\n\nAll these strange activities appear to be having a catalytic effect on\nSilk's home city of Viron, one of very many city-states in the whorl, whose\ndemocratic Charter has long been suspended along with the office of\npresident or `calde' [acute accent on the e]. Instead, a bunch of evidently\ncorrupt councillors (the Ayuntamiento) has held on to power for a period\nwhich seems not merely illegal but impossible. There are whispers in the\nstreets, and by the end of _Nightside_ the words _Silk for Calde_ are\nappearing scrawled on walls....\n\n_Lake of the Long Sun_ illuminates much of what has gone before, with the\nnew light casting longer and darker shadows. Further theophanies occur.\nThis time Silk's journey to the underworld is literal: searching for the\nsecret meeting-place of the Ayuntamiento, he finds himself ensnared and\nlost in endless tunnels within the skin of the whorl, down where it's\ncolder and closer to space. Here we find the chem soldiers who were placed\nto defend each city against the others, most `asleep', those on guard\nworrying that after three centuries the defence plans may no longer\nsuffice: more wheels within wheels.\n\nThe underworld also contain humans in biological stasis. Devotees of the\n_Book_ will wonder if it's important that Silk, already lame like Severian,\nhelps call a `dead' woman from the deeps of time as Severian did.... Other\nmysteries and wonders abound, including a window through which Silk at last\nsees stars and one brief dazzling glimpse of what must surely be, for him\nand all the whorl's passengers, the New Sun. There are confrontations with\nmembers of the Ayuntamiento. We have seemingly come to the brink of\nrevolution and war, with portions of Viron's above-ground human army,\nprodded in some cases by the electronic goddess who most favours Silk,\nhailing him as leader. The next book is to be called _Calde of the Long\nSun_.\n\nI haven't even mentioned the still unexplained case of apparent vampirism,\nthe secular rationale for possession by gods, the too-obvious-to-see system\nof naming which is demurely revealed in a glossary at the beginning of\n_Lake_, the talking night-chough, the thief, whore and other-city spy who\nvariously befriend Silk, the highly-charged dreams and prophecies, the\nflying men who glide watchfully far above the action (and the subplot about\nhawking for one with an eagle), the submarine in Lake Limna, the careful\ndelineation of the three females who run the church school with Silk (one\nhuman, one chem, one half-and-half), the ultra-black joke when one of those\n`corrupt' councillors proves to be _literally_ so, the inevitable discovery\nthat the tokens used as coins in the whorl are not coins, and much more.\nThese books read so very smoothly that one feels a distinct jolt on looking\nback to realize how thoroughly crammed they are with colourful invention\nand incident.\n\nWolfe's prose remains fine and precise. There's a temptation to remark that\nit contains fewer of the deep notes, the magical resonances and ironies\nthat throb through the original _Book_ ... but many of those moments of the\n_Book_ went unrecognized or half-understood until the entire work was\navailable for rereading as a whole. _The Book of the Long Sun_ remains\nmaddeningly incomplete.\n\nSo far: vintage Wolfe, indeed. His hand has not lost its cunning. Be sure\nto buy the whole series.\n\nDavid Langford\nansible at cix.compulink.co.uk"
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