Subject: Gene Wolfe review: Nightside the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun

From: David Langford <ansible at cix.compulink.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 01:18:53 +0000

Order Info: 0-450-59405-X
Pages:      333pp
Series:     The Book of the Long Sun (alias Starcrosser's Planetfall)
Volume:     Book 1
Comments:   hardback UKP 15.99

Author:     Gene Wolfe
Title:      Lake of the Long Sun
Publisher:  Tor
City:       New York
Date:       Jan 1994
Order Info: 0-312-85494-3
Pages:      352pp
Series:     The Book of the Long Sun (alias Starcrosser's Planetfall)
Volume:     Book 2
Comments:   hardback $22.95

reviewed by Dave Langford

[A version of this review appeared in the British SF Association's magazine
VECTOR.]

One problem with reviewing Gene Wolfe is that often there's so little to
say that isn't trespassing - peeling away at least some of his veils of
sneakiness and indirection. Another is that with only the first two books
of a new series to hand, critics can confidently expect a gleefully
grinning Wolfe to pull the rug from under any too-rash understanding of
what's going on....

As far as I can see, it is not actually stated anywhere in _Nightside_'s
text that the setting, the `whorl', is a vast generation starship modeled
like a cylindrical space colony (or like Clarke's Rama), with its
artificial `long sun' running down the central axis. Part of this emerges
in the blurb which after all has to tell us _something_ and the picture
will soon be evident to any sf reader used to picking up on clues like the
skylands visible overhead when the sun is shaded, or the scavenged building
material called shiprock. And does `whorl' hint at cloud patterns shaped by
Coriolis force down the long axial vista? Pay attention! (I made that tiny
speculation before reading _Lake_, which explicitly gives another though
not incompatible origin for the name.)

This new sequence _The Book of the Long Sun_ is set `in the world of _The
Book of the New Sun_' ... but remotely and not near the period we know.
The whorl's launch is ancient history in the _Book_, its presumably
slower-than-light technology long superseded by the mirrors and ships of
the Hierodules. As though in passing, _Lake_ drops the name of the autarch
who once ruled many worlds and ordered the launch of this `starcrosser': we
have met him in _The Sword of the Lictor_ and _The Urth of the New Sun_,
after which his mere name adds a whiff of gigantic vanity and hubris to the
star-voyage. That allusion apart, it is not necessary to have read the four
or five books of the _Book_.

Now, three centuries on, the whorl's launch is forgotten history in this
new series too ... a venerable sf tradition since Heinlein's _Universe_
(though here longer and variously reliable memories are owned by certain
AIs and robots called `chemical' beings or `chems', for all that they
appear to be metallic and nuclear-powered). Equipment is dying with age.
Dwindling stocks of old-technology slug-guns, `floater' hovercars and
videophones coexist with swords, pack animals, labour-intensive farming.
The gods, whose nature is best indicated by the fact of their heaven being
called Mainframe, appear only very rarely at the windows of the electronic
altars. The whorl is already old.

Perhaps necessarily, the setting doesn't at first seem as deep and wondrous
as Urth in the _Book_. But this is Wolfe, and things are subtler than the
easy sf summation above. When the new books' hero Patera Silk, teacher and
priest, is touched by a god, it is not one of the nine chief gods of
Mainframe who gives him enlightenment and purpose, but the shadowy (though
known and accepted) Outsider. There is mystery here, and probably Mystery
... we are given to understand that the Outsider is the only god whose
dominion and creation extend outside the whorl; and that once, incarnated,
he may have driven merchants from a temple. Is it significant that for a
little while before violence intervenes in the final chapter of _Lake_,
Silk finds himself heading for acclaim in his home city and about to enter
it on a donkey?

Silk is a new and likeable variant of the Wolfe hero, seen from outside in
third-person rather than first-person narrative (cf. Severian, Latro) for a
change. He's truly devout and even celibate despite some severe temptations
so far ... yet ready to turn his hand to burglary _ad majorem deorum
gloriam_ when his church and school are sold off to pay taxes.  Silk's
bravura attempt to steal them back forms the centrepiece of _Nightside_.
The whorl's nightside refers to its criminal underworld as well as the
darkness under the long sun's revolving shade, and there's some nice
thieves' cant to go with this: as expected from this author, the more
esoteric terms like `dimber' (meaning approximately `nifty') can be traced
to authentic English historical slang. In the cant, to burgle a residence
is, precisely but euphemistically, to `solve' it.

So we shortly find the young, bright, resourceful and entirely
inexperienced Silk solving a crime-lord's mansion which is surrounded by
high, spiked walls and guarded by a monstrous, tracked killer robot
(`talus'), oversized lynxes and birds, novel weapons, etc. People have
banged on so much about Wolfe's elusiveness, his games of indirection, that
it's worth noting how frequent, well-crafted and straightforward are the
passages of high adventure or suspense.

Our hero is also capable of solving problems in the detective sense, like
Father Brown. (Little ratiocinative treats keep recurring in this author's
work: remember the lochage in _The Shadow of the Torturer_ who deduces
Severian to be no impostor but a genuine torturer, without hearing him
speak or looking up from his desk?) Later in _Nightside_ Silk unravels a
murder in a brothel, uses knowledge painfully gleaned from his earlier
adventures to tackle a case of almost literal demonic possession, conducts
a ritual cleansing and exorcism, and is rewarded by a numinous encounter
with one of the lesser Mainframe goddesses.

All these strange activities appear to be having a catalytic effect on
Silk's home city of Viron, one of very many city-states in the whorl, whose
democratic Charter has long been suspended along with the office of
president or `calde' [acute accent on the e]. Instead, a bunch of evidently
corrupt councillors (the Ayuntamiento) has held on to power for a period
which seems not merely illegal but impossible. There are whispers in the
streets, and by the end of _Nightside_ the words _Silk for Calde_ are
appearing scrawled on walls....

_Lake of the Long Sun_ illuminates much of what has gone before, with the
new light casting longer and darker shadows. Further theophanies occur.
This time Silk's journey to the underworld is literal: searching for the
secret meeting-place of the Ayuntamiento, he finds himself ensnared and
lost in endless tunnels within the skin of the whorl, down where it's
colder and closer to space. Here we find the chem soldiers who were placed
to defend each city against the others, most `asleep', those on guard
worrying that after three centuries the defence plans may no longer
suffice: more wheels within wheels.

The underworld also contain humans in biological stasis. Devotees of the
_Book_ will wonder if it's important that Silk, already lame like Severian,
helps call a `dead' woman from the deeps of time as Severian did.... Other
mysteries and wonders abound, including a window through which Silk at last
sees stars and one brief dazzling glimpse of what must surely be, for him
and all the whorl's passengers, the New Sun. There are confrontations with
members of the Ayuntamiento. We have seemingly come to the brink of
revolution and war, with portions of Viron's above-ground human army,
prodded in some cases by the electronic goddess who most favours Silk,
hailing him as leader. The next book is to be called _Calde of the Long
Sun_.

I haven't even mentioned the still unexplained case of apparent vampirism,
the secular rationale for possession by gods, the too-obvious-to-see system
of naming which is demurely revealed in a glossary at the beginning of
_Lake_, the talking night-chough, the thief, whore and other-city spy who
variously befriend Silk, the highly-charged dreams and prophecies, the
flying men who glide watchfully far above the action (and the subplot about
hawking for one with an eagle), the submarine in Lake Limna, the careful
delineation of the three females who run the church school with Silk (one
human, one chem, one half-and-half), the ultra-black joke when one of those
`corrupt' councillors proves to be _literally_ so, the inevitable discovery
that the tokens used as coins in the whorl are not coins, and much more.
These books read so very smoothly that one feels a distinct jolt on looking
back to realize how thoroughly crammed they are with colourful invention
and incident.

Wolfe's prose remains fine and precise. There's a temptation to remark that
it contains fewer of the deep notes, the magical resonances and ironies
that throb through the original _Book_ ... but many of those moments of the
_Book_ went unrecognized or half-understood until the entire work was
available for rereading as a whole. _The Book of the Long Sun_ remains
maddeningly incomplete.

So far: vintage Wolfe, indeed. His hand has not lost its cunning. Be sure
to buy the whole series.

David Langford
ansible at cix.compulink.co.uk