{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/150",
    "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.",
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  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 150,
    "subject": "Review: Wolfe's _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-09-15T19:43:20+00:00",
    "last": "1998-09-15T19:43:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v23-224-7@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Paul S Jenkins",
        "address": "pj at willowsoft.compulink.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1998-09-15T19:43:20+00:00",
      "subject": "Review: Wolfe's _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "_The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ by Gene Wolfe\n\t\t Review Copyright (c) 1998 Paul S. Jenkins\n\nMaybe I'm not a sophisticated reader. I enjoy books that operate on several\nlevels, and in my opinion that's what can make a novel great - something\nfor everyone: a good story, tackling important issues, with subtle nuances\nto delight those readers who catch them, and plenty of interest at the\nsurface for those who don't. Any book whose deeper subtleties leave little\nto engage the less sophisticated reader goes down a notch or two on my\nscale.\n\nSuch a book, I'm sorry to say, is _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_. Gene Wolfe\nis often cited as a stylist of literary SF. Seeing a secondhand British\npaperback edition in a street market I therefore snapped it up.\n\n_The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ is the first Wolfe I've read, and though I'd\nhave to agree about the use of the term 'stylist'; the three linked\nnovellas that make up this book are superbly written - I had a hard time\nwith the novel as a whole. There are obvious parallels with colonialism,\nslavery, subjugation of indigenous races, etc, but the direction of the\nthree narratives remains unclear.\n\nThe first, eponymous novella, \"The Fifth Head of Cerberus\" is the first-\nperson narrative of a boy on the human-colony planet Sainte Croix. He and\nhis brother live with their father, a brothel-keeper, who performs repeated\n'narco-therapeutic' experiments on the boy, evidently trying to force\nknowledge into him for some purpose. The brothers are looked after by a\nsentient robot known as Mr. Million, who, it turns out, is an expert-\nsystem based on their grandfather.  Eventually the boy discovers why so\nmany of the Sainte Croix inhabitants have similar facial features, and he\ndecides to take matters into his own hands.\n\nThe novella is written in a mildly archaic, Victorian narrative style:\nnothing jars, and it's plainly the work of a master. The plot is simple and\nintriguing, but the use of a naive narrator means we never get a clear\npicture of what's happening.\n\nThe second novella is entitled \"'A STORY,' by John V. Marsch.\" Dr.  Marsch\nhas already appeared in the first novella, but that's almost the only link\nwith this piece of 'fiction' set on the sisterworld of Sainte Anne, where\nthe shadow children or 'aboriginals' dwell.\n\nSandwalker dreams he is his twin brother Eastwind, from whom he was\nseparated at birth. He sets out to see a priest, and while searching for a\nwild animal to hunt as a gift for the holy man he chances upon the shadow\nchildren, a strange tribe of old-but-young people. Drawn by their\nmind-songs, Sandwalker joins them but they are soon captured by\nmarshmen. The shadow children tell Sandwalker of the origins of human life\non the planet. The story ends in an unsatisfactory _deus ex machina_\ndenouement. Obscure, though stylishly written, this story draws parallels\nwith the Australian aborigines and their songlines.\n\nThe third and last novella, entitled \"V.R.T.,\" is a curiously framed story,\ntold by Dr. Marsch of his fieldwork in the company of a youth (V.R.T.),\ninterspersed with his journal of incarceration. The frame device is the\nnarrative of the prison governor who is holding Marsch on suspicion of\nbeing an abo - a native of Sainte Anne. The governor is reading Marsch's\njournal, but the pages have become muddled, and we get wild and random\njumps between the doctor's explorations of Sainte Anne and his subsequent\nimprisonment. It seems that the authorities of Sainte Croix cannot decide\nwhether Marsch is a human from Earth as he claims, or a renegade native of\nSainte Anne. It's an interesting but direction-less story, which remains\nunresolved. At the end we're not really any the wiser.\n\nI've an unread copy of _Nightside the Long Sun_. Having finished _Cerberus_\nI find I'm reluctant to read more of Wolfe. The many-layered obscurity of\n_Cerberus_ is fascinating, but nonetheless frustrating, and though I feel\nthe novel may well repay a second reading, I'm fighting shy of it.\n\nAuthor:     Wolfe, Gene\nTitle:      The Fifth Head of Cerberus\nPublisher:  Quartet\nCity:       London\nDate:       1975 (copyright 1972)\nOrder Info: ISBN 0 704 31176 3\nPages:      192 pp.\nComments:   paperback (price of reviewed edition unknown, but Amazon.com\nComments:   lists the US edition as available)\n\nPaul S. Jenkins"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}