Subject: "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" (SPOILERS)

From: Zorn of Zorna <hartman at cs.swarthmore.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 1990 21:40:15 +0000

I finally read Gene Wolfe's "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" a week or so
ago.  I vaguely remember there being a full-length novel version, but this
was a shorter version, in one of the Year's Best anthologies.  And I just
don't get it.  Or rather, I followed the surface story without too much
trouble, but when I got to the end I had a strong feeling that there was a
lot going on that I was missing.  The story seemed to be very
straightforward in plot; as far as I could tell, it was mostly a mood
piece.  It did a good job of characterization and depiction of this future
alien society, but I couldn't help feeling that that wasn't all there was
to it.  Can anyone help me out?
   I couldn't even figure out if Veil's Hypothesis (I think that was what
it was called) was supposed to be true, or exactly why the protagonist was
imprisoned (there's an obvious reason for him to have been imprisoned
(killing his father), but I thought there were implications that it WASN'T
for the obvious reason).
   Hm.  Just realized that that story was what I was reminded of by the
Prologue to _Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand_ (which I'm reading
now).  Interesting similarities.
   Anyway, I tend to have that feeling about most of Wolfe's stuff that
I've read.  Haven't started on the Book of the New Sun (?) books yet, but
the stories of his that I've read (and _Free Live Free_) have often left me
wondering what I'm missing. 

Jed
hartman at campus.swarthmore.edu
hartman at swarthmr.bitnet

---

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic at walt.cc.utexas.edu>
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 1990 04:21:27 +0000

>(killing his father), but I thought there were implications that it WASN'T

Well, since Wolfe was trying to create a certain amount of ambiguity in his
story, you should be warned that there's no real "answer" to many of your
questions. Nevertheless, you'd probably enjoy the "novel" FIFTH HEAD OF
CERBERUS, which is actually the story you read followed by two related
stories. The book will give you a lot of background on the Hypothesis and
other questions you may have about Wolfe's fictional society.

Wolfe can be troubling to those who read more traditional SF, since he
feels no great need to wrap up his works with tidy solutions.  Of course,
this is part of his strength as a writer, since life itself has no great
fondness for neat solutions.

Mike Godwin
UT Law School